Adventures in Cooking

For some reason, I wanted nothing to do with cooking when I was a kid.  Maybe it was because my Mother was known as the neighborhood gourmet and I didn't like the competition.  Anyway, I missed out on valuable lessons from her.  A couple I remember, like adding cream cheese to mashed potatoes to make them smoother, and using a pastry blender to break up hamburger while it's frying.  The last couple of years, I've started teaching myself the basics, and this week it was all about learning how to make fresh pasta.  I got a small tabletop pasta machine, a ravioli maker, and a drying rack and went to it.  Last weekend it was learning how to make the dough, kneading the dough, and using the pasta machine to make spaghetti and fettucine. 

This week, I tackled ravioli.  The pasta dough is exactly the same, and I still had to roll the pasta out nice and thin using the pasta machine.   The fun part was deciding what to stuff the raviolis with.  I couldn't decide, so basically used leftovers.  Italian sausage, spinach, mushrooms, olives, and garlic all went into the mix.  

And, because my company is starting a health challenge tomorrow, where we get points for eating fruits and veggies everyday, I decided to also make a nice green bean salad to take me through the week.  The grocery store didn't have fennel, so I substituted jicama, and I forgot to buy almonds, so I substituted walnuts.  The pickled red onions are to die for!

Sweetheart's Day

I've been hostile towards Valentine's Day since I went into puberty and realized how hard it was to get a guy to like me.

Earlier this week, I noticed a house on my block was for sale.  Cecil and his wife bought the house when it was brand new in 1961, and raised their children there.  Fifty years of happy memories.  One of his kids loved this neighborhood so much he bought my house many years before I arrived on the scene, and started raising his kids across the street from their grandparents.  I found handwritten letters in the attic that might have belonged to his kids, professing their undying devotion to a girl in the 5th grade.

Two years ago, after a long illness, Cecil's wife died.  Cecil lost weight and became a little confused, but we always saw him on his daily walks down the street.  He loved to visit with the neighbors on his walks, and the new families that moved into the neighborhood looked out for him.

One day, my neighbor told me that Cecil had moved into a nursing home.  He was lost after the death of his wife, and his dementia had become bad enough that he couldn't take care of himself. 

Three days ago, a "for sale" sign appeared on the front lawn of Cecil's house. 

Today, Valentine's Day, I saw Cecil leave his house, and walk with his cane slowly down the street, just like he used to do.  I didn't see a car, but someone must have dropped him off.  Maybe he wanted to be in the home where he spent so many years with his sweetheart, and remember the Valentine's Days they spent together.  Perhaps he was remembering when this neighborhood was the newest subdivision in Fort Worth, far beyond the city boundaries, where people used to hunt squirrels because they existed in the thousands, and couples came, bright eyed with the promise of the children to come.

Maybe he came to say goodbye, on this, the day where we celebrate love.  Goodbye to the laughter of children playing in the street.  Goodbye to his greatest love, his wife.  Goodbye to the neighbors that would race over with casseroles anytime something bad happened.

Goodbye, Cecil.  I'll miss you.

You Did a Great Job!

Come on...if you think about it, don't you just hate this phrase?  It's overused, and half the time it's not meant anyway.  I always grimace when a leader tells a crowd of 20 people, "you did a great job", when you know that that moron sitting in the corner didn't do a thing all year except surf the internet and call in sick.

So, my resolution is this.  If I ever say that phrase, I'm going to say it privately, to one person at a time, and be specific.  "You were able to make a really difficult concept easy to understand in that meeting - good job!", or "I really admire how you're able to grab the crowd's attention and get them on your side so quickly". 

Walking out today with my boss, as we reached the parking lot, he said, "oh by the way, great job today".  I said thank you very much (I had already given him specific feedback earlier on why I thought he did a good job) and continued the walk to my car.

"There's only one or two little things...well, we can talk about it some other time", he said.

Nice.  Now I'm going to spend every waking moment obsessing about why my boss hates my guts and thinks I'm worthless, and wants to take a shotgun and kill me...yeah okay, I'm a little sensitive. 

Or the time that I represented others at a customer meeting, when no one else could go, and sent detailed meeting notes to the people responsible, including suggestions on what needed to be done.  I heard lots of "good job" after that.

Months later, these same people I sent the notes to acted as if their heads were on fire because they found out from the customer that they needed to do the very same thing I had communicated previously.  I pulled out my written, detailed instructions, and reminded them that they knew about the deadlines since November, and wasn't that the reason I went in the meeting in the first place?  The feedback to me was that my e-mail was too long, and if it had been in an official document it would have been read. 
REALLY????

If you want to give negative feedback, feel free, but don't tell me I did a good job first.  Which is it - good or bad? 

Or, better yet, tell me why you thought I did a good job.  Then when you tell me what I did wrong I can know that 90% of what I did was really good and only 10% might be improved. 

Message to all bosses out there - hear me.  What had been a very positive, productive day was ruined for me because of insensitive comments.  "You did a good job" should not be a phrase that is thrown around like "have a good day".  It should mean something concrete, specific, and worthwhile.  Otherwise don't bother.

Thank you, and have a great day.