cookin the pot

  Peter E Pete staggers to the hammock. Another trying day with ungrateful tars and scallywags. Two small sloops bound from Jamaica and all the rum ya could swally was all she wrote. Rum punched, one and all they blather on about not enough coin jingling the trouser as the pillage turned glum. He remembers the days in old Main Brook , a welcome sight after weeks at sea and the hearty and hale at Fred's Lounge, a place before it's time. Plunder a plenty back then but the scarce times came fast as kings and queens fell, and no privateer knew who to trust. At anchor in Spirity Cove, he sensed his days were numbered as the leader of his loyal but frustrated crew. Maybe time would soon come to take Con up on his offer to buy that small inn in St John's, become a publican. A few more raids, enough pirated bounty to ease into a landlubber's life. The slow trough shifted his hammock and...

  LAMONT In the early days Lamont worked the line at “Four Stars” under the guidance of the heavy handed and often absent, Charles Ledoux. Called into the cubbyhole Ledoux called an office, Lamont was told that he was now in charge of making the restaurant's signature beef stock. Ledoux explained that Carson had been poached by a new bistro and there was no time to waste. The stock needed caring. Ledoux pushed home that this was his only job and nothing but. Now four a.m. , starts and sluggish from previous long shifts and rumbled sleep, Lamont fired up the stoves and ovens waking the kitchen. Last shift had been the usual. A rushed start to the day at nine a.m. , a flurry of phone calls about missed deliveries, and threats of cash withheld and then onto the day's prep work. By two p.m. , the promise of a “family meal” pushed everyone through the afternoon without a break. Nothing new here, n...