Hard to keep up with the family legacy

So, my surname is "Bauer", which means "Farmer" in German.  Good, we got that out of the way. So, I think I may have mentioned this before, but I found a census card, filled out, from 1854, in Corondelet, Missouri, from my ancestors.  They had $1,600 worth of farm land.  Now the area where this would be now, is where Corondelet is now, with factories and houses and stores.  That area, is where my family had a farm.  I'm sure also that land was cheaper then and that amount in that time could get a good amount of items and things.  What is important though, is that they held that farm as it was until they needed to sell it.  When they did, it was the grandson of the farm owner, who was my grandfather. 

So, my grandfather didn't grow up on a farm, but at least saw one, when he visited his grandparents.  When my grandfather came back from World War 2, he went to college on the G.I. Bill and got a degree of chemistry and worked at Monsanto.  (But back then, they didn't try to poison the world.)  He still worked on seeds and fertilizers and such. So, he took his work home.  He and my grandmother started a farm, in their backyard.  Their house, a large, two family flat on Virginia Avenue, had a big backyard for the house's size, maybe a quarter of an acre, and they converted half of that, into a successful garden.

A few years after we had moved into our new house, on Terri Lynn Drive, my father had started to plow a small stretch of ground in our backyard, for a garden as well.  This area was probably no more than 50 square feet of space, but he was able grow huge tomato plants, carrots, broccoli, and beets.  I remembered that every spring, we would plant and by mid summer we would be harvesting.  We would grow just items that we used and always had plenty. 

So, my wife and I get our new house, after being married and living in an apartment for a year.  After getting things squared away, we buy some large rose bushes and plant them in the backyard, which almost looks to be about 1,400 square feet of dried up, uneven landfill.  So, the roses do awesome, but the next year we move them into the front yard for a flower garden to help the front of the house look nice.  The area where they were, in the back yard, seemed like a good spot for a garden and after I had purchased and assembled some raised garden beds, I placed those in the back as well.  I filled them with the best garden soil that my Home Depot credit card could buy and placed tomatoes, corn and even some carrots and onions out there.  What I didn't plan on, was the hot and dry climate near my subdivision.  In a subdivision, so young, with no large trees in anyone's yard, there is full sun on these garden spots.  Combine that with a serious drainage issue, means that the tomato plants were getting dried out as the fruit was being eaten by insects, the corn was getting moldy as the plant's roots dried out and the carrots never grew past little sprouts in the ground.

I want a garden so bad, having a garden would be awesome and so much fun.  We had a cherry tomato plant, in our front yard, in our flower garden and we harvested so many tomatoes that we were giving bag fulls to friends and family.  However, we got called out by a troublesome neighbor, and in our HOA contract, we are not allowed to grow food in the front yard.  So, I miss having a garden produce something in such large amounts that it can sustain us, or help us out.

Then we come to this:

This is a garden spot, raised up by my brother-in-law, on land owned by my in-laws.  It was a garden last year, I think, growing salad vegetables.  So, this year, on one hot day, I came down with my kids and let them play as I started to get to work.  This area, probably a 10 foot by 10 foot square, took my about an hour to dig and till and clean up.  It now holds a lot of weeds, but also about 10 surviving tomato plants.  I ordered some plants from Burpee and was hooked on the notion of getting an 8 pound tomato.  Whether that happens or not, is up in the air.  But, whether this works or not, it will at least get the ground ready for a next year batch and so forth and maybe, I might have a garden that can produce food that I can be proud of.  Now considering that the land that my in-laws own, was at one point fertile farmland, and farmers to this day continue to farm their land around this parcel, indicates that the land can support a good sized garden.  In a few years we will build a house on this land and hope to have a bigger garden.

A suprise meal

 Everyone knows about Eckert's farm and store and restaurant, right?  If not, here is a quick summary of what you have been missing: Long ago at a galaxy far and away, my grandparent's used to take my brothers and I, to Eckert's to go apple picking in the fall.  They would drive out and we would do the apple picking and then we would enter the country store, which I recall at the time, being nothing more than a large barn.  We would go in, get a wooden basket, go out and get apples, and then bring them back where they would weigh them and you would pay pennies for each pound of picked apples.  This was great.  Now, within the past few years, or year, they changed everything.   

This is what the Country store looked like a bit ago, with the restaurant to the left of it.  Then they did this:


You can tell that this farm is doing well when they can tear down their old store and make a huge one.  This store is very much on the inside, as high-tech as a Whole Foods or Schnucks.  As for the restaurant, it used to be tiny, country-style decorated and could sit maybe 50 people.  Now, the place is huge and can easily seat a few hundred.

