me, july 2009:: by the inimitable bart nagel

i was honored a few weeks ago to finally have my portrait taken by bart nagel, king of puns. robin said that this shot makes me look like a tough-ass. love that. (i'm considering letting the cooks roast me (and chris) at our goodbye party. would i cry? what could they say about me that i don't already know about myself? that i'm nuts and i get sugar highs whenever chelsea brings cookies in? or that i'm grumpy in the morning until i eat my breakfast? or that i bicker with marco every morning for 2 hours while he fries potato chips "according to his grandmother's secret recipe?" there's also my temper. and my arguments with chris. a while ago, doug asked if chris realized that i spend half of the day standing around and talking about nonsense instead of working. it's true, but as matt said, i spend the other half of the day functioning at such a maniacal pace that i get twice as much work done as anyone else. i'm dying to know what else they've got up their sleeves.)

i've got a few tricks up my sleeve for the next couple of months: canning classes, articles, urban farm to table workshops with veller around the country, and odd jobs here and there in kitchens you may or may not have heard of. i'm pretty excited (and a little bit scared). my first priority, though, is to get all of my cooks and dishwashers situated in happy, healthy kitchens around the bay (and one in LA). i've never worked with such a close-knit group of people, and i'm going to miss them all more than i could ever express.