Southern Hospitality

Yesterday I was sitting on my back deck after work enjoying a book, when my neighbor came out on his deck. He's got all white hair, with a great droopy dog 'stache to boot. He also loves to grill, which is usually when we will have our conversations. His grill is sweet too, a huge stainless steel set up, at least 6 ft long, and he is always grilling things that he apparently just hunted (he had quail on there a week ago.)

I put my book down for a moment and went inside to grab a glass of water, and when I came back he was standing there with something wrapped in tinfoil. When he saw me, he threw it across the deck my way.

"Here's a little tri tip I've been slow cooking, and chicken with my homemade rub. Let me know what you think, when I open my restaurant I'll be serving this."

Now, before I give you my response, I have mention that the book I'm reading is "To Kill a Mockingbird." It's an American classic, and one of my all-time favorites that I recently picked up to re-read. Atticus Finch is the coolest guy around, and reading about how he talks to his kids about what they should and should not be doing to ol' Boo Radley always gets me.

So I'm deep into the book when my neighbor throws his food at me, and for some reason (I don't really know why) I respond like I'm a born and raised Southerner.

"That's mighty fine of you sir, I 'preciate it very much. I'm always hankering for some good bbq, I'm-a head inside and eat this right now."

I turned around and walked into the house with my face absolutely beet red with embarrassment. Why in the sam hell did reading a book based in Alabama get me talking southern all of a sudden?

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the American Idol After Party

While in-between jobs about 5 years ago, and needing money; I started catering from time to time for a little bit of cash. What I learned though, is while the cash is sh*tty, the stories that I come away from with are worth way more than the check I get. I've had a chance to see how the famous and wealthy party, which is usually over-the-top lavishness. Now that I have a full time job though, I try to avoid the catering whenever possible. Except for last night, when I was asked to work the American Idol After party.

The after party was in a tent on top of a parking lot attached to the Nokia Center in downtown L.A., which is where the finale was held. Now, I know when I say "tent" you think of a standard party tent or canopy you might see outside for a tailgate party. This tent however, was big enough to hold 2,000 guests, and over 200 catering, security, and event staff. It also had two 60 foot TV screens inside of it, (showing FOX all night), a DJ tower, two bars, 4 buffet stations (yours truly was running food out for buffet station #1), a dessert station, Go-Go dancers, and fog machines. It also had wall-to-wall carpeting, and plush couches and chairs, 6 photo booths, and traveling photographers.

In the interest of being succinct, I'll try and keep my observations short, and to the point:

• The crowd there took everything. And by 'take' i really mean stole. They took American Idol pillows, wrappers, cups...shoot, I saw one lady even loading her purse with American Idol cookies into her purse before she left.

• American Idol contestants are a big deal...and I know none of them. There was a bunch of them there, signing autographs and taking pictures with the fans. I asked all my fellow caterers "who is that?" and not one of us knew any of these people. What I do know is that they all seemed to try really hard to look like celebrities.

• Ke$ha rocks. Unfortunately, she wasn't there, but when the DJ put on "Don't Stop" everybody in the party got into it. And I mean everybody: the teenage girls, boys, their mom's. Dad's there escorting their kids were bumping up and down. Hell,I even saw the security guards with their dark suits and earpieces bobbing along to the music. And yes, I'll admit it- I caught myself singing along.

• Paula Abdul is the smallest person alive. She was also a walking petri dish last night. She came to the afterparty, and seemed to be the one that everyone wanted to meet. I didn't realize who it was, I just saw a crowd surrounding her taking pictures, videos and waiting their turns to meet her. When she made her way over to my station, I saw that it was Paula, still in her little pink dress and heels from the show. She hugged everybody. She also can't weigh more than 95 lbs, which only leads me to believe how small all the other celebs are on the show, because she certainly doesn't look that tiny next to Seacrest and the crew.

And last but not least, I had the same experience at this event that I've had at every other one I've catered. When you are part of the wait-staff, then you might as well be invisible as far as the guests are concerned. They won't look at you or acknowledge you unless it's to hand you an empty plate, or piece of trash.

Harvest Time!

The beets bulbs are starting to show above the soil, and from the looks of things it was time to 'harvest' one or two of them to see how they were tasting. I actually got excited to see how they were going to turn out. Before I picked them out, I wanted to find some way to cook the beet greens, because I've read that they're really high in vitamins, and easy to incorporate into a meal. So I found a recipe for a potato and green recipe:

Greens and Potato Gratin

The beets were smaller than I hoped when I pulled them out of the dirt. They came right out though, without many roots growing from the bulb. Then I trimmed off several of the greens on the other plants, because the recipe called for 2 1/2 lbs of greens. I still have 5 others planted, so I'll leave them in the soil and hopefully they will continue to grow to a respectable size.



