Potlikker

how to write a cookbook

Braiden Rex-Johnson wrote a cookbook about Pike Place Market (Seattle). She took a course first, of course. That was then: If you want to author a cookbook now your name must be Nigella or Martha or something recognizable to millions of eager cookbook buyers. Once you gather the recipes, they must be tested. The royalties are sparse. Surely there is some underlying satisfaction  in the process. The Seattle Times article reports how three authors made cookbook writing work for them.

the dirty truth about tipping

I had chance to read "The tipping point," written by a NYC cocktail waitress and published in the Village Voice. The intro says that New Yorkers are great about leaving something behind for their server while tourists, it seems, just don't know any better. There's a minimum dollar a drink rule in the city and it must be unspoken, or at least only understood by the natives. It's not the rubes from the country who tip the worst, but the international tourists who "seldom connect good service with dollar bills." Servers respond by overcharging and pocketing the difference.

Cristeta Comerford Executive chef

The first woman to be named chef in the White House is Cristeta Comerford. She served as an assitant chef since the mid-90s. She's a wiz at preparing W's huevos rancheros and Ms. Bush's literary-themed dinners. Comerford is known for her distinctive flavoring.

waiter in training

In the NYTimes, an article about teenagers wielding trays with seemingly bionic arms as they train to be servers at the French Culinary Institute. Twenty-two "food-obsessed" teenagers attended the school to learn the finer points of napkin folding, place-settings, and other skills that come together to create the perfect dining experience. It was part of "a pilot program started by Careers Through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP), a nonprofit group that creates restaurant internship and scholarship opportunities for inner city students."

how to be a food critic

Timing and dumb luck are what one food critic attributes to the success, or origins, or his vocation. He does it in New Orleans. And he has fake names and credit cards to match them. Somehow his PhD in Baroque Spanish theater and his yearning to write landed him a food writing job with an alternative weekly paper. It's that simple.