I was opening this morning and couldn’t find the baked apples (which are typically cored the night before and baked in the morning.

I asked Julie about it and dug around in the walk-in and told me we didn’t have any and she couldn’t make any because we didn’t have any of the “winter syrup.” She thought that’s probably why they weren’t plated last night.

Winter, what? I made a quick change to our apple recipe. No more winter syrup (I’m going to have to ask forgiveness from Rolando on Monday). We cored the apples, put brown sugar in cinnamon in the middle, a pad of butter, put them in 1 inch of water, then cooked them at 350°F for about 1 hour. We basted them once or twice. And they’re spectacular.

We try really hard to avoidthis type of food situation. You know, situations in which people don’t know what they’re eating (or making). This one was an accident I guess. I don’t think we meant to obscure ingredients by making the “winter syrup.” Probably was an effort to make things quicker and easier at night. But it resulted in this situation where apples didn’t get made last night, and were nearly left out this morning, because nobody knew what “winter syrup” was or how to make it.

I had somebody ask me about the menu the other day. Well, it was less of a question, more a suggestion: “you should come up with cool names for your sandwiches and stuff.” Like what, I baited him. “You know, a Clover something. Like Big Mac.”

I explained the names were deliberate. We don’t want to make the food confusing. I don’t want anybody left out. And I don’t want to sell food because it’s clever. We call our sweet potato sandwich a sweet potato sandwich because that sweetpotato is so good and carefully prepared it has earned the right to be called what it is. This is a core of our food philosophy. Food should be understandable, simple, (and taste great).