Category Archives: Living the disaster

Yeah, I didn’t post yesterday because I thinks I gots the Swine.  Ok, obviously I don’t have Swine Flu.  Actually, my husband, Chris, wants to refer to it by its proper name as Swine Flue is a misnomer.  So I don’t have H1N1 Influenza (Really, Chris?  That makes you happy?  Really?), but I’m rocking a sore throat that’s enough to make me miserable… and miserable to be around.  So apologies to my 3 readers (shout out to my mom, Chef Hayley’s mom, and Chris) for slacking off yesterday.

This week is going to be beyond bad, so by force, all my posts will be ridiculously short.  That means they’re going to be normal post length vs. my ongoing diatribes about nothing.  I know, everyone’s thrilled.  So here’s what I want when I’m sick.  Tea.  Green Tea.  Japanese brown rice green tea.  And I want it in my favorite Car Talk mug, which has “unencumbered by the thought process” written on it.  A phrase to live by… truly.  I also want lots of lemons and limes that I will slice up into wedges, sprinkle with Maldon’s salt, and eat like oranges until my teeth hurt.  I want to curl up on my couch, wrap myself in 8 layers of blankets, and watch chick flicks like “Becoming Jane” all day until I nod off.  Unfortunately, I will be leaving here in about 2 hours to spread my joy (and germs) to all the lucky visitors to the FCI library.  Wonder where I can buy one of those face masks…

Ok, I’m exhausted and don’t have a lot of motivation to do anything other than sleep right now.  But… I have one, great little story to share with you.  Forgive me if this gets a little “techy” with mentions of the vacuum machine, but the end is pure and simple Mindy disaster.

I was pulled from brunch service today to help the head of my school prep for an event tomorrow night.  My last task of the day, after a full day of work, was to place these little passion fruit meringues (made with a hydrocolloid that eliminates the need for and taste of egg whites) into a glass vacuum jar and vacuum seal them.  They take hours to dry in a food dehydrator and are light, crunchy, and full of passion fruit flavor, but quickly become soggy if left to sit too long in the open, sucking in moisture.  All I had to do was place them in a jar and vacuum them, and then I could finally go home after being there since 7:30 AM.

Well, I put the meringues in a vacuum jar and put on the lid.  Unfortunately, my boss, Dave, had drilled holes in all of the glass vacuum jar lids for another application a while back (typical).  So, we had been placing the jar and lid in a vacuum bag and sealing them that way.  I asked the head of the school whether the lid was even necessary then.  He replied that he didn’t know, but he didn’t think so and then left, leaving me on my own to finish up.  I put about 100 little puffs into a large vacuum jar, sans lid, into a plastic bag and then placed it in the chamber of the vacuum machine.  I hit start and watched all the air being sucked out of the chamber.  Right about then, I started to think that maybe this wasn’t a good idea… Continue reading →

Quail eggs have been haunting me.  The first time I actually saw a quail egg was just south of Moscow, Russia at my husband’s family reunion.  What a trip.  Some true-to-form Mindy highlights: being held at customs until we paid a $300 visa-revision fee (that’s right, US dollars, meaning my husband had to go to an ATM, withdraw rubles, exchange them into US dollars, just to go back to withdraw $3 more dollars to cover the transactin fee); showing up at a giant, empty hotel with 4, separate entrances, each with its own reservation desk & staff, none of which would acknowledge that we had a reservation; and basically just not remembering how to say “yes” in Russian for days because every time we asked a question, we heard, “nyet.”  Anyway, at one outdoor picnic (infested with yellow-jackets that I actually saw eating chunks of cured meat), out came the quail eggs.  They proceeded to drop them into shot glasses, top them off with vodka, and down the entire thing. Continue reading →