It's Time to Break Up...I've been seeing another blog

I'm breaking up with this blog and moving on to this one. I've been tinkering with the new blog for a while now but haven't been willing to fully commit. But I guess it's time to stop playing games and break things off with the old blog -- 'cause it's really not fair to be involved with both at the same time (I don't want to be a two-timing hussy).

It's probably obvious that the theme of my writing has been slowly heading in the food direction and so I'm going to concentrate on that for most part in my new blog. But I also don't want to limit myself to just that (since I'm a moody person and often change my mind), so I didn't change my blog title to something foodie related (and goodness, I still don't like the word "foodie"). And besides, I like La Kelly Kelly Kelly. So that will remain.

I originally chose the title "La Kelly Kelly Kelly" for two reasons. The "La" does not stand for Los Angeles - I've never even been there. "La" is included in the title because of my first experience in South America staying with a host family. The whole family referred to me as "La Kelly" or "The Kelly" -- which is apparently pretty typical. New to the Spanish language at the time, I thought it was cute and a sort of ego boost. I am THE KELLY, I am the original, I am important. Heh.

The repetition of Kelly comes from the sitcom "Cheers" when Woody writes a birthday song for his girlfriend, Kelly. The lyrics are ridiculous and the bulk of them as just "Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly....." Check it out:

Silly. But it puts a smile on my face.

So yeah. I'm keeping my title because I love it. Bam. (Come on, you know you keep souvenirs from previous relationships.... right? don't people do that?)

I'm nervous about this new blog, I think it could be *the one* .... but ya know, I'm not going to get my hopes up just yet. Only time will tell if this is true blog-love.

Come visit me at the new blog! Leave comments, advice, suggestions, recipes!

What's on my Mind?

Something has been bothering me about the food business (slash MY business): Fancy-ness.

You know, the whole super famous chef and his a billion star restaurant with penguin dressed servers silently anticipating your every want. The entrees that are 15 word descriptions of the dish (with words that I have never even heard) and the desserts look like mini sculptures.

Why is this the top? Why is this desirable? Is this where I'm supposed to want to be?

I'm sure there is a place for these fancy-shmancy restaurants in the world. But I refuse to let define and set the standard for food in the world.

I want my world of food to be a simple, beautiful, social experience.

And so, I'm starting a children's books about food collection. My list, so far, includes the classics like Green Eggs and Ham, Strega Nona, Stone Soup, and Chicken Soup with Rice.

Know any others? Please send me titles! I want to inspire my inner child to be excited about food again... To see the magic and wonder in cooking and cuisine.

Light Bulb! aka Realizing the Obvious

Ugh I'm so stupid sometimes. I've been looking for something to write about (not just on this blog but as a topic to focus on in order to improve my writing) and also for an area of interest to explore in terms of career potential. I've been super distressed about not being able to figure something out.

Ding! Hello, Kelly. You work in a restaurant, you're dating a culinary manager, you love grocery shopping, the highlight of your days off is cooking, you watch food related TV shows, you search the internet for recipes for fun, and you (semi-recently) read a book about food and history that left you giddy.

Write about food, silly girl.

Now I just need to tell myself that all it takes is passion. Because I'm far from the expert on food. I'm definitely a cook-in-training who ends up eating some botched recipes (ideas for cooking always sound better in my head....). And I'm definitely not rich enough to eat at super fancy restaurants all the time to do research on foods. I've thought about culinary school, but decided it wasn't for me (as much as I enjoy the restaurant business, I don't want to cook all day for streams of anonymous customers. I want to cook for ME damnit!).

On top of it all, I dislike the word foodie. First of all, no one seems to have the same definition of the word. Secondly, it just sounds obnoxious.

I like food. I like smelling food. I like eating food. I like cooking food. I like the feeling of peace I get when chopping vegetables for soup. I like the way flour feels when you stick your hand completely into a fresh bag. I like watching Anthony Bourdain travel around the world eating and talking about nonsense. I like Top Chef as well as Worst Cooks in America. I like to read about food on blogs. I like to read about food in books (the book that made me giddy is this one). I like to look at pictures of food. Z and I go out to restaurants on our days off together - not because we're a boring couple, but because we LOVE food (oh and we cook together on occasion as well). I like the fact that Hamburger Stroganoff brings me back to my childhood, the thought of French Onion Soup brings me immediately to a tiny condo dining room with deep red walls belonging to one of the best cooks I know, the smell of corn tortillas takes me to Guatemala, and the taste of an empanada transports me back to Chile (provided awesomely in the DC area by Julia's Empanadas).

