The Green Kitchen, pt 1

When I look back on a lot of my time in the kitchen, I could almost kick myself.  The sheer number of
hours I spent chopping away and swiping my cutting board into the trash is mind numbing to think about the amount of waste I created.  But let's be honest, it was the 90's and there was a lot that we knew but didn't really embrace.  The 80's were worse and don't even get me started on the 50's, 60's, 70's...We could have all have done better but we could not have done much worse.

The Green Kitchen now is a novel concept.  It is something that garners ooh's and ahh's from a lot of people now, but my mother is non-plussed. When she reads about a place like Sandwich Me In in Chicago she is very blase because she remembers a time.  There was a time when everything was not exactly zero waste, but a far sight greener than we see today.

She told me about the summer that she worked at a little bistro in Paris and the pig farmer up the road who would come to get their scraps for his pigs.  In return, they got the best of deals on pancetta and the freshest leanest cuts of pork.  She told me about the milk bottles that they had when she was a kid and how the idea of a plastic milk bottle today freaks her out a little now.  She lives alone now and feels a little better about cardboard cartons but upon hearing that there is a place in Pennsylvania that delivers milk in bottles by horse drawn cart, she wonders if they would be willing to deliver to Queens, NY.

She does things like that all the time.  I told her that California just banned plastic bags she said it was about time and wondered why anyone ever used those things anyway for fear of slicing their fingers.  Paper was not much better for her.  She prefers a blue and white NPR tote bag that she commandeered from my closet one day, and before that a pink and white Lindemann's bag that she has no idea where it has gone.  She things my dad might have used it the day before he passed away and secretly believes that he was shopping behind her back...but that is another story.

Her trash is always so light and airy when, even when I lived alone, I had big heavy sacks of dripping garbage that I had to haul to the gaping maw of the incinerator. And then where did it go?  She grows tomatoes and basil and spinach and onions and potatoes galore out on her patio and on the roof because she always has, she says and I have never seen her buy a seed.  So when someone posts something about how to grow celery or onions from cuttings, she scoffs.  My mom was green before it was cool and she could put most hippies to shame.

Now that I think about it, I could do more.  I called her the other day and told her that we are planning a massive initiative out at the farm and that we are going to try to compost or re-use everything that comes on the property.  Even though she is a few thousand miles away, I could feel myself lean forward ever so slightly as if expecting a pat on the head. None came.

Instead we began to talk about how she hoped that we could see the error of our ways.  She began to express a little regret that she had not done more, but still held to the belief that she had done her best.  She raised two girls in a busy restaurant and hey, she had to make things easier when she could.  For my mother making things easier often meant buying from the local vendor she didn't have the best relationship with because we were close to dinner service.  It NEVER meant buying a tomato from Argentina.  For a moment, I felt as if she thought I was guilting her about something. Still even on her worst day, she was greener than any restaurant that I ever worked in.

Now the pendulum swings back but there is an unspoken (or sometimes screamed?) fear that it might be too late.  We have spent so much time making things more convenient for the moment that we have forgotten about the future.

I remember her and my father once discussing what "organic" meant.  My father explained that it meant that it was grown without chemicals.  I heard her make mention that perhaps the organic should not be the oddity but the label should be on the thing grown WITH chemicals.  My father sighed his sigh and walked away as she reminded him very loudly that in their day EVERYTHING was organic!

Now as adults, my sister and I chat about organic x and y and GMO whatever and it is like another language to my mother.  It is a dead language almost as if we were speaking Aramaic or something.  We are trying but how far back will the pendulum swing?

Being a chef, I tend to think of things both in long term and short term and now I have to apply that to the farm.  Now being a mom as well, I am thinking about the long LONG term in terms of my child and (uggh!) grand kids, etc.

I like to think of my age group as an anomaly; the ones who did it wrong for a bit, about 50 years or so and then started getting it right.  If I am lucky, if we all are lucky, then both my daughter and my mother will think that this blip in time was a mistake and they will both look at me like I am nuts when I go to throw away something that could be easily recycled or composted.

I said all of that because we at 99Knives have made a new commitment.  On top of everything else that we are doing, we are incorporating composting into the construction of our new world and not just in California, but at each of our farm participant campuses.  Last night alone, we gathered over 300 pounds of compostable matter from restaurants and coffee shops in South Carolina and have made the commitment to doing over 100 tons nationwide in the next 365 days.  It's a start.  All of this matter will be saved from landfills and used either for sale or for use in community gardens all across the state.  Goodness knows that we need a lot of it on our land.

Opening My Own Place...You Are Now Leaving The Comfort Zone.