The recipe called for a 1/4 cup of parsley...



I chopped off the greens, then wrapped the bulbs in tinfoil, and baked them with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. They were extremely light tasting and delicious. As you can see, by the time they cooked though there wasn't much to them.



I blanched the greens, and then cooked them into a potato au gratin casserole. It was really delicious! Lots of cheese, so probably not a diet food, but definitely a hearty meal. And although it sounds like a cliche at this point, there is nothing better than eating food that you've grown yourself.

Resume Tips

I’ve recruited for almost ten years now (dear god I’m getting old…) and over the past year of reading more resumes than ever before, I thought it might be good to try my own hand at writing a quick help guide for people that are trying to get responses on their resumes and applications. Here’s my advice:

• Make sure your title matches the description of the position that you’re applying for. Now, I’m not telling you to lie about what your title was at the company, but if you’re applying for a “Technical Analyst” position, and you are a “Desktop Analyst” then do yourself a favor, and change the title to Technical Analyst, you’re not lying and it will help your cause. Same with “Sales Executive” and “Account Executive” etc.

• Your cover letter should only be used to answer any questions that will be addressed instantly from your resume. For example, if you’re applying for a job out of state, explain why/how you’re going to get there (although I’m currently living in NY, I have family in Los Angeles and a place to stay once I arrive.) If you’re applying for a job that isn’t even close to what’s on your resume, at least acknowledge it in the cover letter (Although I don’t have experience as a food scientist, etc etc.) If nothing else, you might at least get a second look at your resume.

• Find out the name of the person handling the hiring. While most companies don’t publicize who is the person quarterbacking the recruiting, you can usually call the main number and get transferred to someone’s voicemail, and hence, have a name to address when you email. (LinkedIn has made this even easier.) I almost always respond to someone if their email starts “Dear Mitch” vs. “To whom it may concern,” Which leads me to next point…

• Whenever possible, email someone directly with your resume, and send your resume as a word attachment vs. pasting it in the body of the email.

• Nothing can be more frustrating for a candidate than if you actually get a response, but find yourself in a vicious game of phone tag with the recruiter. If this is the case, it always helps to leave specific times that you can be available to speak. A lot of Recruiters will just add you to their calendar at the time you tell them. Also, if contacted, respond in kind. If someone calls you, call them back. If someone emails you, then email them a response.

• Never respond to an inquiry on your resume from a blackberry or iphone. It doesn’t look professional to respond to an inquiry with a quick statement from your phone. I hate it if I send a professional inquiry, and get an instant response that looks like “sounds great!” –sent from my iphone. It’s just a turnoff for me.

• No smiley faces in any emails or correspondence (but you knew that…)

Now, I can’t promise that you’ll get the job or anything like that, all I know is that there are things that compel me to call a candidate, and there are things that turn me off from calling a candidate. Let me know what you think.

Farming - an update

Everything is starting to fill in nicely right now, and when the morning sun hits the back'yard' at our house it's always fun to see how our veggies have grown and are starting to look like real plants. The beets greens are filling in, and you can actually see the start of the beet root growing in the soil. I'm hoping that they continue to grow into something that I'd be able to roast with a lil' salt and pepper and then add to a salad. We also have 5 heirloom tomato plants growing in the same bin, they look huge already and hopefully will continue to grow. I've gotten several snow peas from the vines growing.


In fact, one of my favorite pastimes now is roaming around my various pots and plants and just stuffing this food into my face as I inspect things. A little lettuce here, maybe a snowpea there. Hell, I even plucked a flower off of my pumpkin plant and ate that...not sure if it's edible, but I'm not dead yet, so it should be fine...right?

I also have had several salads from my red leaf lettuce plant. It's tasty, but literally is growing faster than I can eat the leaves from it. Here's one of the salads:



I've started a compost bin. Compost is a funny thing, because every gardener talks about how important it is, and thus I'm on board with making my own. What they don't tell you is how your self awareness will go right out the window when making your own compost. Let me explain: picture exactly what compost is: you basically have rotting food turn into soil. Maybe there's a little bit of smell, some fruit flies, ants.

Does this bother me that it's next my bedroom window? Not in the slightest.

Am I further bothered by the fact that I have the bin up against my neighbors wall, hence they're probably getting an interesting whiff every now and then? Nope, and nope. It's all about the soil, baby.

