February 2024

I hope everyone had a restful and maybe even rejuvenating January. Now that we're a few days into February, resolutions have already come and gone, and I feel a little more settled into the new year.

In most restaurants, these first two months of the year are always the hardest. Not hard in the sense of being busy and working a lot of hours, but rather the opposite. January and February are generally two of the slowest months of the year.

Everyone is saving money after an expensive holiday season, and many are on their annual health kicks that have them eating less, eating "better", or partaking in things like "dry January"; Something that really eats into a restaurant's profits.

As a line cook, this can be a nice reprieve from the madness that is November and December in a busy restaurant. But as a Chef or owner, it can be one of the most stressful times of the year.

As I'm lucky enough to be in the camp where this slow time of year is welcome and offers a moment of quiet, I've found myself doing more reflection than usual (usual being zero.)

Some of that comes in the form of looking at personal growth and looking loosely toward the future (something quite new for me.) But much has been more focused on ruminating about past cooking and eating experiences.

One of these moments arose as I was putting together a recipe for carnitas. While the recipe I made wasn't remotely close to the version I ate almost 30 years ago, it still brought forward a memory that I hadn't thought about in years (more on that here.)

Maybe this time of reflection just has me feeling more nostalgic than normal, but another of the "new" recipes I put together last month also had me feeling especially sentimental.

That one is a simple poached chicken dish from my late Chinese grandma. Although, unlike the carnitas experience, this is one that I make often and it is accompanied by nostalgia every time.

Not that there is any real moral to this story, but even though I can go for weeks without consciously considering my relationship with food, there are moments like these that reinforce how much I love it, and how much power it has outside of tasting great or simply filling your stomach.

Aside from being super sappy in January, I've been (predictably) working on waking up early, exercising more, and drinking more water. It's going medium, and I'll just leave it at that.

New Recipes

• Poached Chicken w/Sizzling Scallion Oil
• Gringo Carnitas
• Salsa Verde

January Eats

Even though I know the plight of restaurants in January and February, we too didn't eat out last month.