Food in Life - A Blog by Jen: I added extra bacon

I am pretty sure you know where I work and what I do....what I don't think you know is that I am lucky to have a freaking awesome culinary staff at my fingertips. I am not just talking simply good cooks or creative chefs...which they are both. But they are also nice.

Seriously nice.

As in, when you walk in to the kitchen you don't get berated by an jerk in a chef coat & toque until you cry. Or when you ask for a custom menu, you actually get one with no wanking, bitching, complaining or up charging just because the menu is "custom". Or when I get a last minute request for a cake for the next day from a clueless client, the pastry chef looks pained, but then turns around and whips up a beauty in the midst of a day that we are serving 800 people at the resort. It is a "can do" and "like to do" attitude I can totally live with and appreciate so much.

Don't get me wrong, I have some friends out there that have been chefs that have been awesome to work with and very talented...but there are always one or two who are jackasses that spoil the vibe and need to just move on. And fortunately for me and the rest of the staff, those people are now gone. :)

I have wanted to make this recipe since it was requested and printed in the LA times in April 2009 as it appeals to me in so many ways. My mouth truly waters when I think of it and just now with a full belly I can still smile and taste it and want seconds. But I am cool with leftovers for lunch.

Bacon and Egg Risotto (yeah, you read right!) Adapted from Chef Jamie West, Executive Chef at Ojai Valley Inn & Spa Serves 2 1 Large Shallot, chopped 1 T Butter

2 Cloves Smoked Garlic (Ojai Farmers Market), chopped 5 Strips Thick Cut Bacon (applewood smoked is preferred), chopped in 1/4 inch dice 3/4 C Arborio Rice 3 C Chicken Stock, heated 3 T Chopped Chives 1/4 C Grated Parmesan Reggiano Cheese 2 Egg Yolks (from really fresh eggs)

Saute the shallot in butter until soft, add bacon and saute 5 minutes. Add rice and stir until bacon is slightly crisped and rice is toasty. Add garlic and stir a few minutes.

Start adding stock/broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring frequently while it is simmering (not boiling). Cook until rice is creamy and tender, you may have some stock/broth leftover. Test for salt and season if needed with salt & pepper. Add in chopped chives and grated Parmesan.

Divide in to 2 portions, making a well in the center. Drop in egg yolk and take a picture if you want.

Then stir it all together, dig in and lick the bowl if you wish. I wouldn't blame you if you did.

And yes, the original recipe called for 5 strips of bacon to serve 4....I halved everything in the recipe except that because I have an addiction. So sue me, I'll eat raw veggies again tomorrow before I have to squeeze my butt in a bathing suit this weekend. It was worth it.

Printed by permission. Visit Jen's blog @ http://foodinlife.blogspot.com/

Food in Life - A Blog by Jen: Coming up for air....

Between the beginning of the month to today I have had 12 separate groups and weddings to take care of at work.....I broke up with my boyfriend and he moved out of my house, underwent multiple other day to day stresses that stretched me to the breaking point. I've cried several time....sometimes at length...by myself and on others shoulders. I have not cooked for weeks on end with the exception of sporadic mad dash thrown together meals only fit to satiate my hunger. I have obviously not blogged for some time and I miss both like crazy.

But I have made it.

And now I am rising to the surface....ready to take in a deep breath....and move on.

One thing I have found in the past few weeks is that cooking for one person just sucks. There are very few recipes designed to fit one person, so I end up making more than I need and eating for leftovers. The problem is that I have been so busy that there has been no time to go to the store so I am making do with whatever I have handy and praying that it turns out halfway decent.

I have also been cleaning out the fridge & freezer, getting rid of the stuff I don't use, rotating frozen goods in the freezer to make room for new things. Tonight was the first time I made something worth sharing with you...so here it is. :) Bear in mind that this was made with random goodies from my fridge so there is room for substitutions should you feel the need.

