99 Bosses. A Retrospective.

I made my big move into the glamorous world of food prep at A La Francaise Bakery in 1992. Total accident. Cooking didn't occur to me because none of the restaurants I had hostessed in had anything besides a group of derelict creep-outs behind the line.

My roommate worked at the Francaise and was forever bringing home the spoils. It really was a great bakery. The owner had spent a fuckload of her dr. husband's money to make sure they turned out authentic European bread and pastry and there were walk-in ovens and an astonishing number of tiny Asian people cranking out croissants by the hundreds. XLC (that is Shell-Sea for those of us not born with retarded hippie parents) would bring home boxes of pizzas and cinnamon rolls as big as a baby's head. The former bulimic in me was intrigued.

I don't like to share and since there were three other people in the house and Paul didn't work, he'd be right up the basement stairs as soon as he heard the garage door open. If I was lucky, when I got home I'd get a few cookies and maybe a sourdough bear or turtle.

Something needed to be done.

As luck would have, not many people enjoy the idea of getting up at 4 am to go to work. Even in Seattle, where early morning is a Port of Call fantasy, it's a challenge for a business owner to find RESPECTABLE people to be awake at the crack of dawn. It is 1992 after all and no one is not seeing every single band every single night.  The only people qualified to serve your coffee and scones are at the Hurricane or Beth's already.

Except me. We had only just moved there and so weekends were spent oblivious to the Pearl Jam around me. Josh Taft, their video director and friend lived right across the street for Jesus sake and I had no idea who those dweebuses in long johns and shorts were, I just thought their outfits were funny.

I was ready when XLC asked me if I wanted to replace someone who had decided sleeping until 6am was a God-given right and quit unexpectedly.Visions of caramel danced in my head as I said Yes. Yes I would.

Wouldn't you know, three weeks into slapping down tomatoes and chiffonading basil, I was a mutha-effing, well, maybe not cook exactly, but I was a pantry superstar .

Except for sandwiches.

I was, and still am, an abject failure as a deli spokesman. If you don't know what you want on your fucking sandwich after 40 years on this planet, then how are you qualified for anything, really? Should you be allowed to have children if you aren't sure if yellow or Dijon is your thing? You do have to teach children to make decisions, you know, and maybe we could back the fuck off the federal government because it ain't John Boehner eliciting that vacant stare when asked if you want a pickle with that. Please do not torture your sandwich maker with this nonsense. Those are, in fact, daggers they are shooting at you while they hate themselves for not going to college.

Now. At the time, the bakery was in a building on 1st and Jackson that also housed the Mariners baseball corporation and a little known coffee company. Name of Starbucks. Maybe you've heard.

The president of this small chain of coffee shops was working like crazy to expand his business and part of his deal was he wanted food. He wanted scones and he wanted muffins and he wanted my boss to be the lady to make them so he was forever coming downstairs to pilfer a croissant or moan about our Torrefazione and how it was inferior. He was like Jerry Seinfeld, except there was no Jerry Seinfeld yet, there was only this j-hole making my life hell at least once a day.


And the worst was his sandwich.  Turkey-bacon. Which is supposed to have cranberry cream cheese. Since that's what is on the menu and we get a specific amount of whipped cream cheese, all of it gets mixed with the cranberries. It's just the way it is. I didn't make that rule for fuck sake. But here we go again.

"Hi Howard, how are you today"

"Stupendous, fantastic, high as the sky in an elephant's eye" some shit like that. He's a real Tony Robbins sort of fellow.

"Turkey bacon?"

"Yes. And plain cream cheese. Whipped"  and we're off.

Because you do not tell the president of the biggest growing empire in Seattle that he cannot have what he wants, the eleven people in line waiting for their cranberry cream cheese are now going to have to wait  even longer while I haul out the Kitchen-Aid, squeeze 3 packets of Philly into it and whip it with some cream until it's fluffy enough for the master. I ask Joan repeatedly why I can't just reserve some since there is always someone who asks. She says she doesn't want to have to make nice for everyone. She's actually gone through my reach-in to check and make sure I'm not disobeying. This is my first experience with the chef-owner relationship. The chef wants to do things the logical, easy way, and the owner wants to do it in the fashion of a rich idiot who has no real life experience to base running a business on.