Now, while the family is still running the farm and businesses, these 6th and 7th generation Eckert's have created a memorable and delicious menu for their restaurant to boast and surpass their apple and other produce picking.

My favorite item of all, is chicken and dumplings.  What I love about the chicken and dumplings at the Eckert's restaurant is: first of all, it is bottomless and second of all, it tastes just like my grandma used to make.  Well, first off, they call it "bottomless" on the menu and what that means is that if you have an awesome server, like we did, he will notice when you are remotely close to the bottom of the large bowl of chicken and dumplings and then he will come out with another large bowl and take the old one.  That's right, a wonderful server will come and replenish your ambrosia, before you can flinch, all for $10.  What made our time there even better, is that when I took what was left to go home, our cool server not only refilled my bowl and placed it into a to-go container, but then he filled up a second container for me.  Awesome.

Now, what about my grandma?  Well, she is of German ancestry.  Her parents came from Germany and started a horse farm near Sullivan, Missouri.  As time went on and she became older, her parents sold the farm for a flat in St. Louis.  Then, she went to work at a shoe company, on Washington Avenue.  Every day, her mother and grandmother (whom lived with them), would make their dinner, which I lust for because it was awesome German food.  Now, my grandmother made two kinds of dumplings:  One was a potato dumpling and then other was a spaetzle dumpling.  What I find most often called "dumplings" when paired with chicken, is the spaetzle ones, which are made with flour, water and some egg.  These are what proper dumpling became to be and as my brothers and I grew older, the spaetzle dumplings paired with chicken

So, the chicken and dumplings I ordered at the restaurant, tasted just like the ones my grandma used to make, which means, the original recipe they make to sell, must be similar in cultural or ethnic region.  Anyways; the famous fried chicken, which is also served and sold as an all-you-can-eat option, is also incredible and juicy and moist with a super crispy coating.

So, my thoughts?  Service, atmosphere and food, all get a 4 out of 5 stars for me.

Go there and give it a shot.

What it is really like being a chef or working at a restaurant

I saw this online and it only started to bring back memories:
http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/understanding-cooks-best-kitchen-advice?ref=facebook-868

 

 From the time that I was 16 years old, I started to work at a restaurant. When I think back to this place, from seeing and dining in so many other restaurants, it really didn't seem like a true restaurant, but it was.  I did so because it was easy work and fun when your friends worked there as well.  My older brother worked there and as such it helped me get my job there.  I didn't think of it at the time, but it helped light the fuse for my love of food and cooking.  I tried to avoid the kitchen as best as I could because I was young and 16 and didn't want to do anything back there that pulled me away from my friends and the windows looking upon the outside world.  There were a couple of times that my brother was pulled into the back to help and when he came out at the end of the day, he looked drained and smelled like a trashcan.  I just didn't want that and I did try really hard to avoid it, and did so at that location.  What happened when I was about 18, was that while school was one thing and I had friends there, my friends did not live by me and work with me.  The friends I had acquired at this one location, in Shrewsbury, were the friends I would go out and party with on summer nights, weekends and vacations.  That was my social network, it was Facebook and Myspace before those sites were even invented.  I don't try to sound old and ancient, but before there was the internet and even cell phones that did anything other than make and receive calls, there was a physical meeting of people at locations. 

My friends were all together and we were making friends with managers and then all of a sudden, they moved my favorite manager.  They transfer managers and move them around like chess pieces. (Wait, maybe not because that implies that the district supervisors who manage whole city's worth of restaurant locations would be capable of any intelligent thought.)  But my favorite manager was sent to another location, on Manchester Road, in West County and I was still stuck here in Shrewsbury.

I begged to be moved there and when I was, I noticed that things seemed different and there, I did volunteer my services to the kitchen when they had a cook call in sick.  I thought it was really cool that 2 guys would run the cook's line and maybe 3 on a busy day and there would be as much as 10-15 in the front of the house just working on the products of those on the cook's line.  So one day I was working and the cook called in sick.  There was a certified trainer back there and they needed someone to go back and I took the chance.  I slapped a hairnet on, a cap, a thick apron and went to the cook's line.  I worked there in what seemed like perfect harmony with the other cook.  He was on the ovens and I had steamer and fryer.  I was having trouble keeping up with the food taking and when the manager, probably in a drunken stupor came before me and pulled me over away from the cook's line.

"John," he says. "Recipes are just instructions.  If you can read, just do what they say and everything will be fine."