Every great restaurant story has a really great "how I got the doors open" story that precedes it.  Each and every single one.  I am not talking about those stories where someone is given a restaurant or inherits a place.  I am talking about the ones where someone looked at a bare patch of land and constructed something there, and put their lives on the line, or at the very least, their homes.  If the place was hard to get open, there is a story behind it.

When we thought about the kind of place we wanted to see, we (my fiance and I) , thought about our values and the things that we wanted to see out in the world.  Standard operating procedure is to look for something that is missing that you think will make money and put it out there.  There are plenty of things that are missing in the world, and no shortage of people who think they have what it takes.  When we looked at what we wanted to do, we paused to wonder if this was even a ludicrous idea and to consider what we were getting into.

Was this something that we should wait to do?  Were we in a position to do this and still live the lives that we wanted for ourselves.  Then (and this is why I love the man) we reached a conclusion simultaneously that seemed to say it all, "Why not?"

We didn't say it in the #yolo sense, but in the sense that because we are committed to the values that we are going to instill in this place, to not do it and to not do it the way that we wanted to would have meant a somewhat dishonest life.  So it became do we spend the next 20 years hating our jobs and going to and from work only to be miserable and complain about it, or do we spend that time living out values, instilling those values in our children, and generally living with the decisions that we have made.  Essentially we asked if we should be corporate miserable with flashes of happiness throughout the years in vacations or be independent with moments of worry but being able to spend the day with our child teaching her things, being able to leave whenever we want or need, etc.

Each of us come from self made parents who have achieved some success in their lives and each of us then went to college and began to work for massive corporations just like our parents wanted us to.  If I could believe that there was any flaw to my parents methodology for raising me, it's that they didn't want us to do what they did and that didn't encourage us to take those leaps.  Regardless of how we got here, here we are, about to take a massive leap and walking fiercely out of the comfort zone.

This weekend, I am going up to Shasta, CA to look at cows.  I have butchered whole cows and pigs and I have seen them live, but with this new venture I will be responsible for their care and feeding.  The same thing goes for the chickens and the goats and the turkeys and my husband even wants to get a peacock and a peahen.  It goes without saying that when I serve something, I like to know where it comes from.  This way, I will.  Not only will I know where it comes from, I will know what went into it.  I want to know more about my food than most.

People ask me why we are taking such measures so early in the game.  Well, there is a saying that a year from now, you will wish you had started today.  I started yesterday.

Carol Jordan tweets at @9t9knives and can be reached via email at 9of9productions@gmail.com

Why I Am Opening My Own Place...

Reason 1...My Mother Didn't Tell Me Not To

It really came all of the sudden for me, though my mother said that she could see it coming a mile away.  It was the way I would tell her that I was working on a plan to help others with their restaurants.

She said, "mmmm hmmm."

I told her about how simple the plan was and how cool it was going to be work with a bunch of different restaurant owners and industry people.

She said. "Sure dear."

When I found out I was having a baby, I told her about how I was going to work on food systems and health care for people in the industry as well.

She said, "Sounds great, Booba."

I can hear her voice in my head all day, as I am going about my business.  It has been that way since I was a toddler and now, well into my thirties the voice has gotten louder and louder but it is more what she does not say than what she does say.  Her comments leave a lot of things out, a lot of words not said, a void of commentary.

My mother is a font of patience.  She knows that I am going to go headlong into whatever I am going to go into and that when I come out the other side, she will in the nicest and least condescending tone possible tell me what I should have done and what I should do next.  So, when I tell her these things, I wait to hear what she has to say.  It is when she is not forthcoming with information that I tend to worry.

So when I told my mother about the troubles that I was having doing all of the things that I wanted to do and how I thought the best thing to do was open my own place I expected her to say, "Sounds great, Booba." and proceed to ask me about the baby or my fiance.

It was heartening to me that I could not shut her up when I told her.  Her tone seemed to indicate that it was about time that I stopped screwing around and that she had wanted to tell me to do that in the beginning.  When I told her my plan, such as it is, she did not stop offering advice.  She had been running her own place since before I was born and so I gladly took it.  My mother always felt that experience is the best teacher and loves to watch me make my own mistakes with the idea that I will learn much more from the experience than I will from her simply telling me what to do.

Reason 2...Because The Idiots Are Taking Over

We had been leaning towards the idea for some time but with a baby on the way, our feet got colder every minute.  Anger, however warmed them right up.  See, there is a chef, who shall go unnamed mainly because I do not know him personally, who is leading the charge in fucking it up for the rest of us.

