A Moveable Feast

250 covers in 1 hour

Today I sent out 250 meals within one hour. No reservations had been made. Nobody ordered. Nobody paid.

Let's take a step back to explain. For the last two years my mind had been totally absorbed by my career change. Continuous struggle with the new environment. Questioning whether I had taken the right decision. Working inhuman hours for a ridiculous salary. Since I left HP and Grenoble and my life #1 I had to put aside some of my habits, hobbies, activities that were part of it, in order to survive the beginning of live #2. But I think a couple of months ago I made a big jump, and eventually found the capacity to look beyond a restaurant kitchen again.

Part of my desire has also always been to volunteer and help other people who are not as lucky as I am to live a better life. My father and my sister are both medical doctors and it is not that I wish I had taken their path, but somehow I envy them that they are giving so much of themselves to save other people's lives, to help them to live with less pain; to lead a longer and better life. It is something that is missing in my life. So when a couple of months ago I had overcome the biggest hurdles of my new life, I felt I had the energy again to give also to others and not focus exclusively on myself.

The most obvious way of giving should also be related to food for me. After all the key motivation for my career change had been to bring happiness to other people with my food. So it was a no-brainer to choose to join "Les restos du coeur" , the restaurants of the heart.

Les restos du coeur is very popular French humanitarian association, founded by the French comedian Coluche in 1985. He set up the distribution of free meals to the poorest people, a program that continued even after his tragic death in a motorbike accident shortly after the first winter of the Restos du Coeur. Today a lot of celebrities support Les restos du Coeur, and raise funding in a yearly big TV concert. Even our famous beautiful Carla, the French president's glamourous wife, donated the 60000 Euros she got in a lawsuit against Ryanair (for showing her picture in advertisement) to Les Restos du Coeur.

So since a couple of weeks I have spent my Saturday evenings together with a couple of other regular volunteers to distribute hot meals to the poorest people, who often don't even have a place to live. I didn't write immediately about this activity, because in the beginning I was not really comfortable. People who come to the meal distribution, which takes place outside, are not requested to present ID or justification. Anybody can come, and I was told to follow some rules strictly to avoid trouble. There can be any type of people with all types of education background, some are drunk, some sleep under a bridge, some just got out of prison, some just come for the social aspect without taking a meal. Some people were indeed agressive, but most of the time those evenings have been good experiences, and I try to keep a big smile, a bonjour, a bon appetit for everybody, and I am happy when I can see from time to time a smile returned. I read in an article recently that after all volunteering is as much selfless as it is selfish, because it makes you feel good about yourself. I guess this is true. In this case it makes me also feel good about my life conditions. When you can go back to a warm home, after having spend a couple of hours with people who can't afford to buy food, or don't even have place to stay when it is freezing cold outside, you know how good your own life is. It is a healthy reminder every Saturday night.

Today, after two months of participation, I was "awarded" a badge with my name. Les restos du coeur want volunteers, that are reliable and come regularly. So I had to "prove" first that I am serious about regular participation, before being officially "accepted". Some of the other volunteers I met, go to the same place for meal distribution, every Saturday night since more than 6 years !

More infos about "Les restos du coeur" on their (French) website :

http://www.restosducoeur.org/

Bonne Année 2009 !

Happy New Year 2009 from Germany !!! 

I am spending a couple of days since Christmas until this weekend here in the northern part of Germany with my family and the family of my godchild Amelie (named after the French movie), 5 years old. It was her first New Year's eve, for which she was allowed to stay up until after midnight just because I was there. It was also the first fireworks she ever saw in her life, which you can tell from her eyes...

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Door #21 - what is a bad day ?

I have been thinking the whole week about how bad my Sunday would be, imagining dialogues with the sous-chef, in which I would eventually tell him to show me more respect. I fantasised about how I would report in January to management all the bad things about the sous chef and how he was treating me and was always late on Sundays, all in order to take revenge. Even my last three days off I couldn't enjoy as I was in a bad mood anticipating a bad Sunday. Then today life decided to give me a lesson, and with a literal wake-up call gave me a true reason to worry and be very sad. After that call I couldn't care less about how the sous chef would treat me, and surprisingly he was nice to me all day and all my bad thouhts about him and unhealthy revenge plans were wiped away. Still it was a very bad Sunday, but not for the reason I had expected. I guess I rediscovered life's priorities. 

Madrid

I am sitting in the airport waiting for my connecting flight to Boston. Not just any airport. Not Paris or London or Frankfurt as usual. Today it is Madrid. I am here 24 hours after the disaster. I have never booked via Madrid before. And when I saw the pictures yesterday the idea of going there the next day felt very strange. So felt the landing, and so will feel the takoff later. My flights is two hours delayed and while normally I wouldn´t bother, it makes me nervous, although I know it is just because the incoming flight is late. No signs in or outside the airport of what they have been going through yesterday, except the newspaper photos and headlines in all languages. Somehow I imagine behind everybody´s mind thoughts and concerns. Being "close" to an incident like this reminds me of getting my priorities in life right and the preciousness of every moment.