That is all it takes and that thought, that saying, coming from an a-hole such as he was, was the most remarkable thing I ever heard about cooking food.  That and my co-worker that night, Terrell, told me that cooking was "just having fun."

The rest is history but I can tell you this; the restaurant I worked for, Old County Buffet, was an all-you-can-eat restaurant.  People would pay as much as $10 for dinner and eat $100 worth of food.  I was frying 4 chickens at once in one fryer and about a pound of french fries in the other, while mixing 4 pounds of mashed potatoes in a large stand mixer.  My steamer was filled with 10 pound trays of corn, green beans and carrots and that was the tough part.  On a busy Friday or Saturday night, the line servers were taking food out of the Sham faster than I could cook it. 

The feeling and thoughts and memories, all came back when reading that article.  So, let's look at my favorites from that site:

[It gets really hot]- At the locations where I cooked, and at the restaurant itself, they did not have AC in the back of the house.  So, whether you were working on the oven and the grill or getting a burning facial with the fryers and steamers, there was no saving your body from the heat.  What we did, was use the meat freezer.  About 10 feet from the oven side, against a wall, was the meat freezer.  All of the meat was there, frozen, along with boxes of other stuff like vegetables to be steamed and so forth.  Let me tell you this: working for 8 hours on steamer side and then walking into a freezer is amazing.  It is so cold that the sweat on your hands actually starts to turn into frost after a few seconds and it feels wonderful.  It was a great pick me up during those hot summer days on the line.

[No matter how hot it is, don't drop it]- What a great piece of advice.  I have dropped a large sheet pan full of baked chicken before.  It was so hot, out of the oven, that I burned myself on one of the doors on the side of my arm.  I dropped one side of the sheet pan and it fell down, as hot, molten, chicken fat and juices ran all down my apron and my leg and on my shoe.  While that sounds like I could have been saved, I wasn't.  The lava was so hot that I besides the food costs I wasted, I had to run around the corner, get my arm fixed up and take my shoe off to make sure and stop everything from burning my foot and leg.  What a day.

[Even in scratch kitchens, 98% of everything is prepared ahead of time]- Every night, before we closed and locked up, the cooks would prep for the next day's crew and shifts.  On steamer side, you had to get about 2 boxes of frozen vegetables and get them into some quarter pans to prep for the next day.  The oven side cook would get his chicken laid out and on pans for the freezer to be ready for the next morning.

[You must over-communicate]- My line, which was the cooks I worked with whether I was scheduled to cook or if I was sent back to help as kitchen supervisor, always spoke clearly and loud.  I had my guys yell when coming around a corner.  When you have dishwashers placing cleaned pans on a rack that is the same rack where my cooks were going to get food going, and having guys with grease and food stuff on the bottoms of their shoes walking into a wet and soapy area, it makes a huge difference between being quiet and yelling "coming around!"  When you had something hot, you yelled "hot coming around!" And when my team or myself opened a steamer or oven, customers in the dining room could hear us.  For good purpose because my team, had a flawless injury streak.

Also, a good one on here for people who are in this line of work or thinking about it: Don't date outside of your house.   This just means that if you are on the cook's line or dishwasher (back of the house), don't try dating someone who is in the front of the house, like a cashier, line server, or server.  It will make it very difficult to communicate and keep appointments.


 

Minecraft birthday party

Let me share my experience and information so that you or anyone else wanting to do a minecraft themed party, could have some ideas.  This is what we did for my son, a 6 year old. 

So, let me explain what we did:

First off, we made and printed out little snack cards showing different items from the games, like below:

Then we took some clear, square plates and filled them with some items represented by items in the game.  We had fish, cookies, green M&M's, pretzel sticks, rice crispy treats, and Rolo candies.  We bought some apple juice bottles and ripped the label off.  I then printed out the words "Healing Potion" and stuck them onto the adhesive strips left on the bottles from where the labels were.  I got some red and blue rock candy and used them in clear round cups for the Diamonds and Red Stones. The crafting work was done by making that Creeper face and printing out about 20 Creeper head papercrafts and getting them all together as party favors.  I also then got 20 brown bags and printed out a picture of the chest, cut it out and glued it on the bags, so they were like the chest in minecraft, which is where you put your stuff.  Oh yeah, we took Twizzlers and stuck them in cups labeled "TNT". 