Months ago, we had heard about this chef out of Chicago who was doing amazing things.  He was going to start a small restaurant not in the middle of nowhere, but on the cusp of farmland in the Chicago area.  We followed his progress and made attempts to contact him as he worked on his vision with no response.  When he opened, he was promptly closed.  Now a couple of weeks later, he is selling off what he can and making a run for it.

From what we understood he did not even have a business license when he opened.  Months of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment later, the owner is left looking for new tenants and everyone is able to throw their hands in the air and walk away.  No harm, no foul, right?  Wrong.

I was irate at the idea that a movement is taken and turned into catch phrases and profit centers.  There is a scramble nowadays to make the idea of sustainability and environmental responsibility a  money maker and nothing more. Ventures like his, giant flops that are conceived with very little forethought and backed by people with faith in the figurehead person taking the lead, rather than the idea itself are black marks on the rest of our ledgers.  Meanwhile, this particular chef gets to trot off into the sunset.  He may or may not return to the spotlight again, but I don't doubt that he will get hired somewhere and someone will pay him to do whatever it is that he does.  He is one of the Lindsay Lohans of the culinary world and he will be fine.

On some level, we are happy to have people like him around so that we can see the mistakes before hand.  We can see what people are doing wrong, learn from it, and do it correctly the first time.  The trick is going to be doing it right before so many people do it wrong that it ruins it for everyone.

There are many reasons why I am opening my own place, these are just a couple.  A lot of the things I am going to post in the coming weeks and months are going to piss some people off and I think that is a good thing.  There is a lot that needs to be said and much of it, will not be comfortable to hear or read.

We are going to open a place that is the direct result of problems that I have witnessed.

Beginning the Conversation About Food and Those Who Make It...

For the most part, I am looking at you, chefs, cooks, caterers, servers, managers, owners, hosts, bussers, etc.  There are some big changes on the horizon for the food industry.  Are we ready?  Do you see what I see?  Several things are in the works that will very tangibly effect the bottom line of your paycheck.

An Increase in Minimum Wage...

For a lot of states there is an increase in the minimum wage on the ballot and for some, it is already there and active.  Food service makes up about 10% of the work force in this country and you're fooling yourself if you choose to believe that this is not something that effects each and every single one of us, tipped or not.

The standard prediction is that there will be a domino effect, first off.  One state adopts a higher minimum wage, then others will begin the lobby for their own increase.  Some states do not even have a minimum wage or they have a stratified minimum wage where it is assumed that tipped workers, based on reported earnings, make minimum wage or more.

Some restaurant owners make the argument that this will lead to the need to increase prices and decrease hours to meet the bottom line.  They claim that their business will suffer.  This increase, combined with the effects of the Affordable Care Act leads to a very compelling argument that makes it more difficult to open a business.

The Subtle Push to End Tipping...

There seems to be a growing swell to end the practice of tipping and have owners pay a wage that makes up the difference.  There are many countries where tipping is simply not done and a few where it is considered an insult.  The United States is poised to follow suit as many embrace the notion that it is an antiquated practice.

If tipping goes away, there is another domino effect throughout the industry.  The entire of structure of the restaurant system is built on the idea of ready money.  Without tipping servers have little or less of an incentive for their job.  The cascade of bussers, hosts, and bar tenders who then are not tipped out at the end of the night.

Small things lead to big things and there are a lot of things that are going on in the business.  Why are we not discussing them?  There are some things that we need to talk about.

Email us at 9of9productions@gmail.com or follow us on twitter at @9t9knives

Jessica Louie, Treasurer and Honorary Chef.

Jessica Louie is not a chef, but we won't hold that against her.  For working with us here at 99Knives, that may work in both our favor.  Seattle native and graduate of the University of Washington,  she spends her days working for Capital One Sharebuilder investigating fraud and money laundering but in her spare time she works with the Plymouth Housing Corp., helping to provide homeless men and women with homes and helping them with financial woes.  No, she is not a chef, but she thinks like the chefs here at 99Knives and that mindset is just what we were looking for.

The average chef has a bit of the dreamer in them and there is nothing wrong with that.  It is that dreaming side that brings up great restaurants and invents the pizza.  It is all too easy to forget that side has to be balanced with the practical. Whatever the dream that is being reached for, the dreamer has to have at least one foot on the ground.

This is where Jessica comes in and why she is going to be great in this position.  One Easter, I wanted to make a six foot Easter bunny, but accounting said no because it w
ould be too expensive. I could have made it smaller.  I could have made it hollow but they were not concerned with that.  They would not listen.  I was a little deflated and dejected, but that merely helped me define an ideology in my own life.  I did not want  to always work in places that so no without coming up with a better idea.

