How was your day, Dan?

BAKING: LEMON ROUNDS

I need to start writing these recipes down somewhere. So they'll go here.

After watching countless hours of The Great British Bake Off, a.k.a. The Great British Baking Show as it is named when it airs on PBS here in the U.S. (must Americans be so obnoxious, they won't even let overseas TV shows keep their own names?), I decided to try to bake a loaf of bread. I had never used my oven for anything other than seasoning cast iron pans, after I cooked bacon of chicken or some other meat thing to gnaw on. But baking shouldn't be too hard, a recipe is a recipe so just follow it, and remember the little tricks that Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry taught us. Put the salt on one side of the mixing bowl, and the yeast on the other. If you pour them on top of each other, the salt kills the yeast. Mix bread dough well, but doing it in an electric mixer can overwork it quickly. Blah blah blah.

That loaf of white bread, just plain white sandwich bread, was gangbusters. Delicious. I haven't bought bread in the store since. Thick but not heavy, without those air bubbles found in loaves from bread machines, it was the recipe from America's Test Kitchen, so I don't need to write that one down. It's easily found again. Note: I didn't knead that dough on the counter. I did it all in the mixer and I didn't mix it very much. And I proofed (proofed? proved?) it for a lot longer than the instructions said. Maybe because it is humid in Kansas? Is that why proofing takes longer? I dunno.

Anyway--

So the recipe I am writing down here is for lemon tarts. I used this Martha Stewart recipe for dough--which makes 2 crusts, but I needed only one. I used Gold Medal flour, and I weighed it to 130 grams per cup, from there just do the math. Weighing is much more exact than scooping, because the flour can get packed down an you end up with a lot more than you would want.

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup ice water, but then another 1/8 cup was added as I mixed because 1/4 isn't enough!

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick (1/2 cup) water, poured from a bowl of water chilling with ice

Blend the dry ingredients in a food processor, then add frozen cubes of dough and blend for like 7 seconds. Becomes little peas of butter.

Use a hand-held dough cutter thing to mix in the water little by little, sprinkle by sprinkle. It forms a crumbly mess. Scoop up those crumbs and dump onto some plastic wrap, then wrap it up, and smush into a disc. It doesn't look like it is going to work as actual pie crust. BUT IT WILL. Remember, that butter should still be semi-frozen. 

Freeze that crumbly pile of doughstuff for a few hours. Or a few days. I froze mine for 2 hours, and then I cooked little round shells in a cast iron biscuit pan, but that made the taste strong and nutty, and a milder-tasting crust lets the lemon flavor really pop. Actually, just use anything, it will turn out fine. See, they don't even have to be perfectly formed:

 

So the important part: that lemon curd/cream. I don't know which category it falls into, because it isn't really either curd or cream. It is whatever it wants to be. This is 2017. My Lemon Creation will not be defined nor confined by binary labels. It is label-fluid. 

3 eggs and 1 egg yolk (what to do with the extra white? so wasteful) from large eggs, not extra large, those are for breakfast and not for cooking, recipes are created using large eggs as a standard

3 lemons, regular store lemons, they don't need to be fancy hipster lemons

1 1/2 sticks of butter, unsalted

3/4 cup sugar, I use a mix of regular and a little bit of turbinado, which I keep mixed in a tub because I like the taste of the mix

a little tiny pinch of salt, so keep salt in a bowl somewhere nearby

2 capfuls of vanilla, and yes I use the fake stuff because I like it better! I don't like real vanilla extract. It's too oily.

 

Put a saucepan on the stove and fill it halfway with water. Boil it. Put a glass bowl (not metal, which I found out can make everything taste like a mouthful of pennies) on top of it, so the bowl is close to the water but not touching. This is a double boiler.

Take a kitchen rasp, which everyone needs so if you don't have one you should buy one, and being super-careful and scrape off the yellow part of the lemon rind. SCRAPE OFF NO WHITE. That's the pith and it's nasty. Do this slowly and gently, so you get juuuuuuust the yellow part of the rind. Do all 3 lemons, into the bowl. Cut one lemon open and, after picking out the seeds, squeeze the juice in. Just one lemon is enough. The lemon juice is there more to start the chemical reaction of thickening things. The lemon skin is the flavor.  