I do not remember the particulars about this day. I'm sure it was drizzling, I'm sure that the lunch rush had started off slow, a pizza here and there, maybe a super-wet half-caff for some dumb biddy who had it the one time she went to Paris and now tortures XLC everyday if it isn't EXACTLY how she remembers it. It was probably like that. But it must have been Mercury or whatever planet governs the world of food because I could just not get the ratio of cream cheese to bread right for Mistuh and I had run out of packets.

Each time I would bring it out and hand it to him he would unwrap it from the parchment. lift up the top slice and shake his head.

I had had it. Had it.

I had not been in a real kitchen yet, so I didn't know that cooks have ways of dealing with customers who are less than complimentary. If you've seen Fight Club. Yes. Sorry.

All I had was my mouth. Which is loud. And prone to swearing.

And so, my friends, I did not realize that when I was screaming "Cocksucker" at the top of my lungs next to the dishwasher that was running, and, I assumed, covering up the noise, that the president of the biggest coffee company in the whole world heard every word of it.

You would think I might have been fired. I was promoted to manager. Good help is hard to find.

There is a beautiful moment of irony 10 years later when I am BBQing for the Schultz-man on the dock of his dear friends the Fleischmanns. Private chef beats the Jesus out of sandwich-ho.


These are the cookies we made at the bakery and they are the ones you pay a dollar for at Starbucks. Make a batch for that same dollar. Howard doesn't need your money.


1 1/2 cups oats,
1/2 cup AP flour
1/4 tsp. each soda and powder
 pinch salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light sugar
1 large egg, room temp
tsp. vanilla
6 Tbsp. butter softened
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins



 Butter, sugar, then vanilla, then egg. Mix dry and add. Chill.
325 for 12 minutes

Non-cynical baking blog brought to you by my fetus. My evil is slippin' yo.

Falafel and Gravy

Have you ever seen Survivor? Sometime around the fifth day the tribe members start having food fantasies. They spend hours going over what they would choose if Jeff Probst magically disappeared and was replaced by a 7-11. Hot fudge sundaes, french fries, chili dogs. No one ever mentions tabouleh, say, or that precious quinoa all you glutenistas constantly go on about.  It's always an Outback commercial when the ranting starts.

This is my pregnancy appetite right now. Foods that are never appealing seem like crack right now and old standbys that could be desert island choices make my stomach turn thinking about them. Except stroganoff. It would make the cattle farmers happy to know that I could eat stroganoff every day of my life and wake up looking forward to the smell of mushrooms and meat cooking.

Nick tries to remind me that jalapenos all over my chili tots (yes, tots, french fries are gross, I could not explain this current logic, sue me) is not going to make me happy six hours from now and I am painfully aware of how thin the walls of our apartment are, but I am like a grizzly ripping apart a salmon when my brain and gag center finally get my esophagus to agree to let something past. I chewed a mouthful of muesli for about three minutes the other day but could not get the throat to say yes. It wanted watermelon.

One of the strangest cravings I get is for Armenian food. My DNA is partly authentic Caucasian, and I am always down for a great falafel, but I am INSATIABLE lately and everything today must be minty and garlicky.

Not enough of you are making this perfect food and so, although there will not be pictures, I will tell you the greatest fastest way to a foilc acid-filled Meatless Monday ever. Listen up:

Soak 2 cups chickpeas for 2 days in the refrigerator in just enough water to cover. Drain and let air dry for an hour or two before you use. Food processor : chickpeas, 1 small onion, 1/2 bunch mint, 1/2 bunch parsley, 2 cloves garlic, 1 medium egg, 1 slice bread, 2 big pinches salt, 20 grinds pepper, tablespoon cumin, juice of 1 small lemon. Process on low and stir a few times so it's evenly ground into a thick paste. Chunks of chickpea will make your balls fall apart. Fry a little, taste it and adjust if you need to.  Balls or patties. Oil to 300 or so, 1 minute each side. Try to share.