Perspectives

The constant up and down has not really changed so far, and sometimes I am getting tired of it. For a couple of days I thought, I am really lucky to work in that restaurant, and I should stay for a while, then another incident a week ago with one of my coworkers, who treats me like shit (sorry for the language, I am adjusting to my environment), makes me want to never go back to the place again. As a result I started searching ads and updated my CV. I already visisted one other restaurant in Paris and have another interview next Wednesday. But I also scheduled a meeting for today with the "patron", the owner of the current restaurant, which was really really positive. So after that discussion I have a new perspective, and will probably not change yet. I realized how much my patron understands my situation and values me. While he told me that I need to learn to be strong in this industry he also acknowledged trouble he had with this particular coworker and he promised to work out a schedule, that would avoid me and the nasty coworker working together at the same station at the same time. He also agreed to my proposal to reduce my working time by half a day. This would result in a 4 day work week with 3 days off, that I want to use, to complement the other experiences I need. For example I plan to work in the "front of the house" of the restaurant and do the bar service from time to time for free (I don't even know how to use the professional expresso machines, and I have to know a little bit about this stuff as future restaurant owner), find time to work more on my business plan, read more, investigate more restaurants that are "one-man shows", cook more to develop my own menu, etc. etc.

The restaurant will close for the whole month of August, so I will have four more days to work, before I head to Germany, to visit friends and family for about 2 weeks. Afterwards I will spend about a week in the US with my friends Kate, Margaret, Vini and Andy, who I haven't seen for more than 2 years now, when they came to Paris for my 40th birthday. Can't wait to see you guys and all those kids you made in the meantime (and before) !!!

But before all this, the upcoming weekend will bring my culinary highlight of the year, as I will take the train tomorrow right after the lunch service to go to Cancale, a fishing village in Brittany, where I have dinner reservations for one of France's best restaurants... Insider can guess who I am talking about... I wrote a letter to the chef, asking to meet him and visit the kitchen, while I am there, but I am more than sceptical that during the high season this will be possible, I even doubt my letter reached him. In any case I am very excited to go there and by the perspective to taste his cuisine... 

So all in all, many reasons to stay in a good mood for a while !

  

How I became a waitress

Last weekend I became a waitress. Now before you get worried about another career change in my up and down adventures in French kitchens, this was just for a couple of minutes. And it was in Germany.

My mother had planned to celebrate her birthday last Friday with my father, my sister and some of their closest friends in a restaurant near their home (a little town in north-west Germany, somewhere between Hannover and Amsterdam). What she did not know, was that my sister, my grandmother and I had prepared a big surprise together for that evening since a while. My mother thought that I was working in Paris, and that her monther was at her home in Bavaria, about 700 km away, but in fact my grandmother and me met on Thursday evening secretely at my sister's home, my grandmother (87 years old!) arriving by train and me by plane.

Thursday the three of us spent a day together "secretely" in Hanover, where my sister lives, and the next day we all travelled to the restaurant (2 hours from Hanover). I had told the restaurant owners about our surprise plans, and they were all excited about the idea and wanted to help us make it a big success. So while my parents, my sister and their friends arrived, my grandmother and I were hidden by the owner family in the breakfast room of the hotel/restaurant. Then, when it was time for my family and their friends to look at the menu, the restaurant owner came into the breakfast room, I put on the waitress uniform, took the menus under my arm and went out in the dining room. Everybody looked at me with this "a new waitress ! And she reminds me of someone"-look, and when I handed the menu to my mother, she couldn't believe it. I think the pictures tell the rest. The surprise was more than perfect.

   

I messed up the subsequent distribution of the menus, so I did not get hired by the restaurant. I gave my mother a couple of minutes to recover from "the shock", before I gave the secret sign to the real waitress, and ordered a glass of champagne, which meant, she was now supposed to get my grandmother from the breakfast room, whom my mother believed to be in Bavaria. And then my grandmother appeared with a glass of champagne. This was too much...and my mother didn't know anymore whether to laugh or to cry.

We did not stop laughing all evening, and it was lots of fun for everybody.

Below two snapshots of my "little" sister and me. Difficult to say who's the younger one of us, isn't it !?!. First still well behaved, then a couple of glasses of wine later falling with our heads -pretending to be tired- on the table during a boring speech of one of the party guests, whose identity I will not make public here. But I can say we did not fail to get more attention than the speaker by doing this ;)

   

Because I work Sundays, unfortunately I had to travel back already the next day to Paris. So it was a very short trip but definitely worth it. But I'll be back soon on a friends & family tour through Germany (and the US) in August, when the restaurant will be closed for 4 weeks...

Jetzt faengt das Leben an...

Liebe Mami, bonne anniversaire, und viele liebe Geburtstagsgruesse, feier schoen, flipp ruhig ein bisschen aus.

Fuer das Geburtstagsstaendchen moechte ich Dich gerne auf diesen Blog-Eintrag verweisen :

http://moveablefeast.typepad.com/a_moveable_feast/2007/11/mit-da-faengt-d.html

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everybody...