I also added a splash of lemon extract, like 1/8 teaspoon at most. I used the alcohol-based extract If you want to use some, smell it first. If it smells good, put it in. I have used lemon extract that smelled weird, and surprise surprise it didn't taste any better. Lemon is all about the smell. You smell it on your tastebuds. But if you don't have lemon extract, no need to buy some. The lemons you've got are plenty of flavor.

With the zest and stuff in the bowl, add the sugar, the vanilla, and the little pinch of salt. Mix mix mix. Add the egg parts and really stir it. You're using a whisk, btw, with a long handle. 

Stir for like 20 minutes, probably longer. Directions say to cook past 160 degrees to be safe, if you have a thermometer; but after 160 degrees, it's going to start to get thick, so that's a big giveaway. Keep stirring until it is like pudding. When it starts to thicken, you can taste it to see if you need to add more lemon, but you probably won't need to add anything. Then turn off the stove, take the bowl off the pot and put it on the counter, and stir it a little more to cool it down. 

Use an immersion blender to blend in butter, slices at a time. In trial runs of this recipe, I also tried whipped cream, but for some reason the cream killed the lemon taste and made it bland. Stick to the butter.

Spoon it into dishes or into the shel(s) of your choice, and chill for several hours. The lemon continues to work magic while it's in the fridge. The longer it sits, the creamier it gets. But don't wait too long. Like, a day, tops. FYI, don't let it rest in that bowl. It has to be put into crust or cups or something right away, because it becomes too thick to work with very quickly.

 

 

THIRTY DAYS IN NEW YORK: Dinner.

"How would you like an authentic New York experience?"

I was laying on the couch, in my temporary home deep in the depths of Brooklyn, with the ever-present aroma of cat urine wafting through the air. A chorus of horns blared and bleated outside, as cars crammed into the one-way street like angry sheep, trapped by a rambling garbage truck inching down the block. Having just eaten a bagel, I was licking cream cheese out of my beard's whiskers so hard that it was straining my tongue, but I was too lazy to get up and get a napkin. So yes, I was already having an "authentic New York experience," although the way my friend pronounced "Nu YAWK" certainly added a bit of glamour.

I hoped he couldn't hear my lips smacking from the cream cheese. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'm going to a dinner party tonight at my friend's house down the street from where I live," he said. The hosts, he explained, lived in a glorious brownstone in the Upper West Side, and just seeing their place was worth showing up. But it wasn't going to be a pretentious affair; these dinner parties are pot luck, not a big crowd but an interesting mélange of friends. "We get together once or twice a month. Everyone is really nice. It's like Mayberry."

I will always accept an invitation to dine in the company of people with unimaginable wealth. And my friend is a fun guy. So I accepted. "I'm bringing asparagus," he said. "You bring a bottle of wine."

After a thorough scrubbing of myself and a cream cheese removal from my beard, I hopped on the subway and zipped out of Brooklyn and under the East River and stepped into a brisk evening in the wondrous isle of Manhattan. I then popped into a liquor store and, not knowing what specifically was being served for dinner other than asparagus, picked a bottle of rather nice wine just because I remembered it from my days as a server at a fancy restaurant. Buying wine is always a challenge when going to a dinner party; the host undoubtedly has drinks already planned, and people can have finicky palates. So I hoped they would like it. I just didn't want to look stupid, walking in with a bottle of Clos du Bois or something else I could buy at Target. Because that is usually where I really buy my wine.

With one last sniff  of my sweater to make sure I wasn't carrying any fumes of cat piss from Brooklyn, I rang the buzzer at my friend's apartment, and he let me in with much hugging and chitchat. I showed him the wine; he smiled and shrugged, in a gesture of gracious indifference about whatever I had in my hand, and he said it looked great. Then after putting the finishing touches on his asparagus he grabbed his coat and we stepped back outside to brave the evening chill to walk down the block for the soirée. The street was lined with stately brownstone homes, built with actual stone instead of brick. Even the trees here, without any leaves, look like they have money.

My friend turned up some steps and rang the doorbell. I looked up, admiring the ornate stonework. "The windows are beautiful," I said, arching by back to get a view all the way up.

"Just wait until we get inside," he muttered. "They own the whole building."

"All four floors?" 

"Five," he said. "They have their own elevator."