All this leads to the question: How am I not supremely fat?

Just kidding. The real question is: How can I learn more about food (other than experimenting in my closet-sized apartment kitchen) and discover my food destiny?

Oh great, something else to stress about now!

Book Club: Service Included, By Phoebe Damrosch

It's worth repeating: I love food. So obviously, the majority of my reading lately has been about food and the restaurant industry.

Also, I currently work in a restaurant as a bartender. So I love accounts of the industry. The ins and outs of serving guests. The little facts that only people in this business truly know and understand. No matter if you serve in fine dining or at the corner diner, there are common truths about the food business.

"Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter" by Phoebe Damrosch is a re-telling of her life and experiences while working a Per Se in New York City. My personal serving experiences in restaurants is nowhere near the level of this author. Her descriptions of her job make me salivate with jealous at the level of food quality and sweat with anxiety at the thought of the caliber of service required for such clientele. I day-dream of working for a restaurant like hers where I truly respect the food and chefs. This statement is not meant to bash the establishment which currently employees me. I work for a super corporate chain restaurant ---and, for what it is, the food is above par. But, needless to say, there is no caviar, truffles, or bone marrow. My knowledge of such things in limited to drooling over shows in the Food Network and Travel Channel. In short, my job has not provided the food education that I crave.

Damrosch's telling of the attention to detail in the service at Per Se is overwhelming. It makes me realize how easy I have it at my restaurant .... and yet also to understand the type of service I wish that every guest could receive (even at my casual dining chain restaurant). Eating out at a restaurant is an all around experience of the food, atmosphere, and service -- which should be (positively) memorable and deeply enjoyable whether it's bone marrow or diner pancakes.

Despite the obvious differences between Damrosch's life in "Service Included" and my current life at Nameless- corporate-chain, there are also amazing similarities. The odd pace of life, the comments from friends and family about your job not being "real," the restaurant romance, the eccentric customers, the camaraderie with coworkers, etc.

I could go on forever about how many ways this book touched me but I won't for fear of revealing too much about my employer and for boring non-restaurant-industry folks. Whether or not you work in a restaurant, this book still tells a lovely and fun story. But if you DO work in a restaurant, you will definitely find a kindred spirit in Damrosch.

Cheers

How Food Made Me Appreciate World History

So I have a degree in Anthropology. But I generally find history rather boring and confusing. Too many dates and names to remember and sort through. I realize history is important when talking about Anthropology and culture since we must look to the past to understand why we are what we are today. This doesn't change the fact that I always wanted to fall asleep in history classes.

Well, I finally found a way to make history interesting and engaging for me. FOOD. (Let's face it, my entire life revolves around food. I day dream about it, I love grocery shopping and new restaurants, I work IN a restaurant, I love new recipes and cooking... ).

I have Linda Civitello to thank for my new love of history. She is the author of the book "Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People." It's the history of the world but based around FOOD (totally genius, I tell ya). The book explains how food influenced important historical events, how different foods migrated across oceans, how and why cuisine changed over the years .... awesomely delicious to read.

I had to pause numerous times when reading this book and run to the grocery store to cook up something amazing. Reading about food is dangerous (kind of like watching the Food Network or Travel Channel).

I now understand why I love potatoes so much. I also learned why the US is such a coffee addicted culture -- so I don't have to feel bad about my java addiction, it's really not my fault. And I have a renewed sense of wonder about how diverse the US is and how that diversity if reflected in our cuisine and restaurants. I love being able to choose from American burgers and fries, Vietnamese Pho, Japanese Sushi, El Salvadoran pupusas, Chilean OR Argentine empanadas, Spanish tapas, Italian pastas, Indian curry, Irish corned beef and cabbage, etc etc etc. (It's no wonder Americans are obese! Too many things to eat! (and yet most people here just go to McDonald's and never explore the fabulous options available. Sad face.))

Damnit, now I'm hungry. Time for lunch.

In conclusion: Read this book.

I'm NOT Irish

News flash people (for about the 587th time). I'm not Irish. Yes, I know I have red hair. And I know that the 1 Kelly is an Irish name. My name is some cruel joke thanks to my parents. The hair is (as far as I can tell from family tree information) from my Norwegian heritage. (Go vikings! Go!)

St. Patrick's Day is always a frustration for me when I'm in the US. People are always thinking I'm some insanely Irish leprechaun or something. And I know that a lot of people say "well everyone is Irish on St Patrick's Day!" But I just want to make it clear that I. Am. Not. Irish.

