Music. Music has a way of speaking to me when words are inadequate or unnecessary. Since music has this power for me, I keep a steady supply of new music moving into my ears via my eMusic subscription, which offers a Free Song a Day feature on my phone.  I let a couple of weeks pile up before I give them a listen, then I go through the playlist, ruthlessly culling out the ones that don’t impress me in the first 15 secs of hearing it.  I probably find 1 in 15 or 20 that stand out, and put them in a keepers playlist.  I’ve found some great, inspiring tunes this way, all initially free. And for the artists sake, it may lead to purchasing the entire album.  I’ve recently found Rodrigo y Gabriela and First Aid Kit this way.

Writing.  When I write a post, many times I am writing to myself.  I often write to remind myself of the story that is unfolding.  When we discovered Karen’s  cancer two years ago, my first compulsion was to write about.  Writing reveals what I believe, and making it public reinforces that belief.  It makes me accountable and prevents the pity party from being hosted.  Not every writer has this as his or her starting point, especially those who write for a living.  But our commonality is that all have to find that muse that provokes the words.

Quiet. For about a ten year stretch, we took family vacations to Dillon, CO and stayed in a condo that overlooked a beautiful lake below a series of incredible mountain peaks. One morning, as was my regular habit, I was sitting on the deck, staring out into the view.  This question popped into my thoughts, “Am I looking AT something, or FOR something?”  I discovered it was the latter.  Stillness allows subtle beauty to emerge and be seen.

Giving your mind the permission to roam unfettered is critical for its creative survival.  I can tell when the speed and pace of my life gets too fast.  I remedy it by listening to less music when in the car.  I sit outside at night with nothing playing in the background.  Doing so can make you appear to be aloof to your family, but remind them that just as you go to the gym for physical exercise, you regularly go to the quiet for mental fitness.

Incense. This probably sounds like a beatnik, hippie-kind of thing to do, but hear me out.  The olefactory sense is the strongest trigger to provoke memory recall.  When I smell fresh paint in a room, it takes me back to my years of returning to elementary school during the hot, humid August days of late summer in Oklahoma.  The janitors spent the summer repainting classrooms and hallways, and the smell of paint still filled the air when the school kids arrived.

Aroma is associated with memory, and can help stimulate productive thought.  In the nice weather, when I get home from the restaurant I’ll light a few torches and stick of incense, pour a beverage and let all three components go to work.  While my body is fatigued, my mind is still active, and the aura of the environment gives the brain a chance to be heard and cast its vote.

Walking the dog. Dogs are incredibly healing creatures.  They respond so faithfully to your needs, its almost impossible not to reciprocate.  Our beagle now knows the word “walk,” therefore we have to use a codeword  when discussing whether or not we have time to walk the dog, lest she get defrauded and have to overcome her false sense of hope.  To watch Maddie get uncontrollably excited about nothing more than a stroll through the neighborhood is contagious.  There have been many a problem solved and stress released on these excursions.

Weeding the garden. I hated weeding as a kid when my mom and dad made me get down on my hands and knees and pull the crabgrass crowding the young plants.  But now, as an adult, weeding  an activity that requires no critical thinking other than querying which is weed and which is desirable.  When the hands are occupied without need of strict intellectual oversight, the mind can be free to explore and engage in other types of leisure.

The Grocery Store. Karen hates going grocery shopping for reasons foreign to me, so I gladly do this family chore.  It takes me about twice as long as she because I turn it into a fact finding trip.  I have a little game I play on each outing whereby I buy something I’ve never purchased before and see if I can find a way to use it.  I do this more for creative stimulation than practical purpose.  It forces me to look at the aisles differently, rather than through rote familiarity.  Granted, the canned oysters and the wasabi in a bottle were awful, but it opened my eyes to that section of the store.

TED Talks.  If youre not familiar with the TED movement, find out at TED.com.  there you will find hundreds of inspiring talks, none of which are over 18 min long.  I like going there on Sunday mornings when no one else is stirring about the house.  Great ideas spawn great ideas, and TED is a great way to immerse your mind and provoke your creativity without spending tons of money and time on travel to attend a professional conference.