The host of the party opened the door and warmly shook our hands, graciously accepting the bottle of wine I brought, and offered to also take the asparagus and our coats. Clenching my jaw as I said a prayer in my mind, please God don't let him smell any trapped fumes of cat piss in my coat, we walked down the hall. Several guests were gathered in a formal sitting room, holding drinks and laughing at whatever was so delightfully funny, not full howls of laughter but the polite laughs you would hear at a country club. The hostess, a lovely matron wearing impeccable ready-to-wear and an enormous diamond ring, introduced herself and her friends, who stood up from where they had been lounging on furniture that looked like something out of Antiques Roadshow. Ornately carved couches and chairs, with luxuriously stuffed upholstery woven in patterns of yellow, white and blue, sat next to a grand piano, surrounded by walls painted a buttercup yellow with white trim. The room gently curved at the far end into an oval, with pocket doors that followed the bend, and the doors glimmered with gold accents of the beveled panels. The shape of the room was matched at the front by the bay windows, which were adorned with leaded stained glass. If I tried to decorate an oval room with yellow and gold, it would look like we were sitting in an ugly Easter egg. But here, the effect was stunning. Regal. Obviously professionally executed.

"This is really beautiful," I said. "I love the gold paint on the doors."

And there was a pause. I just kept looking at the door.

"...nnnn-No, dear," said the hostess. "That's not paint. That's leaf."

Faux pas #1 and I just walked in the door! Great.

The hostess overheard something else to laugh about across the room, so she went back to her mingling as her husband passed around libations. They then took turns sharing tidbits of personal history of each person in attendance, until there was not a stranger among us. This couple has three kids, that couple just completed a mission trip in El Salvador. This friend was in Rome and a gypsy stole everything out of her fanny pack, can you imagine? The gypsies in Italy really are such a problem. And as I was the new face in the room, I automatically piqued the crowd's curiosities, so I regaled them with tales of my home in the exotic land of Kansas and my recent road trip to New York, to live in a friend's apartment in Brooklyn so I could care for her 21 cats. I assured them, after fielding a few requests for clarification, that I really had just said 21. It was a lot of cats.  (...and this, Dear Reader, is another story for another day.)

"Why on Earth would someone want to have 21 cats?" asked an appropriately exasperated friend.

"Because 22 would be too many," I said. And laughter erupted from everyone, HA HA HA HA HAAAAA, all around, this time with real laughs, not the country club kind. If they laughed at a line that was that easy, I thought, this party is going to be a cinch.

Feeling very impressed with myself after several more rounds of laughs, and equally as accomplished for not spilling a single drop of my cocktail on any priceless antique furniture, I triumphantly followed the group into the dining room when it was time for dinner. These people were fun! They liked my stories! And we moved to the dining room table, the ornate centerpiece surrounded by equally extravagant chairs, I gently placed my cocktail glass down on the table. Exuding utmost grace and gentility, a most pleasant and genteel smile upon my face, I sat down in my chair and slid into the table.

CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRACKKKKKKK.

In case we haven't met, Dear Reader, I should mention: I am 6'3" tall and weigh somewhere above 240 pounds. So the weight of my extra-large body proved to be too much for the antique sensibilities of my chair, and as I slid towards the table, the front left chair leg cracked out of its joint and bent back at a horrifying slope.

I didn't immediately register what had just happened, but the noise startled my reflexes and locked my thighs into a squatting position. Still holding the chair, I managed to keep smiling, although the cold air on my eyeballs disclosed the fact that my eyes were widened in what could only be construed a look of horror. My friend, sitting on my right, was engrossed in a story with the person on his right so he hadn't noticed what was going on. So I looked to the left, and there was the host, standing with a giant bowl of salad, looking down at me. He had the same smiling but wide-eyed expression that I had.

"I seem to have done something to your chair," I muttered to him.

"It's fine," he said, with a gentle wave of his free hand. "Those chairs are very old." Yes, I thought, antiques usually are.

A woman across the table, sitting perfectly straight in her seat, had noticed the sound of splintering wood and leaned slightly to her right to look down. I knew the moment she saw the leg of the chair, because her eyebrows raised up so high they almost disappeared into her perfectly coiffed hair. And then she looked up at me, and smiled. Everyone was smiling. When anything goes wrong, apparently rich people just keep smiling.

I wrenched the leg back into position, and if I didn't shift my body weight, the chair was stable enough to hold me up, so I sat through the dinner and balanced precariously without any future incidents. And after much pleasant conversation with a sprinking of another story or two, the incident of the chair seemed to have been forgotten. I pretended to not notice how everyone at the table chose to not drink the wine I had brought, so I just shared it with my friend who was entirely happy to have more wine to himself. A true friend will drink the wine you brought to a dinner party so you don't feel low-class and stupid.