Jessica is key because she understands both sides with practical, solid leadership, but still knowing that there are solutions to problems and that if one does nothing to solve them, then nothing gets done.  Rather than saying no, she helps to solve the problem.

Did I mention that she teaches yoga and leads environmental projects for her company?  I am impressed  both at how hard she works and at what she does. I am also proud to have her as our Treasurer and to make her an honorary chef for 99Knives.

You can find out more about Jessica here
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Not All Fun and Games...Is it time to take the industry more seriously?

Have you noticed something about the economy lately?  Have you noticed who was getting hit the hardest and why?  Regardless of where you stand politically, it is pretty easy to see that the service industry and more specifically the culinary sectors was one of the hardest hit sectors.  People stopped going out to eat for a while.
For the most part, the restaurant business is very transient.  For a great many, it is a temporary gig that pays the bills, especially when we talk about the service part of it.  Servers come and go and people bartend on the weekends to make ends meet.  Turnover is very high.  The back of the house, is a different story a lot of times.  When we look at how much of a skill and how many years of work goes into cultivating that ability, we see that it is not all fun and games back there and we don't work for tips.
It is one thing for a server to come in on a Friday night and walk with some much needed cash, but for the most part, the line cook is a full timer.  A well managed kitchen calls for the cutting of hours when it is slow yet still making sure that the guest is getting what they pay for.  It is a fine line to walk.  A lot of this plays into morale and mindset of the line worker.   It is a different thing from most industries to walk in to work and wonder if you are going to have to go home early if not enough people come in.  Sure, you know that going in, when you decide to go into the business, but a down economy has a more immediate effect than most businesses and most restaurants have to trim fat in more ways than one.
I have had bad nights on the line and in front of the house.  A twenty top at the door almost made me want to walk out one night but that is a long story.  The bottom line is that it is a tough business and there is a certain dedication that has to come with it but how do you do what you love and still be able to pay the bills?
A lot more businesses are offering a lot more in the way of basic needs and security.  A lot more are investigating and following through with better insurance and more perks.  I once worked for a major hotel chain that offered health insurance, travel benefits, and (my favorite) the ability to transfer from location to location as long as you were an employee in good standing.  Still, a lot of the little guys can only offer a shift meal and a paycheck every other week.
What is possible though?  Is is possible for people to have a 401(K) that follows them from job to job?  Health insurance?  I think so.  It works with other places and other industries, why not with the culinary biz?
People all over the country are taking leaps of faith.  They are banking on their skills and the idea that their buddies aren't kidding when they say that they make the best brownies in the world.  They are investing in cute little boutique cafe's, renting equipment, and scouring sales from their already failed predecessors for plates and forks.  Don't get me started on the number of food trucks out there now and soon to be rolling off the line.  How many other businesses are doing this?
I am not going to say that cooking has FINALLY come into its own. That happened MANY years ago.  Trends come and go and when we look back we are glad that some of them left (I am looking at you fondue!)
I guess what I am saying, is that it is time that we start getting serious about our industry.  I know there are some fantastic chefs out there who work very hard at what they do.  It takes a lot of work to not only make things taste good and look good, but also to not poison people en masse.  Still, there is an image that we are having too much fun for this to be hard work.  But I digress...
So the question is, how do we do what we do, have fun, and make a living?  We work just as hard as your average bank teller and in some cases construction worker, but we have to ask, if it is possible to have a bit more security like they do?

Chef Kristian Niemi--"Welcome to Cola"

I have been in Columbia for a little less than a week, beckoned by sweet stories my mother would tell me about the place, the infamous southern hospitality, and the chance to do something like 99Knives.  So far, nothing has disappointed.  Cola (I only just learned that this is what the city is sometimes called) is a lot of serious fun. I'll admit, I am a market girl and I like fresh food and knowing my growers. I took a swing by USC's market last week and then Saturday, I went through the Soda City Market and grabbed some stuff to take back to my hotel (we will see if I have the same positive attitude about the city after a week or so of apartment hunting, but I digress).  There was so much to see and so little time Saturday, but I was able to make a record of who I saw and who I wanted to be involved in 99Knives.

It is chefs like Chef Kristian Niemi of Rosso Trattorio Italia and Bourbon here in Columbia.  We asked him because when we put out the post for this and told people that we were looking for chefs to support a good cause and get involved in some good clean fun, his name came up...a lot and he responded pretty quickly with two words, "I'm in."  We are glad to have him in and we are looking forward to talking with him and a lot more chefs in the area, letting you know how they do what they do, and how you can come out and watch them work for some good food for a good cause.