Happy New Year to all my blogging friends. One of my resolutions this year, and frankly probably the first to be abandoned, is to write more often.
But, since it's not 2011 here in Nuevo Mexico I'm going to open another High Life, make myself a sammich, and sit on the couch with the dogs and watch some TV.
Happy New Year to you all.

Cafe Thanksgiving Pics

Thought I'd share a few pics from our Thanksgiving, I hope everyone had a wonderful day.

The Spread

The Friends

The Entertainment

Great movie, by the way.

Well, I was going to try to write something tonight...something about how things with Sam just aren't developing, and how I'm starting to think that they never will, and how that's probably for the best anyway...

or something about how I was ready to drown my old Italian lady prep cook in the dish sink yesterday and how that made me feel like an absolute douche and how I dealt with that feeling in the time-honored tradition of heavy drinking...

or something about how fucking tired I am and how sometimes I wish I'd just stayed a cop and how...

never mind.

Fact is that I don't have anyone to vent to. I just really miss having someone to come home to, to have somebody to listen to, somebody who will in turn listen to me, somebody to make me a fucking sandwich every once in a while.

More Tegan and Sara

Can't stop listening to this one right now..."Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at..."

Love that.

Rocks

T, should you show up, I'll fix you breakfast anytime. I cook better slightly drunk, so you might want to take me drinking first.

M, only real cream is offered for coffee at my place and I would love to visit with you over several cups.

J, biscuits and gravy...hmmmm...well, biscuits are a bit like scones in texture, they are usually round, but sometimes square, and gravy is just a word we use for sauce. There's an old joke that goes something like,

Q: What's the difference between gravy and sauce?
A: About $15 dollars.

And that's pretty true. Cream gravy is basically just a bechamel sauce...flour, butter and milk with a little salt and pepper.
Sausage gravy is about the same with the addition of crumbled breakfast sausage. Fry up your sausage, then make a roux with the grease and add milk, finish with salt and pepper.
Chocolate gravy is a southern thing. I grew up eating it and the little bit of research I've done on the subject indicates that it originated in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and the western Carolinas. I make it with cocoa powder, flour and sugar and a bit of vanilla and salt. My grandma made it with Nestle Quick. It is nothing short of amazing served over a hot, well-buttered biscuit.

The Breakfast Menu

Breakfast is going well, this week was the first full weekend and we made it through with no disasters, I am ditching that late night thing for now though. Here's what my schedule was looking like:

Thursday - work from 9:30 am to around 9 pm.

Friday - get up at 4 am, this requires two alarms set at opposite sides of the room just out of reach of my bed, get to work by 5 am to prep for breakfast. Breakfast ends at 11 am, put everything up and clean the stoves and surrounding area. Take care of any boss stuff (bank/store runs, payroll/accounting, stuff like that) and get home around 2:30, nap 'til about 8 pm and then back to work for the late night stuff. Sell 6 slices to three very drunk people at 10:15 pm then absolutely nothing 'til about 1:30 am when the drunks would start wandering past on their way to their cars as bars were closing. Sell about 6 more slices. Clean up and either sleep at the cafe on my cot or drive home and sleep there (cafe sleep is sucky, but good for about an hour more rack time), get up in time to get back to work by 5 am.

Saturday - Same as above.

Sunday - Back to work by 5 am and done and on my way home by 1 pm. Nap. Mostly a day off.

Monday - Boss shit in the morning, then off for the day. Woohoo.

Tuesday - Regular day, pretty much 9:30 am to 9 pm. Cooking, washing dishes and prep.

Wednesday and Thursday - Same as Tuesday.

Rinse and repeat.

So, yeah, fuck that late night stuff...for now. I still think it's a good idea with potential to make some good money, but not at this time of the year. Besides, it was making me stupid.

Breakfast though is going well, not real busy, but that's good. This is a completely different way of cooking than I'm used to at work. Pizzas you make and put in the oven and then you've got seven minutes to take care of other things. Everything is either prepared in the oven or from the steam table or salad bench. It can get pretty hectic on an extremely busy day, but one person can feed the fifty or so people in a reasonable about of time with little trouble. During breakfast service even a small table can throw you into the weeds...eggs are poaching, biscuits are warming in the oven, bacon and sausage frying, gravy thickening, pancakes overcooking in a second, grits turning from soup into glue as soon as you turn your back on them...and, as you can see from the pic, I don't have a flat top, it all happens in separate pans and it can spiral into chaos pretty quickly.

I've never been a short-order cook, but it's getting better, I'm figuring things out, fine tuning with nearly every order that comes in. It will get easier. I just hope that it stays slow until I find my way a little better.

Around here the Mexican breakfast is king, lots of stuff with tortillas, red and green chile sauces, and beans. And I love that. There are few things I enjoy more than huevos rancheros with pinto beans and a couple warm flour tortillas to scoop it all up with. But every restaurant in town has it on the menu and I wanted to do something different to stand out, so I went with the menu below. It's definitely Southern inspired, some of it is what I grew up eating as a kid, and I guarantee you're not going to find biscuits with chocolate gravy on any other menu in Lincoln County...I'd be surprised to see it on any menu in the state. So far, no one not related to me has ordered it, but a lady this morning did ask if I had some bacon drippings for her grits (hell yeah I did) and a couple from Virginia said that their breakfast today (biscuits with sausage gravy, fried tomatoes, and sausage) was the best they'd had since leaving home. So, I'm finding my audience.

Pretty much everything is made from scratch except for the puff pastry, I buy frozen 3" rounds for the 'nests'. The bacon is cured in-house and the sausage is also house-made. Biscuits are from scratch.

I hope you enjoy.

The Rio Plate – 2 Eggs, your choice of Bacon or Sausage, potatoes and a biscuit $3.95

Nests – Light, crisp puff pastry shells topped with one of our four sauces and two poached eggs.

Florentine – Creamed spinach and hollandaise sauce. $5.95

Creole – Spicy shrimp jambalaya. $4.95

Moroccan – Spice infused tomato sauce. $4.95

Jacksonville – Sausage gravy. $3.95

Griddle Cakes – Short $3.95 Tall $4.95

Toast Lafayette – French toast with a crunchy, golden crust $4.95

Maple syrup, apricot syrup, blackstrap molasses, and honey are available

Biscuits and Gravy – Two buttermilk biscuits with your choice of gravy. $3.95

Cream, Sausage, or Chocolate

Sweet rice - Who says morning grains have to be healthy? $3.45

Sides -

Bacon (3) - $1.95

Sausage (2) - $1.95

Grits - $.95

Biscuit - $.95

Rice - $.95

Fried tomatoes - $1.95

Beverages –

Coffee $.50

Hot Tea $1.00

Fountain soft drinks or milk $1.50

Bottled soft drinks or juice $2.00