Roasted Bone Marrow anyone?

It feels so great to be back from the long weekend.  I hope you enjoyed all my guest bloggers while I was away.  Kasey was calling them Adam's Angels.  I would have to agree.  So from the bottom of my heart, thank you to Kasey, Laura, Ashley, Jules, and last but not least, my wife, Mrs. Throwing Quarters. 

It was a long weekend and I couldn't have blogged even if I wanted to.  I also want to thank you for all the great comments you have left for all my guest bloggers.  Thank you thank you and again, thank you.

So, now that I am back, what should I talk about?  Should I talk about mean customers?  No.  Been there done that.  Should I talk about the awesome Thanksgiving dinner we had this past Sunday?  Yes, but not right now.  I want to talk about food, but I want to share a more recent story.

When you go out to eat, what goes through your head as a parent?  Do you instantly think of what the kids menu is before you leave because you want to make sure your child eats?  What happens? 

It can be a point of anxiety for many parents.  For me?  I don't even care.  I go eat where I want to eat, and I know if I take Audrey along, she is going to eat something.  She isn't going to look for chicken fingers, Kraft macaroni, or pizza unless it's given as a choice.  She is a typical 7 year old.  She likes those things, I cannot fault her.  But as of late she has been asking for things I am not expecting her to ask for.  "Dad, can I try that mustard over there?" or "Dad, I'm not sure if I like it, but can I try that A-1 steak sauce?" or "Dad I don't like those sweet potatoes, but I tried them." 

She does this without me asking.  It literally warms my heart.  I have tried and tried and tried to give Audrey more than just the crap you can get on a kids menu at any restaurant chain.  She orders off it when available, but I don't fret when we go somewhere that doesn't have a published kids' menu.

Audrey and I watch Top Chef together all the time.  I am trying to show her that people get excited about food.  We watch Iron Chef.  We watch Diners, Drive In's, and Dives.  She gets excited about food. 

Well when I told her that my friends Josh and Carrie were coming in from out of town, we are all going to Bar Symon, she was more than excited. 

My friend Josh is a chef in the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Dining Room at the Pentagon, and a total food guy.  So when Michael Symon built a restaurant in our home town, we had to make sure he went while he was on leave. 

Audrey walked around school for weeks telling her classmates and teachers that SHE was going to Bar Symon and that she was excited.  She had no clue about the menu, but she was excited to go.  I knew the menu enough to know that there was something for her on it, but she is the big girl, she can pick what ever she wanted.

 [panorama shot from the table. You can see the Wifey, Audrey, and Josh's Wife Carrie]

So let's go through the progression last night.  Josh ordered the Roasted Bone Marrow for an appetizer.  His wife, Carrie, and I have read the Julie and Julia Project so we were curious about what roasted bone marrow was.  Josh had it many times in his line of work, but Carrie and I thought it was like a unicorn.  Something everyone always talked about but no one ever saw in the wild.  We have yet to see it on any menu at any restaurant we have ever been to.  Now I know there are some great French restaurants out there, but I have never seen this in the wild.  

To the table came the Bone Marrow [pictured to the left] served right in the bone.  Carrie dove in first, and I was just so excited to try it that I almost jumped out of my skin when Audrey said this:

"Dad, can I try it?"

What?  What does your kid eat again?  Oh that's right, Kraft Macaroni N Cheese off the mother fucking kids menu.

So with delight Josh scooped up some roasted bone marrow onto the toast it was served with and just watched, with my mouth gaping open.  What she said next I almost peed my pants.

"Wow, Dad, I like this, can I have more?"

What?  Yeah you have trouble getting your kid to eat chicken fingers at Friday's, my child eats roasted bone marrow!  You know the stuff from INSIDE the bones of a cow!  She eats that! And she asked for more!

So the waiter, named Steve, yeah he was that good I remembered his name, came back to take dinner orders and Audrey decided to try something I was equally impressed with.  Goat Cheese Mac N Cheese.  She knew it was not Kraft, but then again there is comfort in knowing your pasta is about to be smothered with cheese. 

I looked around.  There were other parents there with their children, all eating off the non published kids' menu.  Buttered noodles, chicken fingers, and who knows what else was on there.  Audrey was ordering off the big kids menu and loving it.  Score one for my daughter!  Even the wife was impressed!

Later on in the night I let Audrey's mom know what she ate and she sent back, Eww, that sounds gross. 

I just sighed in frustration and why doesn't anyone else think that this is the coolest thing in the world?!

So I ordered a braised pork shank, because let's face it, pigs are tasty.  That is also pictured.  The wife got the burger.  But Audrey kept tasting everything.  She tried the braised pork shank, the goat cheese mac n cheese [which she loved btw], and even the Bar Symon burger.  Along with the Bacon and Apple Bread Pudding, Brown Butter Whipped Potatoes, and many many other great things! 

For dessert we tried every dessert they had.  It was just a magical night all around.  Good brews, good eats, and good conversation.

It's always nice to talk to someone about Cleveland when they are away from Cleveland.  You can see a bigger picture of Cleveland and not the narrow-minded views of the residents.  The can't see the forest from the trees I believe is the analogy.  Cleveland, as it turns out, has become a travel spot for foodies.  I have read about this in the times, but I have yet to have it confirmed by someone outside Cleveland that I actually knew.

Anyway, our tour of Cleveland Food resumes tonight as Josh, Carrie, and the Wife head down to the Greenhouse Tavern for Blog it Forward Happy hour.  If you don't have anything to do, get down there.  There is more info about it here. 