For party games, we played a game where you have a contest to see who can keep two balloons up in the air the longest.  I made a large Minecraft pig using pink construction paper and we did a 'pin the tail on the pig'. We also then made a bean bag toss game.  I took a rectangle box and we spray-painted it green as I cut out the eyes and mouth of a Creeper.  I taped them back in as flaps and then filled four ziploc bags with about a cup of dried beans.  I duct taped over the bags completely with blue duct tape making bean bags.  So, we had it so each kid went behind a line and would see who would get the most points.

While this was a quickly planned birthday party, I do hope that something we did would either inspire you or help you prepare and plan for your next minecraft party.

Bioshock Infinite and its perfect representation of America

The game: Bioshock Infinite, is by far my favorite game of all time, slowly beating out Myst. (Yes, I still love that game!)  The world that is created in the fictional floating city of Columbia, seems so familiar and so interesting while being a frightening world in reality.  The thing is, I have seen some places in America that have parts of what is being represented in that game, but no where comes as close to the similarity than Silver Dollar City.  Silver Dollar City is an amusement park set up within the outskirts of Branson, Missouri.  It has most of the city representing a fictional time they call the "World Exposition of 1882".  History buffs will quickly remember that there was no 1882 Exposition in America, so the concept is already flawed, but they go along with it.  Silver Dollar City, as I mentioned earlier, has a very large portion of its park, designed to look like it is from the year 1882, complete with an enormously large amount of modern American flags, along with their original mid 1800's counterparts.  There are many buildings set up to resemble those from the 1800's, complete with craftsmen inside such as a glass maker, blacksmith or taffy puller.  All of these buildings, still have the crafts people doing the crafts.  So, the person working at the blacksmith shop, really is a blacksmith and those swords, knives and other gifts were really made by him and his metals.  The glass factory had two guys working the glass on an elevated stage so people could watch and the items they made were for sale in the glass store opposite them.  The whole area was a mixture of these craftsmen and craftswomen, food venders and rides.

While Bioshock Infinite's world of Columbia takes place in 1912 and Silver Dollar City is in 1882, there was many things that were very similar:

  
Silver Dollar City is stuck in this 1882 world of American nationalism or zealot patriotism.  Like the above picture from the Bioshock Infinite world, you can see the use of the "red, white and blue" on everything from umbrellas to signs while selling items of America like flags or toys.  There were so many American decorations on the buildings, flags hung from the light posts, American flag pins worn by the workers and everyone who worked there was in period clothing.  Everyone, from the person selling frozen lemonade to the teen girl running the roller coaster, were in a recreation of an 1880 clothing piece.  The men were in hats and vests and long sleeves and then women were in bustle dresses.

Now, while the above pictures are from a fictional world within a game, some the elements below from Silver Dollar City appear to fit easily within that fictional world.

The world of Silver Dollar City is stuck in the 1880's, which is funny because so much of that style is what is in the actual Bioshock Infinite Video game. Even the trash cans are decorated in such a way:

There were rollercoasters outside of this sign:

An one outside of this one:

With American flags hanging from every post, sign, tree or light:

 

Let me say this, as weird as Silver Dollar City was, if you were dressed up in Edwardian clothing, you would have fit in exactly and everyone would have thought you had worked there and was just in costume.  Also, I was surprised that no one was dressed up as the main characters from Bioshock Infinite.  As the location would make for an awesome cosplay event. 

Farm to table isn't a new concept here

When I was young, back in the early 80's, my dad would drive us around town on the weekends as we went to random spots for random activities.  I know that sounds pretty vague, but it was the case of random weekend summer activities.  We would sometimes drive to an old fruit and vegetable stand, in Webster Groves, where they always sold fresh and locally grown items.  I remembered seeing an old man running it, back then, and always nice.  I want to say it was called "Roger's Produce" and I would assume that the old man was named Roger.  The stand started in the 70's, from an old 1920's gas station. The thing was, on the ride from Shrewsbury to Webster Groves, this way, was about 3 minutes, since they were right next to each other across the highway.  I went to this stand, before it was the "cool" thing to do.  But along the ride, we passed many houses that had small yard-sized gardens.

The produce stand always had items fresh and from local farmers and I didn't think anything of it considering that not only my neighbors on the street at small farms, but we did too.  My dad used farming as a hobby, like his father before him and it seemed that it was completely normal to grow your own food or as much of it as you could.  I remembered seeing a small, maybe 10 foot square garden in my backyard with tomatoes, broccoli and some other vegetable plants.

