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Archive for April, 2013

Westmont Flyer

 

About a week ago I was at work chopping onions and crying my eyes out when I felt the presence of someone standing behind me.  Sure enough it was my head boss.  I assumed I was going to get scolded for a variety of reasons or instances, which most likely would have been warranted.  Expecting the worst I put on my George Costanza frustrated face preparing to pretend like I a gave a shit.

To  my surprise instead of it being the usual negative feed back I have come to love I was asked to come up with and execute an Italian menu for a special event at the Westmont Dinning Commons.  My first thoughts were “awesome more shit I have to do for way too little money”.  Then I warmed up to the idea and decided to really give it a go.  I have been boasting for years that if I was given the shot I could turn out a scrumptious meal.  Finally I was handed just that.

I sat down with my friend and Sous Chef Chantelle and we figured out a good, feasible, cost effective menu.  I am not one to use my own personal recipes with anyone especially for commercial purposes. Those are mine for my restaurant if I ever decide to be ambitious again.   My heart was in this project and I committed two of my original dishes. By the weekend I was rather excited although a bit nervous.  We always do special events like this at Westmont and on paper they sound amazing, but in reality by the time they get to the front line it is far from what we had hoped it to be.

One of the Sausage Sicilian Pizzas

One of the Sausage Sicilian Pizzas

Wednesday was the big day.  We had Sicilian style Sausage, Pepperoni and Cheese pizzas for our  pizza station, an authentic Anti Pasto Salad on the salad station, Fettuccine Florentine on the saute station, Chicken Parmigiana Sandwiches on the grill station.  On top of that there was Chicken Marsala over spaghetti.  I did my own personal Pasta alla Rossado and Eggplant La Fresca as well.  Chantelle was amazing in helping make my vision come to fruition.  If it was not for her hard work and organization I don’t think I could have pulled it off.

The Anti Pasto Salad

The Anti Pasto Salad

She had everything prepped out the day before, a strategy and a check list.   And ff course the infallible help from all of the other cooks in the kitchen with out whom this task would have been impossible.  When I first walked into the kitchen Wednesday morning I was a bit apprehensive about how things were going to go.  In the end we all pulled it off and considering all the positive feed back I got on the entire meal I must say even my negative ass would have to deem it a success.

Fettuccine Florentine

Fettuccine Florentine

Italian-Day-Line

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Book XXI: Mrs. Dalloway, Written by Virginia Woolfe, 1925, 197 pages

“Here he was walking across London to say to her in so many words that he loved her.  Which one never does say, he thought. Partly one’s lazy; partly one’s shy.”  How can one not love the elegance of the written word and Woolfe is a master of such.  She has always been one of my favorite writers along the lines of character development, sentence structure and flow of content.  Plot on the other hand has always been one of those tough ones for me to stomach with her and Mrs. Dalloway did not change my opinion.  The entire novel took place in one day and night and focused on a party.  Yes the novel is suppose to be a satire/expose on the British upper class society, but give me a break.  It took me nearly four months to finish this book cause it was like watching paint peel off the wall.  At least in the case of the latter some little kid might walk by and eat a piece to give a mild bit of entertainment.  If she intended to show how dry and boring society life is in London then she certainly did prove her point.  Its not a terrible read, but I just couldn’t get into this one.

For Book XXII lets go back to Shakespeare who for plot rarely went wrong.  I think I could use a little drama in my current monotonous life so why not Othello.  Happy reading everyone!   

 

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ONE MOTHER FUCKING BLOG IN THE ENTIRE MONTHS OF BOTH FEBRUARY AND MARCH!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!

Lisanti in a Tree
How fucking lazy is this guy?  I guess you would all be correct in these accusations.   I really had no good reason not to write other then the fact that I just couldn’t come up with anything worth while to write about.  I thought just as I have the past two months I would bring everyone up to speed on just exactly what has been going on here in Lisanti Land.  So here goes.

Chefing it Up

Or a lack there of.  Well last month I had this bull shit going on with Sodexo where they were actually robbing me of over $250 a pay check.  After nearly three weeks of phone calls, fights, death threats on  my end I was finally cut a check of over a thousand dollars.  After taxes that amounted to just around $800.  Thank you Uncle Sam for taking my hard earned money and doing nothing with it (who am I kidding I don’t work very hard for my money at all.).  Thank you Sodexo for lumping it into one big check so that I could get twice the amount of taxes on it.  Isn’t America a great country?