Towards the end of dinner, the conversation had turned to decorating ideas, so as we moved to the living room for an after-dinner drink, the hostess mentioned to her friend with the perfectly coiffed hair that they should go upstairs and look at the newly-remodeled top floor. Perhaps emboldened by all that wine I drank at dinner, I asked if I could come along. The hostess energetically welcomed me to join, and we progressed to the stairs. And there, in all its glory, was their elevator, a little wooden box filled with magic, golden light.

"You two take the elevator," she said. "It isn't big enough for all three of us." I hesitated, as I hadn't originally been invited on this adventure, but the hostess insisted she took the stairs all the time anyway, and she would meet us at the top. The friend stepped onto the elevator, turned, and looked at me with those eyebrows raised again. And she looked me up and down.

"Are you sure this can handle both of us?" she called to the hostess, who was already up a few stairs.

"It's fine!" she said. "It was built for two."

The woman on the elevator grimaced. "Yes, but..." she said, as she undoubtedly remembered that dining room chair. "I hope we don't get stuck."

Having lived my entire life pushing back against people who would prefer me to be different, to fit into what they define as socially acceptable--not so gay, not so flamboyant, not so much whatever--I have developed a reactionary behavior which I certainly make no claims of being able to control. If people say they don't like something about my personage, I give it to them double. Full-throttle. No holding back. Tell me to not be so queeny, I become obnoxious. Tell me to shut up, I get really loud. And in this case, this woman, with her passive-aggressive eyebrows, was obviously telling me I should not be so big. So forgetting all my efforts at being polite amongst this crowd of social elites, I did what I had no choice to do.

I barreled into that fucking elevator and shut the door. "DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT!" I boomed, amplified by the tiny space of the elevator. "IT'LL BE FUN!" And I punched the button for the top floor.

As we passed the first floor, this person seriously stood there humming nervously, and actually said "Oh I hope we make it," not meeting my gaze as I stared at her down. The elevator hummed as we rose up, two, three, four, until we reached the top floor and surprise, the doors opened without incident. "There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" I said, as I stepped off. Although as soon as I looked at the splendor of the magnificent room around me, this time a neutral-toned refuge up in the sky, flanked with windows, I instantly no longer cared what she thought about anything.

"Yes," she said. "But I'll be taking the stairs back down."

 

 

SPIDER

I am not particularly scared of spiders, but I had to share this story.

I live in an apartment that faces a piece of land that has a creek, and along the banks are lots of trees. It's a bit of a wilderness over there. At night I hear an owl hooting nearby, which is cool. And last year I was visited a few times by a toad, who squatted on my front porch for a few weeks and hopped inside whenever I opened my door. That toad freaked me out for some reason. I worried it was going to jump on me, and...I didn't know what would happen. But I knew I wasn't going to like it. One particularly unfortunate afternoon, I was re-planting some potted plants on my porch and as I pulled a plant out its pot, the toad--which had evidently burrowed into the soil, unbeknownst to me--fell out and flopped onto the ground, its legs jerking around as it tried to flip over and hop away. I screamed. My neighbor, an alarmed look on his face, came outside to see what the ruckus was about. I will spare you the description of his reaction when I told him I had just been attacked by a toad. Needless to say, he wasn't impressed.

This is not supposed to be about toads. This is about a spider. I am not scared of spiders. But still...

DAN VS. THE SPIDER

Grab towels out of laundry basket.

Notice a towel had fallen behind laundry basket, and pick up that towel to add to towels already in arms.

Look down at towel, and notice dead spider attached to that towel, legs curled up into body in death pose.

Walk over to toilet, and shake towel in attempt to knock it off into toilet.

Action of shaking the towel alarms spider, which was just pretending to be dead, but is actually very much alive. Spider flips legs open, and is now the size of a dime. Spider begins to scurry up towel in general of direction of hand.

Shriek. Not knowing what else to do, shove entire collection of towels into toilet.

Stand back and gaze upon collection of six bath towels (plus one spider) in toilet.

Survey clump of towels from multiple angles, looking for spider. See no sign of spider. Plan the intricate task of peeling out towels one-by-one to inspect for presence of spider.