Turtle Farming

I've always had an interest in growing things, since my days of working at the Geneva Greenhouse through high school, so I recently signed up for an 'Urban Farming' class at a place called Silverlake Farms here in LA. The class was an intro to growing vegetables, and they went over the basics of what we needed to do to start our own veggie farm. One thing about living in a city like this, is that no matter what your hobby, you're going to find a lot of interesting people that are involved in the same type of thing. Case in point, was the couple that ran SilverLake Farms. They are an awesome couple, Tara and Beat (pronounced Bay-ot) (In typical Mitch-fashion, I thought his name was Bear, which is what I called him the entire class.) Good ol' Bear was walking around the Franklin Hills community garden while we were learning about soil, and I glanced over to him as he was doing a little weeding. Apparently weeding involves eating, because he started pounding down all the flowers that were growing around the weeds like he was at a buffet. I started busting out laughing, elbowing Mike at the same time to take a look.

At the end of class, Tara gave us a tour of the garden, and she gave us a sample of a celery plant that she was growing. No joke, it was the best celery I ever tasted, I ate it all the way down to the leaves. We also sampled some Asparagus that was growing right out of the ground, I ate the entire thing it was so good. Right when I finished it, Tara mentioned to me "Mitch, be careful, I knocked a slug off of the bottom part of that piece I gave you." Uhhhh....thanks for the heads up Tara.

The class gave us a starter set of seeds, and we had our choice of what vegetables to pick. We opted for beets, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, romaine lettuce, eggplant, summer squash, and parsley.



This would compliment well our grapevine that is growing like crazy, as well as an avocado tree that I'm growing from a pit I stuck in the ground, and a pumpkin vine that is growing from seeds I stuck in a pot after Halloween.





I had such a good time that I emailed Tara letting her know that if she needs any volunteer help at their community garden, I'd be happy to help. Here was her response:

"I would like to take you up on your offer.  Are you available Tuesday 16th to help my husband install a small irrigation system at the Silverlake Community Church?  ....I'm hoping you can help.  It's a volunteer job....We could also use an extra pair of hands on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week...  My husband has to install an irrigation system for a job in Studio City.  He could definitely use some help."

Soooo, to make a long story short, I took a 1/2 day off of work to see what this is all about. Turns out volunteering=digging a ditch for 4 hours in the Valley in order to put some piping in. This experience has temporarily ended my volunteer activities for the time being.

But back to the farm....

I had seeds, but no where to plant them. So I called a guy who builds custom planter boxes. English is his second language, here's how our conversation went:

Me: "You were recommended to me as someone who could build a planter box for me."
him: "yes, yes."
Me: "I'd like a box that's 4 ft long, 2 ft wide, and 2 ft deep."
him: ...
Me: "hello?"
Him: "Wait wait, give to me again."
Me: "4x2x2, etc etc."
Him: "..." "..."
Him: "$40"
Me: "Tell you what, I'll give you $80 if you can give me that box, two smaller ones, and deliver it to me."
Him: "......"
Him: "$90"
Me: "Oh yeah, how about $85?"
Him: "...." "Haaaahaaaahaa"
Me: "OK ok, you win, $90 it is."

So we got the boxes, they delivered them from the Valley down to our house, and these things were freakin' huge. So the next dilemna was to find the dirt necessary to fill this box, for our vegetables. Kelly came up with the idea that people give soil away on Craigslist, and lo and behold; we found 'Ed' a gentleman in Culver City who was getting rid of all of the soil at his house We emailed for me to come pick some up. But before he could give it to me, he first wanted to learn what I was going to do with it. Like, he wanted to screen me first to see if I was going to put his soil to good use. When I told him I wanted to grow vegetables, it seemed to pass his litmus test. I went to pick up the dirt with two garbage cans, he helped me fill them up and lift them into the car, and they filled the box half full. So I drove back again on Saturday, and got two more garbage cans of dirt, and finally had enough soil for our seedlings to go in. Ed and I became such buddies that he also dug up two of his red leaf lettuce plants for me to plant, and about 1/2 dozen radishes. Nice guy.



I'm happy to say that the soil is in, the seedlings are planted, and I'm planning on having a bumper crop soon, followed by a raging party where we get to eat all of our produce. Stay tuned.

Slap Happy

Slap Happy is defined in the Urban Dictionary as: "term used to describe one's mood when sleep deprived or tired. Signs of being 'slap happy' include inane rambling, strange remarks, odd random behavior (such as giving oneself a wedgie), uncontrollable laughter at one's own jokes."

First of all, urbandictionary.com is the greatest source for real world definitions. I highly recommend it. Second of all 'slap happy' is a perfect explanation for the customer service chat I had with my financial institution as I was trying to work out my taxes this year. See below:


Ramona Hinrichs: For your tax filing you only need your total 2009 contributions not in which year they were made

Me: Great, thanks. I appreciate the assistance.

Ramona Hinrichs: Your are welcome. What other questions do you have for me today?

Me: none, you're awesome! Have a good one and hopefully you don't need to talk to too many more dumb dumb's like me.

Ramona Hinrichs: Oh no, not dumb at all. Thank you so much for your business. We appreciate you choosing Fidelity. I hope you have a great day!