My grandparents lived originally on Virginia Avenue and had a complete house to themselves.  As a young child, my grandparents would host myself and my older brother for sleepovers. There was the old television, my uncles original 13 inch tall G.I.Joe figures and some other random toys, but the highlight of those days was the garden.  My grandfather, who worked at Monsanto after he finished his run as a field nurse in the second World War, started a garden in their backyard.  I would estimate that the garden was about 10 feet wide, 20 feet long and had a chicken wire roof at about 8 feet off of the ground.  In fact, the entire garden was encased in this chicken wire cage with a wooden screen door as the entrance.  I remembered that he had everything from tomatoes to corn and squash to green beans growing inside of this garden cage.  The place was magnificent and it was such a treat to have my grandmother harvest items from their own backyard and use them as side dishes for items she prepared.

Now I know that life in St. Louis was different in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, but even when my family moved to a new house in the mid 80's, we worked to get a small garden in the backyard again.  This time, with tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and peppers.  During this time as well, when my dad would take us on drives or excursions during summer weekends, we would sometimes pass still operational produce farms in St. George off of Mackenzie or off of Union or even further off of Telegraph.  It is just amazing how much property and land was farmland even in my younger years and is now residential or commercial. Still, the concept of farm to table, as it is being used today, is the same as it was then, only now there are fewer farms.  But I don't think this area, this metropolitan area of St. Louis has anything but farms.  I lived near farms and farmers my whole life and even on the Illinois side of the river in Columbia, my subdivision is located next to farmland. I admit though, the land that we have as our yard, was once a landfill where people dumped things they didn't want so the ground is not great for farming, like the farms around us.  But, even with use of the farmland at my in-law's home, we have a large summer farm in the works with corn, sunflowers, tomatoes, squash and peppers.

I tend to thing that St. Louis is doing a better job at the farm-to-table concept than any other city based on the fact that the time between productive farms 20 years ago and new farms now, was just a short hiccup of time compared to other cities.  Think of those restaurants in Austin which claim to support local farmers and do farm to table, but get their products from farms 30-100 miles away.  About 10 years ago, the farm to table was just really becoming a popular thing again in the US and at a restaurant at the newly opened Lumiere Casino called Sleek, Chef Hubert Keller wanted to bring St. Louis the concept even though it never left town.  I remembered eating a meal at his restaurant and having the waiter telling me how everything has been locally farmed or produced and then his explanations included things like carrots harvested from Wentzville or beef from Colorado or even tomatoes from a farm near Chicago. I was then and am still disturbed because at that same time, I was fully aware of cattle being grown for their meat, just in SW Missouri, I was aware of deliciously fresh and local carrots grown on the other side of the river and even tomatoes grown just inside of Columbia, Illinois.  To me, when a restaurant says they want something local, they mean within 20-30 miles, for the record, Wentzville is about 50 miles from that restaurant.  There are a lot of really good local farms and farmers within less than 50 miles from that restaurant and yet they wanted to focus so much on what was outside the limits.

To be blunt and still remain some sort of sense in this madness, I would like to state that I have been eating farm-to-table practically my whole life.  I have never lived more than 5 miles from a farm and always support the closely local farmers.  I can't really explain much more or describe much else but I guess it would be similar to someone explaining how they are the best in Parisian Fashion when Paris is the best at that.  What would happen if a designer came into Paris and told the people there that this is how they do it in Paris and showed them things they have been seeing their whole life.

Contrary to popular belief and statistics, St. Louis is a very safe place to live.  The place that makes it listed as a dangerous city is a very small surface area of the entire area.  The rest of the city is awesome with historical landmarks, farms and gardens, and still the friendliest people in the country.

Savannah Grille's spring time boards

No real story here or article, just some food porn.  Two weeks ago my wife's family and mine were going on a road trip to Branson via Lake of the Ozarks.  So, we had one afternoon of driving and then dinner at the Savannah Grille.  I asked Chef Robert, on the phone earlier that day, if he had anything special and he told me that he had some fresh tomatoes and would make something special for us.  He also had finished breaking a pig down, earlier in the week and wanted to make a better meat plate.  So, we ordered and it came, these are the boards:








































Look at how delicious everything on this board looks. He gave us headcheese, some terrine, some fresh sausages as well as prosciutto.  Then covered the board in all of these random vegetables, which he pickled.  Each pickle was a completely different spice or flavoring agent to complement the meat items.

Then, the tomato plate come out:

The board has some toasted bread on it and then these perfectly red tomatoes and a drizzle of some balsamic vinegar and sauce and these were just extraordinary.  The bite of these tomatoes tasted like that first day of summer.  

Chef Robert always makes great use of the items that he can get, always looking for fresh and seasonal.  My advice to you, is to go there, order these boards and try one of their new burgers.