Poulet Provencal

4 Chicken Thighs, trimmed

1 pint Cherry Tomatoes, halved

2 Shallots, medium dice

2 Cloves Garlic, sliced thin

1/2 Cup Green Olives, sliced in 1/4

2 T Olive Oil

1 tsp Fennel Seed

1 T Herbs d' Provence

Saute shallots in a sauce pan in olive oil until soft, add tomatoes, garlic & olives. Saute until tomatoes let out their juices. Add in chicken and spices with a little salt and pepper, cover and simmer until chicken is tender and falls apart. Adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve over pasta with a little Parmesan cheese.

I've missed me....welcome back. :)

Printed by permission. Visit Jen's blog @ http://foodinlife.blogspot.com/

The Dish - A critic's review of Enoteca Toscana

Jun 2010 - Took my wife for lunch at Enoteca Toscana in Camarillo. She had been there once before with a group function. I had never visited the location but received a discount card at the Casa Pacifica Wine & Food Festival. I was very excited to have lunch there. I just don't think they were as excited. The server, also acting as host, was not very friendly nor did he make us feel comfortable. Was it because he was pre-occupied with one other table for lunch? I don't think so. It was almost an imposition.

I don't want you to think I'm a snob, but I just want someone to remember what customer service is all about. Make me feel welcome. The only reason why I opted to visit the place was because of the discount special. So now that you have me in the building, try to keep me please. While I finished a telephone call in the car, my wife waited for an acknowledgment from the "guy" - so she could hopefully get a table. I joined her 5-10 minutes later.

We ordered panini sandwiches and waters fore both of us. The sandwiches come with a nice side dish, but since we were using the "special discount" we received - there were no side dishes included. That seemed a bit unfortunate. Thus, we ordered a small beet salad to accompany our paninis.

Our waters were delivered and when we both took a sip of them, the taste was extremely awful. I remember as a child the times when I would drink from a garden hose on a hot day. Although the water was cold, the taste and smell from the garden hose was definitely a turn-off. I explained to the "guy" our displeasure and asked what might be the problem and he said the water is just fine. I than suggested a bottle of water as a substitute and perhaps he should check out the water issues he has at the restaurant. We received our water, the beet salad and the panini sandwiches.

I have to admit - other than the original waters, everything we consumed was fantastic. The food had great taste. We finished our meal and requested the check and sure enough - the "guy" had the audacity to charge us $5 for the bottle of water. I complained and he replied that his waters were just fine. I guess he sensed my displeasure and he than offered to remove the $5 charge with a little annoyance. Would I return to the restaurant? Not sure. I liked the food, but not the service, the attitude or the waters.

Date Night - A Blog by Mari: Bring Chocolate Next Time. At Least I Can Eat *That*

I went on a date last night with two guys at once. The date was meant for one man, but his pal was in town, yada yada yada, long story short that I’ll manage to make long: he asked if it was okay to bring John. I shrugged and said, “The more the merrier.”

It was a blind date. Most of my dates are blind; I’ll explain that later. I saw them, we hugged, we had good conversation. Then, mid convo, John said, “And there was this huge…”

I couldn’t resist the pause.

“That’s what she said,” I said.

My date blinked at me.

John laughed.

My date is a transplant from Valencia via Oregon, Hawaii, and Costa Rica. He works as a waiter while he’s putting himself through school for photography.

John is in California to work for an organization that brings food to different events. Most of the events are non-profit such as the event he was managing on this trip. He and his crew are traveling with cyclists who are doing an AIDS bike-a-thon from San Francisco to San Diego, stopping along the way, and feeding the cyclists. When the trip ends next week, he returns to Northern California to wait for fire season. If there are fires, he and his crew travel to the hot spots and feed fire fighters. After this, he’ll be in Boston feeding volunteers at the Susan G. Komen organization.

John has a scar over his right eye about 1 inch long. It looks like a fingernail moon. He’s skinny. Good, strong arms. Glasses. Plaid shirt. Brainy and funny. He laughed at my jokes about human trafficking. And when I told him he could get raped in the trailer he sleeps in, he asked me to go into further detail. So I started singing “Behind Closed Doors” by Johnny Paycheck.

