McHuston Booksellers

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Tag: Rose District (Page 102 of 104)

Sitting on the dock of the bay (leaf).

March 14, 2013 /

Things said in passing – to be embedded in memory forever, seemingly. My dear Mum read the restaurant review in this morning’s Tulsa World.

“I can’t believe you remembered Esther talking about shanty Irish,” she said. “How old were you anyway?”

It seems to me I was about five or six years old.

“So you remember the conversation too?” I asked. “How old are you anyway?” (Just kidding about that last part. I would never ask my mother her age. I already know it.)

I’m indebted to Mr Cherry of the World for his kind comments about the shop and the lunchtime fare. It was a nice article and I was only slightly mortified over his noting the retrieval of a bay leaf from his stew. Bay leaves are deceptive. You think you have them fished out, and yet there is another one – lurking in the bowl of Tulsa’s most influential restaurant critic.

Oops.

Maybe it serves as proof that I make the stew myself.

The article (which I’ve attached in the click-able image, not so much out of pride, but to let you read it for yourself – in case you don’t have the paper tossed on your porch these days…) – the article also mentions my Shanty Club sandwich, the poor cousin of the traditional sandwich. It has no bacon, you see.

Shanty Irish was a pejorative phrase back then that isn’t heard much anymore. It described (mostly in the Irish community) someone from the “other side of the tracks” or the poorer side of town. It could be spoken in a mean-spirited way the way “white trash” is sometimes used. There were plenty of Irish in Parsons, Kansas – a Katy Railroad town where many immigrants found work during the laying of the rail line across Indian Territory to Texas in the late 1800s.

The review created enough interest that I was making stacks of Shanty Club sandwiches at lunchtime today, along with the many, many bowls of Irish Stew dished up and served. Enough of these busy lunches and I may dwindle down to a shadow of myself, running to and from the kitchen. (Like THAT would ever happen.)

Five years old and overhearing the grownup talk, also called gossip, going on in the kitchen – a conversation that stuck with me for some reason for more than fifty years, and wound up on the bistro menu. I realize now Grandma Mimi could afford a little gossip about the shanty Irish. She lived near enough to St. Patrick’s church that should could lean out the window and say a prayer of contrition, and another on Esther’s behalf. (Like THAT would ever happen.)

Plenty of new visitors found the shop today, most having mentioned that they had seen the article in the newspaper, and many of them ordering Shepherd’s Pie and Irish Stew.

I made a particular point of fishing out the bay leaves…

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St, Broken Arrow OK
918-258-3301

Sunday. That day of rest.

March 10, 2013 /

They look innocent, don’t they? Those little cubes of carrots resting in a holding container? Sure. They look that way, but they’re tricky. When you least expect it, they can hurt you.

Two important words:

1. Confidence.
2. Over.

Also important to remember not to put those two together.

As a matter of fact, I’m having a little trouble with my touchtyping as a result of that combination – Overconfidence.

Here I am, on my one day off a week, in the kitchen peeling potatoes and dicing carrots. (Actually, I’m NOT in the kitchen at this exact moment, but you get the work-on-the-weekend idea and the fact that I am now typing.) I thought I could invest a little time on Sunday afternoon and save myself some time in the morning. On these types of things, I work more efficiently in the PM.

Two types of cuts for the carrots. A bigger dice for the stew and a smaller cube for the soup. Pounds and pounds of carrots. So little time. “Hustle!” said Marshall Allen, my first boss, whose voice I still hear when working on any such projects. (He knew I was moving as fast as I could, but I believe he was trying to instill a work ethic in a fifteen-year-old.)

Cut the carrots length-wise and then begin the knife-work. If you’re in a hurry, change up your method and try to make that second cut without flipping the half that landed on the round side. (That’s sarcasm, aimed at myself. The rest of you in the kitchen: don’t really change up your habits when holding a sharp knife.) Confidence. Don’t think any more about it. (Overconfidence.)

Here’s a physics tip, too. Round things roll. After the first slice, one side of the carrot is flat, and the other – well, it’s curved like a half-carrot would be.

Hustle! said Marshall, somewhere in the back of my grey-haired head, from somewhere around four decades ago. Hustle!

Don’t need to flip that carrot onto its flat edge, just slice!

The carrot rolled.

You foodies know that it’s best to hold your fingertips under or curl them down when dicing. It keeps the fingertips intact for use over the rest of your life. Conversely, I should have had mine extended when making that particular slice. The carrot rolled and the knife jumped and the vinyl glove offered no protection whatever.

(I just now thought about one of my young cooks, years ago, and the cheese-grinder episode. My insides clinch, just remembering. I think I was more startled than she was. She was the picture of calm. Apologized even. That sort of coolness isn’t learned or inherited. It must be ingrained in the DNA, and in life-and-death situations, most successful outcomes depend on people like her being in attendance. I’m ashamed I never asked to see her finger, later. I couldn’t bear it then. The family of the work place and the empathy of pain: It turned out okay.)