If you have certain things you do to refresh your mind, please leave them in the comments below.  I’d like to know what helps inspire your thinking.

“Creative work is still work.”

You’ve probably seen the site What My Friends Think I Do. It’s a funny look at six different points of view of an occupation, going  from the stereotypical ideal back down to ruthless reality.  We all experience this disconnection between the image of our work on the one hand, and on the other, what we actually do on a day to day basis.  It seems cool to want to be a musician, artist, teacher, farmer, author,  or chef, but there are going to be tasks that are required with any job or profession that are mundane and don’t come easily.  This is the value of the book, e-Myth, of which I recommend over and again to anyone interested in being an entrepreneur.  The author balances the romance of entrepreneurship with the realities of what it takes to successfully run a business.  Without this understanding, your dream may not be sustained.

The image of a creative oriented profession might be that of working in an office that has no dress code, no time clock, everyone wears flip-flops and the mini-fridge is stocked with an unlimited supply of Red Bull.  It’s a place where there are no desks, but instead the workspace is filled with big wheel tricycles, bean bag chairs and folks playing board games at 10:30am.  I’m using hyperbole, but somewhere in our brain these kinds of practices can get strung together in series, forging an unconscious idea about what we wish for and what actually is.

(One of my favorite authors, Michael Ruhlman, has some great things to say about the realities of writing.)

At the same time I’m not one for crushing the romance of creative work either.  Even when my feet throb at the end of the day, and I sit in the dark wondering if I made the right decision to be a chef, I reach deep and pull out the rewards of my work.  It’s the pleasure of setting my own course, of creating the kind of food I like to eat and want to share.  Its seeing people laugh, celebrate, relax and reflect at my table, and leave with a smile  on their face and tipping the kitchen staff with a thumbs up on the way out the door.  Granted, its work, but it’s the work I choose. And I am blessed that I have that choice.

Its important to know where the source of that kind of internal motivation resides, because you will have to mine for it many times over in your career as an entrepreneur.  Like a favorite fishing hole, or foraging site for morels, it’s a place to which you must know how to return.

When we bought this house we live in, it had a small plot sectioned off in the northwest corner of the backyard and this is the 20^th year I’ve planted more than just tomatoes and peppers.  In that tiny little 12’x30’farm I have sown many ideas.  In doing so, I have reaped significant lessons.

Gardening is not solely about food.  Its also about hope, nurture, tragedy and the occassional compensation for patient and persistent effort.  Just as I used to draw inspiration from my long distance running, I glean recurring reminders about life and how it is filled with both risk and reward.  Who knew a little cordoned off patch of dirt could do all that?

I physically feel better in the springtime. Maybe due to the lack of healing sunshine or of just being cooped up all winter, but at the first visible sign of life emerging from the brown layer of decaying leaf matter that looks like layers of untempered chocolate, something wakes up inside.  Spring is the reminder of hope, that seasons do eventually change, regardless of how dark the winter was that came before it.

A harsh winter season struck us two years ago next month in May when the doctor discovered the tumor in Karen’s ovary.  The season changed suddenly, like a rush of a cold Noreaster that swoops in with its freezing wind, turing everything green and growing into limp, mushy debris.  Gratefully, we endured the season, and spring finally returned.  We are enjoying the renewed life in our relationship, and are attempting to fully embrace the beauty of each day without cancer.

keeping the pests at bay

Cancer is a little like the pests that come in and invade the treasure of the garden.  Some ask me why go through all the effort to build miniature Fort Knox – type structures to keep the rabbits and squirrels at bay.  My response is to suggest keeping your keys on your dashboard so its easier to remember where you left them.  You’d  never do that because you don’t trust the bad guys out looking for cars to steal, and I don’t trust the damn rodents to leave my broccoli alone.  You guard what is valuable to you, and the more disdain you have for that which robs you, the stronger the effort you will make to protect it.

It’s a heck of a lot easier to buy lettuce than to try and grow it yourself, but  when you learn how much work it is to get food to the table, you learn to appreciate the work of the farmer and the rigors of the work that goes with growing.  In addition to pests, the farmer deals with weather fluctuations, like unexpected frost that can wipe out baby seedlings, or unusually high temperatures that inhibit seed germination.  Factor in the chance of damaging hailstorms or washout due to excessive rains.  Add blight, rust and every other fungus you can think of, and then you start to get a picture of the exigent process.

