The Accidental Chef Goes West

Not too much going on this week, still trying to recover from Saturday. This involved lots of sleep and a trip to the chiropractor. So you have several option here, look at the pics of a very few flowers I have stashed around my house, read the post or ignore the whole thing until I'm up to speed. But, if you've gotten this far...


Sometimes after the gold rush, my friend Peaches and I left Nantucket and flew off to California, San Francisco to be exact. We decided to look for jobs as domestics. This seemed romantic to us. I snagged a job as a live in domestic chef and she became a nanny for a big $$$ brewery family. We had one and a half days off a week and lived within blocks of each other in Pacific Heights. I was responsible for staff (butler, personal maid) breakfast and lunches ( add in various housekeepers, laundress etc.) and dinners for the family. Every morning I prepared a tray of 1/2 a grapefruit and coffee and sat by the bedside of Madame as we planned dinner. Then, off I went to shop and meet Peaches for a coffee. There was no budgeting, there were many, many dinner parties, out of season fruit and vegetables were preferred and my gi-nornomous kitchen had a incredible view of Alcatraz ... well you get the picture.

I was in HIGH clover. I was sent for cooking lessons with a very old, very wise, classical French chef Josephine Araldo, who took a liking to me and when there were seriously VIP dinner parties she'd sneak in the employee entrance and help me cook. I had a huge Vulcan stove and 2 wall ovens, marbled counters for pastry and a china filled pantry bigger than the house I live in now.

After dinner I was out that servants door in a flash, partying it up in the city by the bay, though I could often be found at 2:00am, back in the kitchen practicing pie dough. My nemesis then, my nemesis now.

If only I hadn't started dating the son...