As of press time Sodexo still owes me $254.14 of which I am just too damn lazy to go after at the moment.  The rest of my job well lets just say it is the same bull shit it has been for the last 4 years.  Then again how can one really complain about a position where he pretty much gets paid to hang out all day and cook the occasional piece of food.  I just about found the food service equivalent of the gas station.

The Ladies Man

I don’t know if one could truly call me this, but I guess I do get around a bit.  I mentioned at the end of last month’s update that I had rekindled a lost romance from a few years ago.  A month later I must admit that maybe there is a reason things went south the first time around.  Mainly because things never “went south” if you catch my drift.  Yeah I know I’m insatiable.  In all seriousness she was a fine girl and all, but just not the one for me.

Things were actually going well for a couple of weeks.  Then courtesy of an illness on her part I had not heard from her for about eight days and deemed her dead.  When I finally did hear from her I ended up seeing her once, got stuck walking her shitty fucking dogs (we all know what a fan I am of doggies) and being scolded for not having any ambition in life.  I have to say I was rather fed up and disgusted by the whole ordeal.  Then we played phone tag for about a week or longer at which point I just decided to let it burn.

In the interim during that eight day period when I thought the above mentioned party had died I met another member of the female persuasion.  Where did I meet this one you ask?  At the Wild Cat of course.  I actually owe the whole thing to Bizarro.  We were suppose to meet at the Kitty a few Saturdays ago.  Bizarro got too drunk and never made it. No big surprise there.  I was flying solo thus more inclined to go and meet new people.  I have been seeing this new girl ever since.  Things are running alright so far.  I suppose time will tell.

Dirty Laundry
Dirty Laundry

I sort of feel like I have been spending the bulk of my spare time doing laundry, thinking about doing laundry, hustling quarters in order to run the washer and dryer, folding laundry, going to the dry cleaners, mending damaged laundry, at the moment I am waiting for my laundry to finish while I write this.  It never ends.  Then I turn around and my hamper is full again.  If I don’t have laundry to do Bizarro is over here doing his laundry since the machines in his building sucks ass or my girl is here mooching my change to do her own laundry being that she does not have a laundry room where she lives.  At this rate I should just move into a god damn laundromat.

Doing laundry is always a battle here in my complex since there is only one washer and dryer.  Each is a buck twenty five meaning a $2.50 round trip.  I always assumed laundry room etiquette to be like bar etiquette with a pool table.  If there are quarters on the table then you have fives on it.  The other day someone was using the washing machine but I really had to do a wash of my work clothes.  Since I was doing nothing but watching all of the Lord of the Rings movies in sequence I figured I would wait it out. I decided that I would put my quarters in the slots of the machine thus indicating that I had the next load.  Thirty minutes passed and I still heard the washer going and now the dryer too.

Mind you I live directly in front of the laundry room and can hear everything when I open my front door.  I ran over to the washer and sure enough some infidel stole my change and used my wash.  I wen back into my house and pulled a full half gallon of cranberry juice out of the fridge and dumped it into their wash.  It was a load of whites.  Don’t fuck with laundry room etiquette or Lisanti justice will bite you in the ass.

Surfing

My whole entire winter season came down to a total of 45 minutes at Pitas on March 7th, my sister’s birthday as a matter of fact.  It was about as good as Pitas gets and I must say if the wind had held out I totally would have called in sick to work.  Alas it did not.  I will take those few amazing rides to the bank, especially in this winter of let down and heart break.  You can read the March ’13 edition of the Surflog for more on that. Besides that session March was another blow out.

Sleepy Time Nick Died

Remember my old roommate Sleepy Time Nick from the fall of ’11?  It’s ok if you don’t he was easily around 4 roommates ago.  They do pass through the Palace fast now don’t they. Anyhow Nick lived here for about four months of pure insanity.  During his tenure Lisanti Land was in a bit of disarray.  Anyway Nick was a sweet kid who got mixed up in some rough drug problems.   Ultimately we had to oust him from the apartment as a result of such.  He ended up moving to England with his dad and getting clean for nearly 18 months.  He faltered and died in March of a Heroin overdose.  Although Nick and I had our problems I can’t help but be saddened by his untimely death.

If there is one thing I have realized is that we all walk a very fine line between sanity and insanity, life and death.  Some of us are more precariously perched then others in this life.  My life has always teetered on the bring of destruction  yet stayed on the line.  At the moment I cannot help but feel a strong sense of tedium with my current direction.  Then again I really have not had a direction to move in over the past five years or so.  I find myself at a loss of whether it is a good tedium or bad.  To me the word tedium by itself just seems negative.  Tedium may just be the theme of 2013….

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