Jack and Kevin in the Rose Garden

Everyone needs to learn how to take care of something. Growing a garden teaches this lesson of nurture..  A problem of youth today is that they have little that demands anything of them.  Consider the amount of money spent on entertainment for no other purpose other than to assuage boredom.  My dad grew roses, hundreds of them, because they needed his care in order to display their full beauty.  “Everyone needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning.” he said to me often.  In his retirement years, his hobby did more for him than just pass the time.  It put a smile on his face, and of those who visited his rose garden.

My therapist

For me, I have never planted a garden this early.  I once remember putting out tomato plants on April 14, but March 31^st is unheard of.  A seasoned old gardener once said that if you arent’ losing plants to frost, you aren’t planting early enough.  It took me a second to understand his wisdom. While nobody likes to waste good seed,  it probably won’t break the bank if that $1.99 packet of beans get nipped in the cold.  Rolling the dice on planting time may payoff in early harvest and seizing neighborhood bragging rights.

I can tell the season shifts gears from Winter to Spring when Saturday attendance exceeds Friday.  Traditionally for us, because of our location, people don’t come back downtown in the winter on the weekend.  But with our outdoor seating and the beautiful, pest-free weather, folks have taken advantage of both and filled our little corner on 8^th & S all day Saturday.  I love the energy it brings, produced in part by the sounds of laughter and conversation around a table set with simple food and drink.

Cascade hops off to an early start

Spring is synonymous with the word new, so you can anticipate some spring-time developments on our menu  and operation.  Watch for new complements, sandwiches and seasonal drinks (Rhubarb gimlet soon.)  We offer our first Easter and Mother’s Day Brunch this year.  We have plans to launch an evening cocktail hour after 9pm with nightly drink features, and a Monday night Chef’s Table during the month of June, where I will cook and serve a seasonal, family style meal, with wine/beer pairings, for 12-15 people each week.  If you are interested in knowing more about our calendar and receiving news about our events, enter your email address at www.breadandcup.com.

We’ll set the table; you bring the conversation.

You’re going to have a night like this.  Trust me, it’s going to happen. Better to spend your effort on deciding how to deal with it rather than fretting over how to prevent it.  Your best laid plans to do so will get squashed, leaving you without a well formed answer.

The standard ebb and flow in the season of our business is that in the winter, Friday is typically our busiest night, and in the summer, Saturday gets the most traffic.  We assume this is due to the fact that folks don’t want to venture back down our way again on Saturday in the cold weather.  This pattern has been consistent since the beginning.

Until this weekend.

We keep our little kitchen open until 10pm on the weekends, but usually the steady flow for dinner ends around 9pm and those coming in later are for drinks and dessert.  But the proverbial tour bus stopped and our dining room filled all at once, taxing our 6 burner stove, and depleting some of our supply.

It’s an awful feeling to watch the service collapse, like a domino effect, knowing you will not be able to satisfy the eager customers, many of who might be visiting for the first time.

So chef, what do you do when that happens?  You feel horrible, ashamed, and fearful this will be the start of your ruin. The conversation in your head ensues, and the dialogue turns into self loathing.  You rush to beat yourself up before anyone else does. Misery loves company, and all those negative voices in your head prove it.

But chef, this is not wise.  Take control of the mental exchange and exercise self leadership.  Here are a few things I suggest:

Be honest about the situation.  There is a veil that that is hung between the front and the back of the house.  That curtain is in place to shield your customers from the heat of the kitchen.  They are in the house to be served and shown a good time.  They don’t need to know your pressure or if you are in the weeds.  It’s your job, chef, to keep that under control and make the customer happy.

But in those times it does slip beyond your control, like running out of food or getting so far behind can’t make a timely delivery, be honest and let your customer know what is going on.  Acknowledge the failure.  Point out the elephant in the room.  It doesn’t change what is crumbling, but at least the truth of the moment is admitted.