Do I have to say the words? I was more into John than I was into my date.

Even better? The scar over his eye was the result of a recent camping trip, when a tent pole flew out of a zipped pouch and hit him in the face.

Oh, how we laughed. Dirty humor: check!

After this they asked me to take them to a dive bar, so I brought them to the Big Dog: The Star Lounge. The only place on Main St. that happily smells like puke.

I didn’t intend on drinking that night, but John bought me a PBR long boy, then made me split his Jaeger bomb. My date doesn’t *have* to buy me a drink–I don’t believe in the conventional rules of dating all the time, but I know that John probably shouldn’t have been the one who *did* buy my drink.

After the game, we rotated over to The Dume Room, a cute little joint that had really bad stand up comedy. Sweet-nerdy John kept looking at me and smiling. I smiled back. Curses.

I have never experienced anything like it. I could have slipped him my phone number, but that seems rather classless to me. And, as KME reminded me last night, “John is only in town for a few days. What would it have mattered anyway?”

I liked my date as a human being because he had a good heart, but I wasn’t attracted to him. Maybe it was the cigarettes, or the fact that he admitted he’s not good at saving money; therefore, there will not be a date #2.

It’s true. Romances *can* be very fleeting… they can last years, months, days, a night… even a few minutes. You pass someone on the bus and have a short conversation, and then they say, “Here’s my stop.” And you never see them again. It happened to Redford.

…When Robert Redford was young, in his teens, he used to ride the New York subway to and from work. One night, he took a different route, and on that route he saw a girl who wasn’t particularly pretty, but there was something about her that he thought beautiful. Her stop came, she hopped off, and he said he kicked himself for not saying anything to her. He decided, that next day, that he would take this strange route again with hopes of seeing her. He took that route for an entire month and never saw her again. What happened? Maybe it was her only night in the city? Maybe it was an odd route for her, too?

Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese had a One-night-romance in the Terminator–minus the hard-core hot piston injection Kyle gave Sarah in that sleazy hotel room, when he buried his seed and left her a single mom, it was two people given the opportunity to dive below the surface for a brief wink in the expanse of life. None of the weird quirks or bad habits could come to the surface because Kyle was killed in a pipe-bomb explosion… before Sarah had to walk in on him sniffing his dirty underwear to see if it was clean enough for a second go because he was too lazy to do laundry.

At the end of the evening, I said goodbye to both men, hugged each goodnight, and walked the 1 block to my apartment. As for John, I probably won’t see him again. He will be the subway girl to my Redford. He will be the Kyle to my Sarah. And as for my date, I didn’t feel the click-click-click of all the chambers falling into place. I happily move along.

Printed by permission. Visit Mari's blog at http://www.mari-go-round.com/

Date Night - A Blog by Mari: We Have Arrived at your Deathtination

Last night, I went on a date. We met in Thousand Oaks, and then went to dinner. We sat at a park and he pushed me on the swings. We climbed around on pull-up bars. I made a necklace out of flowers and he put it on his rear view mirror. Everything was kinda great.

At dinner, he stared at me. Uncomfortable.

After dinner, I felt nauseated and told him I might have to go home and puke. How about this: instead of saying, “maybe we should take it easy, then,” he took me on this weird ride up into the mountains and drove like an Andretti. When I asked him to slow down, he continued to lay heavy on the gas pedal.

We were in Calabasas, and on a road worse than Mulholland. Twisty, canyon-ish, and dangerous. I can be quite the crazy driver, but I was about to hand the torch to this guy. It was 10pm and the fog was thick, wrapped around the roads and hills, his headlights were reflecting back into us. I was about to spray California rolls and miso soup on his dash.

I kept saying, “Slow down, dude.. slow it down.”

I’m known for being soft spoken.

He wasn’t listening or he wasn’t hearing me. I kept trying variations of “slow down.”

Then, a car was in front of us and my date was, as DS would say, “Not even buying the guy a drink before fucking him in the ass.”