Danke Nina fuer die Vorlage ;)

An ordinary day - part 2

During my break in the Café de la Place I decided I needed to do a bit more than just not sleep if I wanted to make the day feel a bit more extraordinary. The issue was, because of French laws I couldn't take a day off, and because of the working hours I couldn't really go out or celebrate or meet friends.

The only people I would be able to meet this year on my birthday were my new colleagues. So before returning back for the dinner service I bought the best chocolate cake in my neighbourhood patisserie. My new colleagues were really pleased, and I was glad that I had done it, because even if I hadn't told anybody about my birthday in the morning, they had found out through management. So one of the waiters surprised me with a flower bouquet, and then they put the "happy birthday" tape on very loud. Eventually I got the birthday feeling. After the service, the waiters invited me for a glass of champagne, and so on my way home in the metro with my flowers in hand, I could not stop to smile all the way....

Tomorrow after the lunch service my weekly 2.5 days off start, and I will take the train to Brussels where I meet my parents, and so the birthday feeling and smile should continue.

An ordinary day !?

Just like any day since beginning of February I left my appartment at 8:40 a.m., took the metro 10 stations to get out at "La Madeleine", entered the bistrot, had a very good espresso before climbing down the hundreds of years old wooden stairs into the "cave" and locker rooms to get into my cooks uniform. 

Official working time to be in the kitchen is 9 a.m., but with everybody having an esprosso first, it usually gets 9.15. For the month of March I am assigned to working "au chaud", on the hot line. This morning I prepared a "gratin dauphinois", which was the side dish for the "plat du jour", the entrecote. It needed to be planned to be for 20-30 orders, so it was a huge gratin. Then the usual "mise en place" checking if of everything for the service was ready and in enough quantity in the fridges, from lemons, to tomatoe cubes, to meat, fish, scallops, lobster, precooked vegetable. I cooked some potatoes, that are served with the sole meuniere and the "blanquette de veau", and prepared the mini-legumes that go with the lobster. Before 11 I also finished preparing the meal for the staff (4 cooks, 1 dishwasher and 4 servers), today roastbeef and pasta.

Like every day at 11 a.m. the chef kicked us out of the kitchen, even if we wanted to continue with the mise-en-place. But he insists on everybody respecting the break time. It is the first of the restaurants I have been working at where the staff eats at the normal customer tables and not on the pass or on the working benchens, so I am enjoying those 45 minutes. Like everyday I get back into the kitchen at 11:45 and double checked if everything was ready for the service to start. I quickly produced a sauce Bernaise, that we were running short of, that is served with the filet-frites. The amount is 10 times more that we used to do at school, so the techique and tools need to be adjusted a little bit, but I can do a sauce Bearnaise for 100 people perfectly now in one shot ! Customers come in starting at noon, and are accepted until 3 p.m. Today it was my turn to cook everything, while an appretice did the plating. Usually we take turns. The chef just interfered, when we were starting to "drown" or to be "dans le jus" (in the juice, or losing it).

We sold a lot of "blanquette de veau" today, a dish that goes very well, when it is cold outside. Basically it is a combination of big cubes of veal, carrots, bacon, potatoes, and small onions in a thick creamy sauce, not light but very yummy and the specialty of the bistrot. I also cooked ris de veau, andouillette, chicken breast with vegetables, pork feet, sole meuniere, filets de boeuf, "saignant" and "a point" perfectly mastered, something that was a mystery to me only 1 month ago, the plat du jour, entrecotes served with my gratin that the chef had complimented. Around 1 p.m. the apprentice and I got a bit in trouble, because the tickets were flowing in all at the same time. For each table the machine spits out a ticket twice, once when the customer orders (la commande), and once when the waiter wants the order on the customer table (la reclame). Depending on whether the customer has a starter or not, drinks an apero or not, eats slow or fast, the time between the reception of the two tickets at the hot line can be anything between 1 second and 20 minutes. So I started to lose it a little between knowing what I had to cook for sending out immediately, or what I had to prepare for later. Sometimes you can't wait for the second ticket, for example a pork feet cooks at least 15 minutes, so it must go in the oven with the first ticket. For an entrecote on the other hand, you just start to sear it, when you get the second ticket, and then imagine 15 tickets getting in at the same time... But the chef interfered a little bit to set the priorities and very quickly we were back on track.

(my current work area at the end of today's service, with the last order for a table of two on the pass : a steak-frites with sauce bearnaise and an entrecote)

It got quiet for me around 2 p.m. when the last customers all had their main courses and moved on to desserts. But this month I am not in charge of them. So at that time I started to clean my area, the stove, the workbench, moving items back into the fridges, and cleaning the floor while being ready for late customers, which we have to accept, but everybody hates when they walk in at 2:50. Whether there is something to do or not, we have to stay in the kitchen until 3 p.m. and then are kicked out by the chef again. I took the metro back home, usually I take my afternoon nap before getting back at 6 p.m. to start the service at 6:45. But I decided I will skip the nap today, and instead be awake the most time possible today, and offer myself a nice café in the Café de la Place. 

Actually I don't want this day to be just an ordinary day.