Make amends. Offer free drinks.  Bring a free appetizer during the wait.  Comp the whole meal if you have to.  Better to lose a few bucks on the ticket than to add insult to injury and make someone pay for a poor experience.  Your reputation is worth the pricetag.

It’s not the end of the world.  One night won’t tank you, unless you fail to learn from it.  Danny Meyer says that the road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.  They will happen.  Spend your energy on crafting a strategy to not repeat the collapse than on beating yourself up.

Reread your commendations.  I keep a file of cards, letters and notes that grateful customers have left for us.  When the low point hits, I review some of that feedback to remind myself that an evening like this is not the norm.  We have done better, we can do better and we will do better.  Stay rooted in what you know to be true.

Open your best bottle.  Will Guidara writes in his 11 Madison Park cookbook about some advice a customer once gave him; “I save my best bottles for my worst days.” The applied meaning is that we all need a little cheering up, in whatever form that may be.  Don’t just wait for the good times.  Find the source of beauty that puts a smile back on your face.

And do we ever grow out of it?  Of course not.

It’s simple human nature; we all want to be liked for who we are and what we do.  If you like what we do, then you must like us, and that acceptance feels very, very good.  This is important to understand; else we will make someone pay for our experience of unfound validation.

I put some things on our menu that are uncommon.  From time to time you’ll see items such as rabbit, quail, chicken liver, and pork heart interspersed among the more recognizable beef, pork and chicken dishes.  I don’t expect everyone to accept them all because everyone has a different palette.  A woman once told me she abhorred goat cheese because of the smell of it that she remembered as a child.  I can accept that. Those memories run deep.  They represent preferences, of which I want to be aware.

When I set something in front of you, I need to be mindful of its quality as well as your preference.  Did you reject the dish because it grossed you out, or because we cooked it poorly?  If you are not pleased, we’ve not done our job, regardless of what we serve you.

If you’ve eaten at my restaurant, especially in the evening, you’ve probably seen me wander out of the kitchen and into the dining area to survey your reaction.  I do this because I want to know if we are hitting the mark or not.  And that mark is your satisfaction and happiness.  I realize it’s sometimes awkward to have someone interrupt your meal to ask, “How is everything?”  It’s not easy to say what you really feel in that moment, especially if the food or experience is subpar, but I invite you to let us know what you think.  I really want to know if you are pleased or not.

When we catch the mistakes we’ve made, we can correct them on the spot.  Recently we had a temperature error on an entrée, resulting in a delay of service; I took care of the customer personally.  He thanked me and said ours is his favorite restaurant in town.  I told him I want to keep it that way.

Good question.  And it’s one that I actually learned how to answer several years ago, long before I entered the restaurant business.  It was a lesson in decision making that I remember from my days in college.

I don’t know why it made such an impact on me, but I was listening to a man lecture on time management and he made this statement that stood out and stayed with me these many years.  He said:

Make a decision and make it right

He explained that we should not put so much burden and worry on ourselves about whether or not we made the right decision. Instead, in some cases we should just once and for all decide what our response will be, regardless of circumstance. His simple point?  Locking his car doors. The speaker found that every time he got out of his car, he went through a little mental debate on whether or not he is parking in a place that should require the extra safety of locking up. (Note of context, this would have been in the days before electronic door locks and remote controls.) Instead of deliberating about locking the car or not, he said he just decided to always lock them.

Decision made. No need to revisit it. It will be the right call from now on.

I feel that way about keeping the restaurant open.  I could calculate the pros and cons of doing so, of whether or not it would be profitable, or about various safety concerns.  I could wonder if anyone will show, or I could just decide that I will always be open and be done with the conversation.  Make the decision and make it right, and let it stand, and carry on with business.

If you were to compare some of the music of John Coltrane to the world of food, I think you would be safe to place him in the category of today’s gastromolecular chef.  Both produce a distinct, out-of-the-ordinary experience for its prospective audiences.  Both are easily misunderstood. And I would add that both probably felt a compulsion to create that drives them beyond the norm.

