Now Playing: Curtis Mayfield--"Wild and Free"
Fluffy has taken to cutting me early on Mondays and Wednesdays so as to avoid overtime pay, which I perfectly understand, as the place has to make a profit. This past Wednesday, it was a positive blessing. Fluffy, you see, had chanced upon Hell's Kitchen, the show where the probably intensely-bullied-at-school Gordon Ramsay psychologically pulverizes people into puddles while they train as chefs in his kitchen so that they, too--one of them, anyway; the "lucky" one--can hock overpriced Tuscan or Provencal delicacies to vapid, bejeweled gluttons who should consider thamselves lucky to have enough to eat, let alone enough to pay for it. Fluffy gushed on and on about the "industry" and--obliquely--about the necessity of behaving in a mentally ill fashion therein to attain success. For the rest fo the day, she played a broader role of asshat than was the norm, turning her micromanagement on yours truly. The irritation is certainly nothing new, but it's really the inconsistency I can't stand. I've had thoroughly loathsome bosses before, but none of them ever turned that way just because they'd seen someone doing it on a goddamn TV show. It was a joy, then, to leave that day, and I tried, in the unexpectedly mild and pleasant afternoon, to protect myself against dark thoughts. These latter frequently feature in my life, but they're more honestly in the nature of mental exercises than anything else, to see what my brain's capable of doing. One thing I definitely don't want to do is want someone to have a nervous breakdown.
Fortunately, I'd planned to visit the Farmer's Market in Kerrytown to see what I could pick up for a dish I'm planning (basically a salad version of mushroom and barley soup), and stopped at the Tantre Farms stand. I'd seen it before on Saturday mornings, when I usually go to the Market (though rarely buying anything except the odd tomato or potato), but had never actually stopped there. The guy behind the table was good with the marketing, to be sure (assuming I was a chef because of the pants which I was too lazy to change and calling out across the walkway), and I was intrigued by some of the offerings, but they were sold out of asparagus, which was what I really needed. He asked, because of the pants, if I was shopping for a restaurant. It would have been nice to oblige him, buit I had to explain that though my position roughly correlated to that of sous-chef in (let's face it) a dinner restaurant, I had no purchasing authority. He must have been taken aback as I subsequently took over the ensuing conversation regarding the need for local restaurants to patronize local farmers and producers with fervent agreement and my equally vital need to shove Fluffy in the dishwasher (I wish I'd actually said that now). Our discussion did have the result of partially restoring my spirits and resolving me to visit the Tantre stand again and actually buy something. It shouldn't be too hard to find a recipe for garlic scape, I guess.