Pull out towel that originally had spider. Hold up above toilet. Spider is, not surprisingly, still present on towel on area that is soaked with water from toilet, but is still, very surprisingly, alive. Spider starts crawling up towel again.

Turn on shower. Hold towel in shower stream. Strike spider directly with water in attempt to wash down drain.

Spider curls up again but does not dislodge from towel. Continue to attack spider with deluge of water from shower, yet spider refuses to relent.

Contemplate the resilience of spider. Waves of guilt flood forth, while trying to kill a living creature for no reason. This spider means no harm. This spider only wants to live. Who am I to kill this poor spider?

Turn off shower. Study spider for signs of life. Spider unfurls legs again, and tries feebly to crawl up towel once more. Wow. What a tough spider.

Holding towel like a bullfighter's cape, walk with towel to front door, dripping water in steady stream along the path. Spider falters on towel, so walk quicker, to get spider outside and off wet towel. Worry that spider may die while on towel and guilt would be too much to bear. Please don't die, spider. Make it just a few seconds more and you'll be outside. And if you live or die out there, I cannot control. But it's a nice day.

Step onto porch, and flick spider outside. Feel warmth of sun on face. Goodbye spider. May you live to see another day.

Turn to go back inside, and notice neighbor, looking back, while I stand on porch. In t-shirt and underwear. 

Walk back inside. Neighbor already thinks I'm crazy anyway.

 

 

THIRTY DAYS IN NEW YORK, part deux

 

I wanted to get a cup of coffee.

This is not a casual decision. I can't go just anywhere, and get whatever swill they're straining out of their coffee bean grinds. It needs to be the good stuff, with labels like "Fair Trade" and "organic" and "made by hipsters" all over the place. I like the kind of coffee beverages that have a lot in common with my ex-boyfriend: both are unnecessarily complicated and slightly bitter. The ex is long gone, but I still like fussy coffee drinks.

So I took a walk, in the hopes of finding an overpriced coffeeshop somewhere. It shouldn't be that hard, right? I was in Brooklyn.

But from what was supposed to be a quick jaunt around the neighborhood, I turned that way instead of this, and ended up wandering aimlessly towards the waterfront, right into the middle of Cobble Hill. 

That's where the rich folks live. When row houses are fancy, they're called "Brownstones." This is Brownstone territory.

I walked all the way to the waterfront, where I stood beneath the expanse of the Brooklyn Bridge and contemplated my place in the universe.

But then I lightened up at the sight of these lovely fellows.

It was a beautiful day. And a beautiful day for a wedding. 

I turned left.

The remnants of piers gone by poked out of the water, just hanging out beneath the sun.

I was extremely intrigued by those old wooden posts. 

That's the Statue of Liberty way back there. Click on the photo to enlarge it, and you can see Lady Liberty a little better. 

I still hadn't had coffee. But it was getting late. Time for lunch. I found pizza. I had a slice topped with eggplant, my favorite.

Actually first I found these cannolis, but I'm embarrassed to tell you I ate them before I had the pizza. And yes I ate both of them. How do I choose which I liked better? It's like Sophie's Choice of desserts. Both were delicious. FYI, cannolis in Brooklyn are only $2.75. In Manhattan they are like $4. 

It was after St. Patrick's Day, but they had leftover green sprinkles, so why not? "Sprinkles are for winners," as the Geico lady says, and I was having a good day. So I deserved them.

And then I turned a corner and was greeted by this:

Well that's a nice how-do-you-do after a lovely meal. Glad I ate the eggplant pizza and nothing with meat. Blech. But again, this is what happens in NYC. And whatever that butcher is making out of this stuff must be deeeeeelicious. Fresh. 

I continued my long walk. The nice neighborhood ended. I walked into the wilds of hipster gentrification, where the brave 20somethings are roosting with their beer gardens and their juice shops, and I passed a shuffleboard club?...playing bad 80's hip hop.

Is this really a thing? I guess it is no more or less boring than bowling. Everyone was drinking huge glasses of beer. Have fun, peeps. I kept walking.

I stumbled upon a coffeeshop where a full jazz band was playing. Ah, that's better.

I never got any coffee! But it was too late. So bought hot chocolate, and had a seat for a little while and enjoyed the tunes. I would show you the audience but it was much lower in number than the amount of people in the band. But again, that's NYC. And there were people waiting by the door to play. Open mic night.

I faced the brisk night air and just walked along the streets, taking photos of the various things to see.