At this point, my stomach rolling, the car was up on two wheels like some Popeye cartoon, my date was fucking someone else before my eyes, and I yelled, “SLOW DOWN! You’re FREAKING ME OUT, dude!”

He said, “Well, he’s going slow.”

I replied, “Yes, because it’s foggy. He can’t see two feet in front of him! You’re probably scaring him to death!”

Finally, the old man in the car pulled to the side of the road and my date sped around–continuing his fast pace to whatever the hell romantic deathtination he had planned. At this point, I figured he might be taking me up here to kill me, or to make out. I didn’t want to kiss, I wanted to fist fight; I wanted to punch him so hard in the lip, like a boxer, that he stumbled from the force of it.

My only thoughts on the driving are that he was trying to show me how much of a bad ass he could be. We were elevated high enough to be above the clouds, and when we shot through them, he pulled off the highway and killed the engine.

I didn’t budge.

He expected me to come out and look with him, and I must admit that–at a glance–it looked so pretty up there, but I didn’t I was more concerned with keeping my insides from becoming outsides. I waited in the car, and after about 30 seconds, he returned. Without words from him, I said: “Please take me back to my car. I want to go home.”

I was expecting him to say, “Bitch, THIS is your new home–” gunshot, my lifeless body is kicked from the car, and I roll like a rag-doll down the hillsides of Los Angeles. Roll credits.

However, he started the engine and did another crazy drive down the hillside. I could only think, gripping my gut with one hand and my head with the other, “Really? This is how I get to die? With a douchebag stranger?”

Again, I said, “Can you please slow down?”

Nothing. It was like he was Carnie Phillips on her way to the doughnut shop.

I began to think, “Three dates. Is this a deal breaker? I wasn’t asking for the window seat on the flight, I was asking for him to slow down and give a shit about my safety. So is this guy going to use my favorite shirt to wipe grease off the counter because he didn’t HEAR me? Because he doesn’t have the common sense to know that when you have a passenger in a car with you, you don’t drive like you’re #8? Or was Dale #3? I don’t watch nascar.”

The drive home on the 101 was quiet. He turned the radio up and talked to himself–or me–I couldn’t tell. Kept pointing out good songs on his Sirius satellite radio.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, halfway to Thousand Oaks.

I was calm when I said, “Look, you just shouldn’t drive that way when there is a passenger in the car. I’ve never been up that road before, you scared that man off the road–”

“I didn’t scare him, he was pulling off to see the view.”

“He was pulling off because he was having a heart attack. You were up his ass.”

“Whatever. I wasn’t up his ass.” He paused, then, “Okay, maybe I was a *little* up his ass.”

When we arrived at my car, I leaned over to give him a friendly hug. He stopped me and said, “Are you trying to give me your sushi?”

Not a sexual reference. I had leftover sushi in my hand from our dinner.

I got out of the car and he left; didn’t really make sure I was safe from rapists. It’s okay though. It’s the bad stuff that’s worth remembering on these dates. And maybe, to some gal, his crazy driving was a turn on and, in a sense, he just pulled a bad one off the pack, too. It’s this kind of stuff that I kind of *heart*. Especially when I survive the experience without a scratch, and with the fleeting memories of a slightly sweet–though crazy, and very short lived–romance. Besides, it all helps narrows the field and make *my* dating life more memorable; so, when I’m older, and I’m settled somewhat with the man who some girl passed up because he used the word “dong” during dinner, I can look back fondly on my adventures.

Printed by permission. Visit Mari's blog at http://www.mari-go-round.com/

The Room - A critic's review of The Ventura Marriott

Jun 2010 - Last weekend, we spent a night at the Ventura Marriott after an unpleasant adventure at the Pierpont Inn (see previous review). Our room was very pleasant and the pool area was quite inviting. Not a tropical setting, but rather a comfortable atmosphere with poolside service. And yes, they had an outdoor Jacuzzi. It should be noted that the Pierpont Inn did not have an outdoor spa and suggested we use the local racquet club with an indoor Jacuzzi loaded with heavy amounts of chlorine. Points for the Ventura Marriott.