Tzatziki is 1 cup yogurt, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, other half bunch of mint, finely chopped, 1/2 cup chopped or grated cucumber, 1 clove garlic as much salt and pepper as your dead old tastebuds need. Get flatbread.


One and a half paragraphs and your colon says THANK YOU.

This Meatless Monday post has been brought to you by my uterus.

We'll See

My husband has magic sperm.

Like those beans in Jack and the Beanstalk, he plants and a vine begins to grow.

My uterus, on the other hand, is like the gingerbread cottage in Hansel and Gretel. Children go in, but they never come out. Evan is a motherfucking miracle.

I had two miscarriages after he was born and was initiated into the club of superstitious freakouts who don't even want to breathe the word pregnant lest Rumpelstiltskin crawl out of the floor and steal my fetus or whatever it is that we're afraid of.

When I got to 36 weeks with Riley I felt like I could finally talk about the impending addition and we all know how that turned out. Never count your chickens before they hatch. Apparently that means human chickens too.

Thanksgiving before last I was 16 weeks pregnant. Walt. I knew it was a boy but it was hard to tell. He popped out while I was peeing and he looked just like the fetus on those horrible signs that the Devil Christians hold up outside Planned Parenthood.  I was screaming, Nick and Evan came running, we didn't know what to do so we flushed. It only occurred to me later that it might have lived had I fished it out and had any kind of idea what to do when sort of thing happens.  I had just finally gone to the midwife to discuss a natural birth plan. Superstition.

As I write, my belly is swollen, my boobs are killing me and when I am not face deep in the toilet, all I want is Buffalo Blue potato chips.Normally Buffalo flavor anything would make me gag, but this little shrimp is a hillbilly and enjoys the finer things in life. Like Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I am waiting until I have skipped three periods before I go and commit to a heartbeat and a name or two.

I'm sure you understand.

Still Born (or why I am so angry all the time)

the following is a public service announcement:

At least once a month someone asks me if Evan is our only child. Maybe they can't believe one child could have worn me out so thoroughly.

I never quite know what to say.

There are so many questions we ask each other without realizing how the easy answer can be so hard.

Do I say yes, because technically he is the only one who is living.

Or do I tell them about Riley?

Riley Jane Borowiec loved the Foo Fighters. She loved bagel sandwiches with the cucumber heavily salt-peppered and she woke me up every night at midnight so I could read a book in the bathroom, sitting in front of the toilet, waiting for the remnants of the pound of cherries she insisted on to come back and look like someone was trying to flush away a murder.

Riley Jane came after four miscarriages. At the end of the first trimester I was optimistic, when she got to 9 months I was ecstatic. When the doctor said I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat,  I was numb. A knot, an accident, a delivery for no purpose other than expulsion. Do you want to hear about it when you make your inquiry?


It may seem like small talk at the park or a party, but it's really an invitation for me to think of something really horrific. Lots of women have dead children and we don't all wear T-shirts because that would be AWKWARD.


So stop asking.  How would you you like if I got all up in your vag and asked how you planned to throw down with it for the next ten years?


That's what I thought.

Brother Can You Spare A Cube Steak?

Hey y'all, I know it's been an eternity. Here's what Team Borowiec is up to......

In 1996, Gregg Mortensen decided to give up a lucrative career and comfortable life, moving to Afghanistan to open schools for the children there who had a less than zero chance of education. These schools were built plank by plank on the sides of mountaintops by the determination of ordinary people who possessed an extraordinary need to give something to people less fortunate that would sustain them in a way they had never thought possible. Now there are books and TED Talks and probably a movie with Liam Neeson in a beige caftan at some point.