The white building is the Brooklyn Museum. I should go in there.

Perhaps another day.

30 DAYS IN NEW YORK: day one.

Well hello.

I've been thinking about you for a long time, my lovely, sitting here ignored like the stump in The Giving Tree. I've come to sit on your stump again.

~~~

My friend is a scientist who researches primate behavior, and she and her husband spend a month each year studying animals at a refuge somewhere in Florida. They sent out a plea to anyone who could come stay in their house in Brooklyn and care for their cats. They live in a row house in an up-and-coming neighborhood, although almost all of Brooklyn is up-and-coming, and if you ask me I think some of it is not destined to ever arise and make it. But in a city where rent is thousands of dollars just for the privilege of saying "I live in New York," standards of what makes a neighborhood "liveable" are low. And people make the most of it. A Starbucks opens in between a check cashing store and lady who reads palms, and suddenly the neighborhood is being gentrified. And so here I am.

The people in this neighborhood mostly speak with a mélange of lovely, lilting Caribbean accents, and based on the rasta headwraps on a few of the men, presumably the vibe here is Jamaican, although there are also signs for food from Trinidad. Would that be Trinidiadian? Trini? I think Trini, I've heard that before. And the people here are quite friendly. Ordering some chicken fingers to-go may involve a very long wait, because no one behind the counter is in any hurry, but they will definitely greet you politely and sincerely wish you a very nice day. And apparently the ox tail is delicious. 

The day before my friends departed on their road trip south in their Prius, I made the voyage to NYC from Kansas in my Corolla, adding another 1,500+ miles to the 190,000+ already on the odometer, and arrived clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckle death grip after barreling through what was apparently the largest snowstorm of the year. The snow had already stopped in the city, and the streets were clear; but snow plows had piled all the snow into drifts up to the door handles of the cars parked along streets. The next day, after the overnight freeze, all that street slush had formed into a wall of ice. And we had to dig through it to break free their poor little Prius.

It was a definitive Brooklyn moment: a group of Gentrifiers, dressed in flannel shirts and Merrell boots, hacking away at the ice piled up around a Prius, as men with rasta head wraps walked by cheering us on. Hey mon! You gonna do it mon!  

After taking a break to indulge in some Fair Trade coffee from the shop down the street, we cleared a hole in the ice wall, and a hearty final shove by myself launched the Prius through the sludge and onto the street. They were off, into the wilds of scientific research amidst the palm trees of the American sub-tropics, leaving their home and their cats in my care. I watched them zip down the street, past the coffee shop on the corner,, and then marched my weary limbs back into the house empty of anyone except a few cats. And as I flopped onto the couch, I peeled off the soggy boots from my feet and looked around at the quiet, and thought...So you're in New York. Now what?

 

 

Jeremiah Bills and 'The Great American Baking Competition'

I wrote this for Huffington Post: The Great American Baking Competition

 

HOW TO USE GLOVES

I wrote this email to a restaurant chain that shall remain nameless for now. If I go back and they are still having problems, I'm going public.

 

~~~

 

Dear ________,

I believe your employees in SoCal need a refresher on how, and why, they should wear gloves.

 

I say this because I enjoy eating at your fine restaurants, but I also used to enjoy a certain burrito chain, and then they poisoned a bunch of people because their employees were using dirty hands. Now I don't eat those burritos. I don't want to lose you as well. So this letter is for my benefit as much as it is for yours.

 

A little background: I am an RN, and I was also a health department inspector for a little while, so I know gloves. I change gloves daily on countless occasions. I am also not a fan of gloves in food service, because they give people a false sense of security. Because the hand underneath the glove is clean, the worker forgets that the glove itself gets dirty really fast. So people don't take them off when they should.

 

I have seen your employees on multiple occasions (I eat at your restaurant often) using their gloved hands to remove the lids from food storage containers, open cooler doors, touch cash register screens, touch their own clothing, and (gross!) handle money, and then use those same gloved hands to reach into food bins and touch the food that people would then eat.

 

Anyone who took a college Chemistry 101 class probably performed the experiment of swabbing money and placing the specimen in a petri dish, and coming back a few days later to see what was growing. E.Coli usually showed up somewhere in the classroom. So "don't touch money" should be a no-brainer. But as a health inspector, I was also very nervous about people touching doors to coolers or other surfaces, and then touching food. How do we know those surfaces are clean? We don't.

