Calm Before the Storm

I have a big cooking gig this coming weekend. By Friday, I will be a basket case, stressed out, exhausted, ready for the rush of Saturday. Right now is just the feeling of impending doom, which is normal. Tomorrow I make the production timeline, teleconference with my co-chef, test a recipe, etc. The fun begins. I am slightly relaxed, knowing the once that timeline is written, all will go well, as it always does. But until I have that timeline with every dish charted, I feel like I am a sitting duck on the Gulf Coast awaiting the hurricane.

Blogging might be sparse, or it might be heavy, as it can be a good way to think about something, anything else, but it will certainly be a little odd. That much I can guarantee.

So, if you are not in the mood for odd posts, stay clear for a week. Although, odd posts are pretty much what I have been giving you recently (yeah yeah, recently?), so you know what is in store.

We are settling into our new location. It is good. The weather is good, the neighbors great, the food scene, well, crap, but we are not far away from good eats, and since we aren't going out for great meals all that often these days, I can't say that I am missing anything from being out here (and when things settle down, we are frightfully close to the Napa Valley).

Appropriately enough, the feast of St. Lawrence is coming up. As you all know, St. Larry is the patron of cooks. I think I will be praying for his intercession frequently in the coming week.

I have been doing these cooking gigs to get it out of my system, which is sort of like doing dope to end the urges to do dope. It feeds itself. I find myself planning the next event as soon as the last dish is cleaned from the current event. To think that this is all part of my mad scheme to avoid opening up a restaurant. I think I will call it Pizzeria Mazentio. Har har har. Yes, the first record of pizza that I know of is in the Aeneid (the Trojans are told that they will be so hungry that they will eat their tables - in Italy they are served a peculiar dish that uses a flat bread as the table for the meat and vegetables, which they eat). Mazentius is a bastard, but I cannot help but think that his name sounds like a good name for a restaurant. It is one of those names that sounds good even in the thing it stands for stinks. Listeria is another one. It sounds like a fragrant flower. It could make a great bouquet with Chlamydia, which is also an entirely too lovely name for what it is.

Plumbago, which is a lovely flower, on the other hand, sounds like a disease. Perhaps they could exchange, sort of like a spy exchange. Two cars approach each other in a remote parking garage. They flash their lights. Agents of each side step out of the car and check the surroundings. Plumbago and chlamydia switch names. Everyone goes home and it all appears in a Freedom of Information Act file sometime in fifty years when the whole thing is declassified.

I need to get some sleep.