Blooming Hill

I wrote this in my food writing class. It's a cherished memory that I thought I'd share with my four readers. Here you go.

In the summer of 2004 I was very tired. I had been working as a line cook at ‘Cesca, an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and was working 60 hours a week. It was my first job as a cook and adjusting to the long hours and tedious work was making me very cranky to say the least. So it seems odd that when my chef, Amanda Freitag said she needed another cook to come upstate with her and work a dinner at Blooming Hill Farms I volunteered. At the time I think I thought it sounded fun and though I didn’t know it at the time it was very beneficial to me to cook in an environment that wasn’t a restaurant. I like most line cooks had stopped cooking at home almost immediately after I started working in a kitchen professionally.

Guy Jones, the proprietor of Blooming Hills Farm, invites chefs to cater a diner for up to 60 people throughout the summer months. Amanda had taken off on a Saturday to be the guest chef and was bringing Myra, another one of the line cooks from ‘Cesca with her. The point of the dinner is to only use ingredients that are in season and grown on the farm. As the two of them poured over the list of produce available and started planning the menu they realized they needed another cook. I flippantly offered myself, “I don’t need a day off.” Looking back I wanted to be included, I wanted cooking to be fun again, which it was increasingly not back in those days. The long days and 6-7 day work weeks were wearing me out, just about anything would drive me to tears. A change in enviorment would do me good I thought.

That is until I realized that I would be picked up at six in the morning. I am not now, nor have I ever been a morning person. One of my favorite things about the restaurant industry is the hours, they are made for me. So waking up at five am on my day off to cook seemed like a ludicrious idea. But I had given my word, so bleary eyed I jumped into the car with Amanda and Myra, cds for the road trip in one hand, my FCI chefs jacket in the other. We drove from Brooklyn to Cesca to pick up equipment and some food we had prepped before hand. The drive up seemed like a montage out of chick flick, as I started to wake up and the coffee started working we laughed and talked and fought about the music (mine as is most always the case was deemed “too sad and depressing” for a road trip).

Upon arrival Blooming Hills farm seemed like some sort of paradise. Impossibly green and fragrant it was the perfect refuge for three women who spent all their time stifled by the heat of the kitchen and the concrete of the city. Guy Jones lives on the farm with his three sons, the oldest 16 at the time, the youngest 10. These children with their straight blonde hair and their enthusiasm to help run their fathers farm, only added to the idea that I was on some foreign idyllic planet.

All the food was in the kitchen waiting for us. At times Myra and I might run to the market on the farm to pick up basil or look for a colander. But mostly it was just the three of us cooking and enjoying each other’s company. As dinner approached we were ready to put out 5 courses. By the third course the sangria Guy had made and that we couldn’t stop drinking started to have its intended effect. We giggled, we plated, we ran out of Amanda’s apricot polenta cakes. I don’t quite remember how we remedied that but in the end everyone had dessert.
Before we had to go back Myra and I just lay in the green grass and stared at the stars, a luxury I think only a New Yorker really appreciates. Before we left Guy let us take whatever we wanted from the market. I returned to the city with sunflowers, tarragon and a newfound love of cooking.