 

I don't understand why California allows mingling of foods--reaching into a bin with a gloved hand, and then reaching into another bin with that same gloved hand, spreads the food residue from one bin to another. You have bell peppers, for example, which are a member of the nightshade family, and are commonly a source of food allergies. When I worked as a health inspector, I was told to require facilities to have separate serving utensils for each bin. But California is a wacky state, so apparently the health inspectors don't mind it here. So let's let that pass.

 

HOWEVER, when an employee wipes her gloved hands on her shirt and then sticks that hand into a bin of food, that entire bin of food should be thrown away.  (I didn't tell anyone to do this. But when I saw this, I didn't get that topping that day.)

 

I have an exhaustive list of infractions by your employees, but it's just the same thing over and over. Grossness, grossness, dirty dirty grossness. You get the picture. So, in conclusion of this long letter, let me just say this: A hand should be gloved immediately before touching food, never a moment before, and then as soon as that customer's food handling is over, the glove should come off. If that worker needs to touch a surface or cooler door or big white tub of cheese, the glove should be taken off and thrown away, and then a NEW glove should be put on to finish the order. This means, unless you are set up like a Ford auto plant and everyone has only one job over and over, each new customer's pizza gets a new pair of gloves. And, duh, never touch a cash register (?!?!?!) and then go back to touching someone else's food.

 

I am available to host a glove-utilization technique class for your employees in LA, for the price of some free lunch. If not me, you need someone to do it, because this is how that burrito chain got in trouble and spread E.Coli to a bunch of people.  All it takes is one person with dirty hands. Watch yourself.

 

Sincerely,
Dan Renzi, R.N.

OLYMPICS

If the Olympics can support rhythmic gymnastics, air rifle marksmanship, and speed-walking, there are some events that I think should be added to the lineup.

1) Tug Of War
The ultimate team sport, this used to be an Olympic event up until the 1920's.

2) Mixed pairs synchronized swimming
If there is mixed pairs in figure skating, tennis, and whatever else is currently an Olympic sport, there is no reason for there to not be men in synchronized swimming. And with all the men who perform in Cirque du Soleil water shows swimming around, obviously there are enough men who can compete like this. Other levels of competition have competitions with men; see Italy here in the World Synchronized Swimming Championships.

3) Darts
Olympics has a competition for air rifles. Translation: bb guns. If they have bb guns, and skeet shooting, and archery, etc., they can have medals for darts.

4) Polo
There are already numerous horse riding sports in the Olympics, and they are mostly technical competitions. Imagine teams of polo players thundering around the stadium. That would be awesome. And polo is a real sport!

5) Chess
Chess is the most intense of any competition. This one is a stretch for the Olympics, but imagine awarding an Olympic gold medal to a chess champion. And it would allow more countries a chance to win--in this age of hi-tech training, the only chance most countries have to earn a medal is if they have athletes who have the money to train someplace like the U.S.  But chess can be learned and practiced anywhere. Anyone has a shot. That's what the Olympics are supposed to be about.

BOOKS

I am heading to the wilderness for a few weeks, or as long as I can handle living out of my Ford Explorer, and I need some books to read at night while I am hiding from bears.

I don't like e-readers of any sort.

So, should you have a book you think I should read, send it to me. I'll send it back when I'm done, or I will drop it off when I pass by your home in the northwestern U.S. I could take recommendations, but I probably won't have the presence of organizaion to go find a book or order it online. I know myself. I won't read it unless someone hands it to me and says "Read this." 

If you don't need your book back, I can instead send you another book I've read from someone else.

 

I WISH SOMEONE TOLD ME...

Things no one ever told me about what it is like to be a nurse:

Working in a hospital means 12 hour shifts, three days a week. But you will then spend another two days each week feeling hung over.

If you get a job caring for patients on a hospital floor, you won't need to understand anything you learned in chemistry. But learn why having too much TSH identifies hypothyroidism. It really is something you will probably need to understand, and be able to explain to your patients.

The better the hospital, the more shit the nurses themselves have to wipe off their patients' asses. The days of nurses' aides doing all the dirty work are over.

When you do cpr, there is no soundtrack playing like in "Grey's Anatomy." It isn't exciting. It is stressful and sad, partially because it usually doesn't work.