Coltrane was a contemporary of Miles Davis in the late fifties, just at the time Davis was exploring the cool jazz sounds that would reach forward decades later and put his fingerprints on artist like Steely Dan and the electronic sounds of techno, house and trip-hop.   Coltrane took the keys to the musical vehicle that Davis handed him and put the pedal to the metal.  He found such freedom in expression in the modal jazz form that he often did not know when to quit.  It is said of the days when the two played together live, that Davis might leave the stage and take a seat at the bar as Coltrane began his solo.  At one particular gig, forty five minutes later, Davis would return to the stage once Coltrane was finished.  This created some tension at times, to which Coltrane defended himself by saying, “I just don’t know when to finish.”  Miles retorted with a snap, “Just take the damn horn outta your mouth, man!”

Much of Coltrane’s music does not make it on a playlist for the restaurant; else I would have too many people with puzzled looks asking to turn it down.  It is not ordinarily accessible.  It is “extra“-ordinary.  It does what all great jazz should do; it makes you think about what is being played.  It creates a statement. It is not background music. It is not to be ignored.

To appreciate the music of Coltrane is to be willing to step deeply into his theory and practice and understand the thought behind the seeming cacophony.  There was method to his madness and that method, much like some chefs, requires thought and engagement

It’s a goal of mine to have more Coltrane encounters this year.  Whether its food or music, I don’t want to take either for granted.  I want to be near the kitchen or near the stage of thoughtful, engaged creators that believe in their craft so passionately that to overlook it would be an ignorant transgression.

The older I get, the less I want to take life for granted.

Music is an important part of creating an environment of hospitality. Just as the food and service must be consistent in quality, it’s my personal opinion that the music heard in a restaurant needs to have a consistent genre or vibe to it. What you hear develops expectation, however subtle or subconscious it may be.

We often get the question, “who’s that playing right now?” So I decided to list 24 of my favorite artists/discs that set the mood for the bread&cup experience. Most are available on iTunes, Amazon or the service I primarily use, eMusic. I have listed the genre, a brief description and a one song definition that you should sample to get a good idea of the artist in one shot.

Though I’m probably too old, I lean toward the hipster on this list, as I take pride in finding stuff you’ve never heard of.

I’m into making goals and resolutions, so if you’re not, bear with me. Maybe I can make my point without being that guy.

One thing I’ve learned this year about leading people is the very thing that The Gallup Organization has figured out years ago; everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and the best course of action is to try and get people into a realm where they can express those strengths easily.  To focus only on strengths without giving attention to weaknesses may seem like neglectful management, and it is if the weaknesses are never first acknowledged and understood.

Dealing with Karen’s cancer over the last year and a half has led me to view our marriage in a completely different light.  It has caused me to lean on her strengths more and more rather than to bicker over the ways she is not like me.  More than once I found the question hovering over me in the darker moments, “What would I do without her?”  This was a sobering realization.

With us, we are two extremes.  I am time-conscious. She is list-conscious.  When the movie starts at 5, I want to be in my seat by ten til.  For her, if the movie starts at 5, it doesn’t matter because she still needs to unload the dishwasher, finish the laundry and let the dog out one more time. I hate being late; she hates not getting things done now. As you can imagine, this is good fodder for conflict.  But the more I understand how much I need that balance, the more I am able to see it as a strength.

I can get the big things done, like changing careers and opening a restaurant. But for some reason I procrastinate on the little stuff, like keeping the garage organized, or cleaning out the gutters, or vacuuming out the car. On the other hand, Karen can plow through the to-do list like a hot knife through butter.  She dislikes the abstract, mental work that I get immersed in, and instead prefers the concrete, practical tasks that each day presents.  I need this balance, and value its worth more and more each day.  Too bad it took a crisis for me to discover.

As with most of my writing, I am my first audience.  I write to speak to myself, to clarify thoughts I’ve been mulling over.  In this way, this type of public musing makes me accountable for the change that I want to undergo.  Keeping it buried doesn’t create urgency.  I think I’m this way because I hate starting something I can’t finish.  It’s why I put things off until later. A half baked project is just a monument of all talk and no follow through to completion.

I’m not sure how this will play itself out into a measurable goal or resolution, but at least it provides the borders around which the ideas can grow.

Best of luck to you all in 2012.  May you bloom where you are planted.