The Marriott has some decent dining options although we chose to hang out in downtown Ventura for the music scene. We have stayed at Marriott hotels in Paris, France and all throughout the United States. The comfort level was just as we expected. Great bedding!

Ok, now here's where they fell short - upon arrival, we had no reservations, but they had plenty of rooms available. After receiving the room rate, we proceeded to contact the Marriott call center for a better price. The price was the same, however the sales agent suggested we ask for a free upgrade to a suite. When we asked the front desk agent for an upgrade, he said no. We than asked to speak with the manager on duty and were again denied by the front desk agent stating that he can make his own decision and does not require assistance from a manager. The fact that he opted not to find the manager on duty was not acceptable.

The matter was later resolved, but this is a complete example of how our institutions are lacking customer service. In a time when our economy has been in a recession and consumers are searching for a good deal, hotels should be looking for a variety of ways to bring in new business without sacrificing their customer service. Why is we seem to pay more and get less? I just don't understand it. In any event, the Ventura Marriott scored well with their product but lacked quality customer service.

The Room - A critic's review of The Pierpont Inn

Jun 2010 - We wanted to write an article about a hotel in Ventura. We opted to stay at The Pierpont Inn because of its charm and beauty. As you know, there's no better way to know about a hotel than to stay at the place.

Our intention was to stay 2 nights and explore the nightlife. We have a business friend that used to work at The Pierpont Inn for many years. She recently left her position stating many negative quality issues with the new management change. Was it wrong for us to want to give The Pierpont Inn a try?

We thought it might have been sour grapes by our friend. We made reservations and asked to speak with General Manager, Miller Vargas. We left 3 messages over 2 weeks for him and never received a return call.

Upon arrival at the hotel, everything seemed to go well. However, the headboard was not attached properly to the bed frame and each time you sat on the bed, the bed squeaked. It was quite irritating. The room was not very comfortable. We had a long day and were thinking of taking a Jacuzzi. However, they did not have one on property and we were forced to use an indoor - chlorine laced - Jacuzzi at the local racquet club for an extra charge. Not really what we had in mind.

Our room came with a hot breakfast available in the restaurant from 7am - 10am. The next morning we arrived at the restaurant at 9:20am where we were accosted by the front desk agent and informing us the breakfast closed at 9:30am. We were told not to sit down and she very firm with her statement. Another group of 4 girls arrived the same time we did and we were all flabbergasted by the front desk agent's remarks to us. A waiter stopped by and told us that breakfast was available until 10am. We questioned the issue and the front desk agent never apologized for her actions except to state that she thought breakfast was over at 9:30am. We asked why she accosted us and also why she would stop us at 9:20am if they closed breakfast at 9:30am. Not a good experience at all. The breakfast was no better either.

Our friend was correct - ever since the facility has been under new management, lots of quality issues are apparent. It started for us with a lack of customer service and any attention from the General Manager and continued until the morning after we checked in. Looks like The Pierpont Inn has a long way to go before they get better.

The Dish - A critic's review of Joe's Crab Shack

Jun 2010 - Visited Joe's Crab Shack after a very long week. Checked into the Pierpont for a couple of days and opted to get a few cocktails and some dinner. We were told our wait would be 5-10 minutes and waited patiently. A young couple walked in and said hello to the hostess. They all seemed to know each other.

Within minutes, they were seated and we were still waiting in the lobby area. Nothing like picking favorites.

I immediately got up and located the General Manager (Darwin was his name) and explained my disappointment. He seemed not to really care as we were being seated next. Not once did anyone from Joe's Crab Shack ever apologize.

Once seated, we dropped $75 and Darwin never stepped in with any customer service. He simply ignored us entirely. Not a real "feel good" manager by any means. All he had to do was offer his apologies and this review would have never been written.

As for the food and drinks - we drank some Bloody Mary's and split a steam pot of crabs, shrimp, sausage, corn and potatoes. End Result: The food and drinks were very good, however, the service was not acceptable.