Pressure stockings are magic, for both you and your patients. You will eliminate hours of leg pain if you wear them. Just remember, if your patients are wearing them, take them off for an hour every day to take pressure off the skin. And when you peel them off your patient, cover your mouth and nose, because edema damages skin and it sheds off, and a lot of dry skin will fly through the air when you pull off those stockings. When you breathe in a chunk of that, you won't feel clean for days.

An LPN and an RN are different. LPNs usually work in nursing homes, and doctors' offices. Both places can be great jobs, but RNs make more money. RNs usually work in hospitals. The main difference between RNs and BSNs is...honestly, I'm still not sure. Don't worry about it, you can get a job with an RN associate's degree. Not everywhere, but a lot of good hospitals don't care. And the nursing care at the jankiest hospital should, and can, be exactly the same as the fanciest hospital, so take pride in your work and be nice to people, no matter where you work.

If you are nice to your patients, sometimes they will come back and bring you cake. And those hugs, while they are trying to balance some cake without dropping it as they hug you, have an energy that feels really good.

Never talk to geriatric patients like they are kids. Their mental processes may have declined, but they are still adults, and they understand more than they can communicate. Although it helps to slow down. Practice this with your friends: speak slowly, but not in a condescending way. It is really difficult to find the balance.

In job interviews, ask what your nurse-to-patient ratio should be. Then after the manager gives you an answer, ask again, what it is really. If you have more than 1:6, unless you are desperate for a job, it may be best to look for a job elsewhere. Hospital administrators will sacrifice providing nurses for patient care to save money, and then blame nurses when patients complain. FYI: Texas and Florida hospitals are notorious for giving nurses too many patients.

If your patient is in labor, give her an enema and then tell her to walk herself to the bathroom for a little while. It makes everything a lot more pleasant. The baby will not end up in the toilet.

Psych patients know they are crazy. You don't need to talk to them as if they don't know it. But patients with dementia or Alzheimer's Disease are not psych patients. It's quite different. For example, notice I separated "dementia" and "Alzheimer's Disease." Even those are not the same situation.

Family members of patients are far crazier than anyone in the psych ward.

If you learn how to read an ekg strip, you will make a lot more money than other hospital nurses. At least learn the three lethal rhythms.

There is no addiction stronger than an American's addiction to fast food. And those addicts somehow legitimize it by drinking a Diet Coke. Patients will be in a hospital bed, with heart failure, and they will still ask family members to bring them some fast food, with a Diet Coke. You will never get through to these people, so don't try. But document it as "Patient is non-compliant with diet." And let them see you documenting every hamburger wrapper and french fry container in the room. THAT will make them behave, a little.

Male nurses are usually expected to do more heavy lifting than female nurses. This is total bullshit. Equal pay means equal work. Correction: equal pay means equal effort. They have to at least try to help.

Two words: "travel nursing."

When you unplug a gastric feeding tube, bend the tube to kink it before you unplug it. Gas in the intestines often bubbles back up and you don't want one of those bubbles to pop out of the tube while you are leaning over it to attach a syringe or something. Gross.

Wounds can smell really bad. Like, so bad, you start to panic.

If you work on a hospital floor, you may be asked to hook up a bag of morphine to a patient's IV line, with the intention of killing the patient.

If you give someone a bed bath, you will probably use disposable cloths. But bring a tub of warm water and a washcloth and wash the patient's face and back with it, just because it feels good. And otherwise, the patient will tell everyone he/she never got bathed.

The respiratory therapists will be your favorite people in the hospital because they will suction the mucous out of your patients' trach tubes.

Narcotic pain medication is a wonderful tool to use, and we in America are lucky that we get to use it. A lot of countries do not. But a portion of your work day, as a nurse in America, will be spent giving those legalized narcotics to drug addicts who go to the E.R. with fabricated/exaggerated medical conditions just so they can get drugs for a few days. And those drug addicts are very selfish. They have no problem manipulating you for as long as it takes to get more drugs, which keeps you from taking care of your other patients who are actually in pain.

Be careful which coworkers you ask for help. Pay attention to the nurses who like sports. They comprehend the concept of "teamwork." And they won't talk shit about you behind your back. This is REASON NUMBER ONE that getting girls to play sports when they are young is beneficial.

If your charge nurse sucks, ignore him/her. If the doctor taking care of your patients sucks, quit immediately.

Alcohol detox is hideous. Learn the stages of alcohol withdrawl so you can chart them for your patients correctly. And never turn your back on a detox patient. You may end up with a plastic tooth.