I'm a lucky, lucky ho, because my man's idea of altruism was giving up a six-figure income to go work for a manufacturer of solar inverters in lovely Rocklin Ca.  BFN, yes, but not the kind of BFN where burkas and M-16's are the standard. Even with a 60% pay cut it's (probably) still better than picking rocks out of my ass all day and fighting off scorpions.
When he told me what his plan was I was a) Glad we'd given up the ditch digging fantasy that had been rolling around the dinner table for the past few months and b) hopeful that the move from Northern Tijuana would do us a little good. Los Angeles has a decent taco, but the fact that it takes 40 minutes to go 12 miles is not enough to make up for forty pigs worth of carnitas.

So we gave notice, said goodbye to our resort-style apartment at the beach, and landed in Northern California just as it got all nice and grey and suicidal. Oh, and did I mention the trash-pickers?

Now Mama gets to rejoin that special group of folks known as the poverty-stricken. Normally a group of miscreants who couldn't get off the meth or make it through junior college. We're like the King and Queen of the white trash here and as soon as I can afford it, I'm going to the WalMart to replenish my wardrobe of  Miley Cyrus-wear and hit the Dollar Store HARD.

Knife Bag 5. OUI CHEF!!!!!!

You know the part in Pulp Fiction where Sam Jackson flips his wallet out onto the table and it says Bad Ass Motherfucker?

Ludo Lefebvre is that wallet.

Look him up online. Don't let the white teeth fool you. This is a man who runs marathons after training a few days, who comes to work after back surgery instead of nodding off on Vicodin like the rest of us weenies would.  He is polite, unassuming. He is a machine.

There are so many parts to being a chef. Cooking is only the first. You are the coach, the mommy and the shrink. You need to recognize different personalities and get each cook to want to be better with each plate of food they put out. You never want your team to be counting the minutes until they can leave. This isn't Subway. People can tell how much love got put into their food and that is a direct reflection of the team and it's leader. Ludo is exceptional. It is stunning to see someone who gets subtitles when he's on TV explain himself better than any chef I've ever worked with. EVER.
Lots of chefs get the cooking part, but cannot tell you how to do something. When you think you have finally figured out what they want, they come over and tell you how stupid you are.

(What normal person picks a job where people get to scream "RETARD" at you while you burn yourself, btw? There is such an S&M angle to cooking. I wonder what Freud would say)

Anyhoo, Ludo is genuinely warm as he greets me.

He hands me a shirt and apron, smiles with his very white teeth, and.........

tells me I'll be working hot apps & dessert with Chef Dan. R'uh r'oh.

The Twitter has led me to blogs and the blogs have led me to stories about failed souffles.  No one has apparently mastered these little fuckers yet, but there have been many stern looks of disapproval and the inevitable banishment to ice cream land. 

Lead me to the guillotine, sir.

It's like the first quarter of cooking school where you have to get past the crabby instructor before they let you cut more than onions and carrots.  It must be very challenging to have so many people with different skill levels knocking flour everywhere and forgetting things in the mixer.

The other interns are AMAZE-O. Where they lack experience, they make up for in stamina as they are pulling 50 hour weeks, gratis, just to get to work with him.  That's the power of the LudoBite.

After a five year-absence I feel like the red-cloggers on Top Chef. You've seen them. The 40 year-olds who represent for the catering witches everywhere. We're not untalented, just a bit slower. We don't have the energy we did when we were 25. We have had dead babies and breast cancers, sick parents and mortgage crises. We want to cook to save ourselves and the world from ow-ies and mean people.

So I'm slower, but I'm also different than I was before in a kitchen. I am VERY sensitive as most of you know and I used to go home crying sometimes after a behind-the-line ass-chewing.

Not anymore. When told to "inspect and reflect" my buttered souffle molds in a tone that might be construed as condescending, I just said Okay, and did them again.  I thought about Evan and how glad I would be to see him in four hours.

Wrap first night.  No disasters. I remember to say 'behind' and 'corner'.  No plates are dropped.

I am on cloud 9 as I exit through the dining room, softly lit like a cathedral where octopus and pork belly are worshipped instead of the Mother. I am back in my element, I can't wait to collapse into the Subaru and get home.