My fingertip will recover. No guitar playing for a time, though.

As you know, mistakes beget mistakes. While I was fooling around with my fingertip, I scalded a pot and suddenly the kitchen has the aroma of burned popcorn, second on the offensive-smell list only to a roadkill skunk. I jumped up and spun around, trying to figure out what was burning, grabbed the pot and dashed it under the water.

Scrubbing is ahead, still. Tough scrubbing.
Priorities call. Books absorb odors. Readily.

I threw open the back door and propped it that way with a bungee snagged to the dumpster out back. At the front, I wedged a piece of wood to allow the breeze to move through the store. Front to back, McHuston Booksellers & Irish Bistro is a long and narrow location. With Sunday’s north wind, it was near-gale-force as it whips down the aisles between shelves.

Probably have a few minutes to write this, while it airs out.

Why am I suddenly shivering and sniffling? I trot back to the back hall, leaning into the wind that is tunneling through the building. How long have I been typing? Not THAT long! Oh, there was that thing about the firewall and needing to shut down computer security to move the carrot picture to the other computer and another change of the bandage on my finger. The thermostat’s thermometer says it is 53 degrees in the back of the store.

Back door: closed. Trot to the front, passing the front-of-store thermometer: 62 degrees. No wonder I’m a tad chilled.

Front door: closed.

Fingertip wound: closed.

Case: closed.

Happy weekend, almost over as it is. It is back to work as usual Monday morning, except we’ve all sprung forward to Daylight Savings Time and we’ll be starting out in the dark.

Let’s not finish that way, shall we?

McHuston Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
Broken Arrow, OK
122 South Main Street, 918-258-3301

Watch those Wishes!

March 1, 2013 /

Free publicity can be a blessing and a curse. In my case, it was a perfect example of the real-world application of that old adage, Be Careful What You Wish For!

After some months of prepping and peeling, stirring and ladling, I found myself thinking that just a few more customers every day would help me avoid tossing out leftover food. Up until now, I’ve treated the lunchtime business as an opportunity for friends and acquaintances to drop by for lunch. I don’t mean to say that everyone who had a bowl of Irish stew set before them is on my Christmas-card list. It has just been a casual sort of lunch hour.

On Tuesday, an article appeared in the Tulsa World, courtesy of food critic Scott Cherry. He had called me and asked a few questions, then mentioned he would later write it up for his blog on the internet. I know the World has an active website, but I assumed the impact would be minimal for an electronic story.

Well, an editor for the Scene section picked up the item for inclusion in the printed edition of the newspaper. I was all ready for Tuesday’s business, the food prepped, the lights on, the door unlocked. I was relaxing with my cup o’ caffeine and scanning the paper.

WHAT?

The name McHuston jumped off the page at me. BAM! My skin got all goose-bumpily. I jumped out of my chair and ran to the kitchen to whip up another batch of stew. What I had made, would not be enough.

In restaurant jargon, there are a number of phrases that are used to describe the situation that developed between 11:30am and 1:30pm, the lunch hour. Several aren’t suitable for print here. “In the weeds” is used to describe a server who is running behind, or a kitchen staff that is having trouble keeping ahead of the orders.

To be frank – I was a bit beyond “In the Weeds.”

Calls were made after Tuesday’s business, in attempts to find a waitress to help me out the next day. Between a new hire on Wednesday and my daughter’s gracious assistance on Thursday, the lunch hours were much more efficient. Smooth sailing? No. Nope. But much, much better.

Today, being Friday, I found myself pretty much out of food, out of energy, and out of sorts – trying to figure a way to reduce the hitches in the process of getting plates and bowls of food out to the guests.

Dishes were still in the sink at 8pm Thursday, with me bending over the sink scrubbing up. There was no time to make an assessment of what items would be required to prep for the next day’s business. The book part of the store – the main attraction! – had been largely abandoned due to the lunch rushes and the attention required cleaning up and prepping.

Friday: Kitchen closed.

The freezer in the kitchen has been relocated, along with the stainless steel work tables, to streamline mobility. (Not so important when serving just a few folks at lunchtime…). The convection oven has been moved to the wire shelving to make the table it was on accessible for other things. Nothing is constant, but change, they say.

Mr Cherry advised me that the upward bump in business would settle down a few days after the article appeared. I remember wishing for a few more lunchtime customers. Be careful what you wish for! In truth, I’m really excited about the attention and the possibility of serving a few more guests at lunchtime. I’m in overdrive, thinking about how to make each person’s experience the best it can be.

Next week should be a little more organized.

At least, I hope so!

McHuston Booksellers
Rose District, Broken Arrow OK
122 South Main Street
918-258-3301

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