The 'Crisis'

I have been trying to write this blog all day. I cannot seem to get it right. I have been trying to prove that the economic situation is being perpetuated by the media. I went into these long diatribes about how the media starts every news cast with horrible news. It's like it has become the apocolypse. I went back and got transcripts of every single speech Obama has made since he became the Democratic nominee to prove that Obama, the savior of America, is at the top of the negative food chain. I went back and compared our situation right now to the Great Depression. All the while, I wasn't proving a thing. I was just another part of the problem I was trying to eliminate.

So as I went back to re-read what I had written, I hit ctrl+a and hit delete. I started over.

We all watch the news, we all listen to Obama [supporters and non-supporters alike], and most of us have a job, yet all we hear in the media is what is going wrong. The obituary of our economy plays everyday on the news at 6pm.

The 'crisis' is fear. The media is out to scare us. The President is out to scare us. We are out to scare us.

Everday the news starts with a bad news story about the economic crisis. The stock market lost XYZ points today. The recession creeps closer to the "brink of the abyss of depression" as Chris Matthews tells us. CNN told me today that the economic outlooks is "abysmal".

So how do Americans feel? They feel scared. Of course they would. The President said the journey is going to be "long and hard". He describes it like it's John Holmes and we are the ungreased assholes [pornographic I know, but again I don't care]. If I was sitting at home and my savings was drying up, my 401k was losing value, and my company was going out of business, I would be scared too. There have been so many casualties of this economic 'war' that every person with a job is on the cutting block, or so they feel.

Yesterday I sat in a large conference with the leaders of my company. They were announcing our 4th quarter results and setting the ground work for 2009. Where have we been? Where are we going? Everyone wanted to know what our outlook was for 2009, considering the crisis. The area president was there, the company COO was there. They brought out the big guns. Everyone in the room was nervous. We had just spend a ton of cash on aquiring another company. Our 4th quarter results were not to the expectations of Wall Street anaylists, what is going to happen with our company?

As the conference rolled on we heard from our finance guys. We heard from our network guys. We heard from our marketing guys. We heard from our advanced data guys. With every presenter my excitement grew. It was like the slow creep of the roller coaster up the first hill. With every foot closer to the top, the adrenaline in your blood stream gets more and more potent. After all the presenters were up, our COO took the stage for his speech.

His tone was not akin to a funeral. It was quite the opposite.

He looked at all of his employees and addressed the economic crisis. He gave us a history. He told us a story of how he got into the cellular business. It was 1973. He just moved from the state of Arkansas to New York to start a business where people could be mobile, yet still talk on the phone. He was literally selling air to companies. At the time the Oil Crisis of 1973 was in full swing. Inflation was rampant, unemployement was in the double digits, and people were literally fighting at the gas pumps. The crisis we have on our hands now is not as bad as it was back then, yet we are gathering canned food for our bomb shelters.

As his speech continued he gave us an example of his sales process back then. He said he had to figure out what his client needed. He needed to find a reason why he couldn't live without my product. At this point mobile phones were an unnecessary convienience, and a cumbersome suitcase. They were not popular, they were barely reliable, but he was able to leverage the customer's needs, with the benfits of his product. He had to show that by buying his product, they would get a return on their investment in time saved and convenience.

A lot has changed in my industry, but they are exactly the same as they were in 1973. The only thing that has changed since is the wide use of cell phones and the ease in which customers will part with their money to buy a cellular phone.

Many businesses would say that people aren't buying. I would say that those businesses haven't given the consumer a reason to spend money. The media would say that consumer spending has fallen off because of the economic crisis. I would say consumer spending has fallen off because the businesses haven't done a good job at adapting to the economic outlook.

I am not naive enough to think that there is not a problem. But my COO said something that rings true.

Many companies are slashing prices to attract customers, and they are in fact ruining their industries. Our company sells a better product than our competition and we charge more for it. Sure we have not grown our customers to the analysts expectations, but we out sold our competition. We "kept selling and we didn't slash the prices and ruin our industry." We went back to the ROI [return on investment] selling. During the height of the cell phone boom in the late 90's, people would line up outside the stores to get a cell phone. Now that people are holding onto their money like a life raft and we have to assure people that by purchasing our products, they are not letting go of the life raft and wrapping their arms around a cinder block. Cell phones aren't a luxury anymore, they are a necessity. How do we sell to a customer that just lost their job and are depending on unemployment until they get a new job? How do we sell to a family who has 2 kids in college and their investments are losing value, and their income isn't going up?

"We need to step our game up."

This is not a time for us to lick our wounds and feel sorry for ourself. The mantra that my COO was touting from his soap box rings true for the rest of America. We need to step our game up! We need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and start holding ourselves accountable.

Right now retails sales is tough. But right now, nothing is easy. Instead of letting the economy be an excuse for poor results, I must make an investment in myself. I must push forward and better my skills. I have to polish myself like a stainless steel kitchen. Poor economy is not a reason to sit at home and hunker down. It is a time where the strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker. I have to polish my presentation skills like I am a chef plating a dish. I have to look at my subjects differently like I am a photographer looking for the perfect shot. I am not cooking, I am not taking a picture, but I am trying to get you to part with your money and make an investment in me.

If you are among the weak, you will fail unless you try and do something different. You don't win Top Chef with a deviled egg.

There is a paper factory in Wisconson that closed down. There was 500 employees out of work. What did they do? Went back to school to learn a new trade. If Obama gets his way, the construction industry is in for a big boom, so most of those 500 employees are learning to weld and drive trucks. These employees are not sulking with a woe is me attitude, like the news media wants us to. They are proactively seeking a new skill.

What America needs is a pep talk. Obama has inspired us all with his vision of hope, but he has not inspired anyone to act. My COO inspired me to act. He has inspired me to take off the practice jersey and put on my varsity letters.

The road ahead is not going to be easy. This is a time to sink or swim. I have signed up for my swimming lessons. Have you?