I turn the corner and reach my car................


Which is all alone. In a pitch-black lot. With no valet in sight.


next up-Are You Effing Kidding Me?

Knife Bag, Part 4......Welcome to the Terrordome

I was a bad-ass.
 
Professional cooking is hard as nuts. Most girls would never want to smell this bad or have their nails look like mine. Could never imagine being elbow deep in pig intestines. And the outfit.  Sweet Fucking Jesus. I cried the first time I put the whole thing on. 

When I came into the kitchen in 1992, women were the mascot. There was one of us in every kitchen and we got to make salad. If a gal was lucky and blew the right GM she might skip cooking altogether and go straight to being Executive Chef where you only had to show up a few hours a day to order and schedule.

I was NOT that girl.

I was the girl in the parka and ski-cap on a dock on Lake Union in January, grilling 200 sides of salmon. I was at the Ruins working 21 hour days during Xmas. You heard me. When was the last time any of you actually stood up doing manual labor for TWENTY-ONE HOURS??!!( the five chefs and one actress reading this are excluded)

I was a fucking bad-ass.

Maybe not to the guys on Deadliest Catch, but seriously, compared to most people I know? 

A certain constitution is required to be able to handle the long hours, hot & dangerous work environment and binge drinking. It's a perfect life for a single 25 year-old. It's hell if you're a mommy.

So when Evan was born, I quit.
I didn't want to parent from the couch while I recovered from the night before. It seemed a logical choice for me to stay home.
2000 days later I am a bit out of shape.

Cooking is like athletics. You might see a big ol' gut on a chef or two,  but there are no fat prep cooks.

A few days after our miraculous anniversary dinner I get an email. Ludo is going to add a prep cook. Am I in?


Nick promises to leave work early everyday so I can be downtown at 3 and I start to assemble my knife bag.

Uh oh.

Honey? I need to get some tools.

Like what?

Like EVERYTHING. DUH. I can't go asking to borrow stuff in the kitchen.

Why not?

It's like talking to a tree stump. He just doesn't get it. It's not like an office job where the computer and printer are waiting when he gets there in the morning. A kitchen has an oven. And some half pans if you're lucky. It is not uncommon for cooks to bring their own egg pans or their own spatulas or whisks.  Restaurant owners are notoriously cheap and forcing you to bring everything down to measuring spoons ensures that they won't have to pony up for any more than necessary.


I spend the next 2 days driving all over LA reading the menu and trying to guess what I might need. Poached oysters? Better get an oyster knife. Ricer for mousseline? Check. Nick shakes his head every time I walk in the house with a new bag and bets me I won't use any of it.


Now that I am equipped, I have the genius idea to get the oil changed. Which leads to some belts being fixed and the info that our battery is about to die.


THAT can't be that hard to fix. I've done it plenty of times.


Yeah, stupid. IN THE NINETIES!!!!!!!


When the computer of the car did not need to be reset in order to run.


This is a revelation a girl does not want to have at 6 pm on Saturday night.  My chariot to the most fantastic kitchen experience ever is stalling every other minute and the only place open on Sunday is the Sears who sold me the battery, but can do nothing about computers. Sorry. SORRY?????


I am hysterical. I call everyone, look at every Subaru repair website. What am I going to do???  I can't sleep, I'm so freaked out. I swore to Krissy that not only could I do this, but would do the best job ever and I can't even get there. I even look up metro schedules so that Nick can start and stop my ass all the way to the bus stop if he has to.


I go to the EZ Lube that tested the battery, in tears, asking the manager what to do. The very nice man who looks exactly like Cedric the Entertainer, motions me into his office. Uh Oh.  I don't want to cook THAT bad. He tells me that he can reset our computer, but it's totally illegal and he's going to do it to get me to stop crying.


There must be some reason life is trying to get in the way of me getting to Ludobites.


Silly me thinks its a test to see how bad I want it.


next up - Out of the Frying Pan.