I probably add more to the confusion because I love corned beef and cabbage. And I have a strange addiction to potatoes (but seriously, other countries besides Ireland eat lots of potatoes - that is to say the people in the countries... not actually the countries themselves... err, ok sidetracked there for a sec). And my favorite color is green.

Point being, despite the signs - the hair, the name, the color, the food - the Kelly of this blog is not Irish.

But Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all anyway. Drink your green beer and whatnot. I'll be bartending all night and grimacing every time someone shouts, "hey red! You must LOVE this holiday, right? Cause you're sooooo Irish!!"

The Foodie Label

What is a foodie?

I can't seem to get a straight answer on this at all. And like pretty much every trendy/newly-invented-word*, everyone has their own definition.

When I first started to hear/read the word foodie I was like, "ok, these are people who really like food..." But seriously folks, who doesn't like food? So is there a higher degree of like-age here or something???

Then I started to hear that it's basically the same thing as a "gourmet" - but that people think that gourmet = snobby, so they made up foodie to imply something more down-to-earth.

Digging further I found that a lot of people HATE the term foodie AND think that it implies plenty of snobby-ness (I came to this conclusion after reading far too many message boards discussing the definition of "foodie" - made my head hurt honestly). It seems that these "foodies" get obsessed with reading up on every new restaurant, going there and critiquing their dishes based on whatever article/book/blog they just read (these readings generally telling them what the new trends are for ingredient pairings and which newly discovered wines go best with them). Some of the foodies actually get into actually cooking things themselves in order to substantiate their expert knowledge of food.

This description of foodies kind of reminds me of those "sports fans" who get all their information from Sports Center and PTI and proceed to repeat the opinions of these television personalities instead of actually watching the games and coming up with their own opinions.

I'm definitely not pretending to be better than these types of people AT ALL. With my constant moving around for the past two years, I've done a piss-poor job at keeping up with my favorite sports teams. Sometimes I like to pretend I'm still a dedicated fan, but I will quickly admit that I know nothing these days about the players, stats or what-have-you. And since I'm just getting into this whole cooking/culinary thing, I know I have plenty to learn - and I will read articles and books about food in order to do that.

I guess my conclusion here is that I still don't know what a foodie is and so I will never call myself one. I'm not an expert on food or cooking and even as I learn more I will take everything with a grain of salt (BAM! food idiom!) and try my very best to stay true to my personal taste.

* according to my research, the term "foodie" was coined in 1981. So maybe no-so-new. Depends - like always - on your perspective.

both sides of the coin or my love/hate relationship with travel

Like always when I leave a country to return to the US, I have a list of things I cannot wait to have when I get "home."

- a shower with hot water AND water pressure

- a fully equipped kitchen with lots of awesome kitchen tools (thanks mom!)

- a diet with far less pork

- a washer and a dryer

- drinkable tap-water

But there are also things I will miss....

- amazing coffee.

- freshly made corn tortillas

- chocobananos

- the man

- the academy (aka my place of work)

- spring-like weather always

I love/hate this feeling. It always starts when I begin to pack. It's this sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach (that has nothing to do with food poisoning). It's feeling like you're losing something important but at the same time it's excitement to move on. I think this feeling is exactly why I like flying. It's a rush of emotion and energy. It's intense.

I just wonder when after this I will have this feeling again..... we shall see.

Dear Chile, Happy Dieciocho!

Fiestas Patrias. Funny to think that one year ago I was in Chile going to fundas, eating obscene amounts of empanadas and drinking delicious Chilean wine (sorry, not a fan of the chicha).

And now I'm in Guatemala, missing Chile like it's my job. In honor of this nostalgia for my 2nd home and for the national holiday being celebrated, I bought a bottle of Concha y Toro Carmenere (on sale today for only 50Q!!*) and I made my own version of pebre using Guatemalan ingredients (which will probably mean the pebre will be super spicy, but I love it!). (OK OK, I also bought a bottle of Pisco. It's Capel. But come on now, it's pisco in Guatemala...wtf, that's awesome!)

Completely unrelated to Chile, we're also making pan-fried chicken wings. Neither of us has ever done this before and most wing recipes online call for some amount of baking. Unfortunately, we don't have an oven (! oh yes, we definitely "live without" in many ways). This should be interesting (at this very moment I can hear the chicken sizzling). Hopefully we don't burn down our kitchen in our attempt to satisfy the craving for US style Happy Hour hot wings.

Pictures to come. And with that, I'm off to make sure the man isn't burning anything!

Viva Chile! Enjoy your chicha/vino/pisco!

* 8Q = 1 USD