well, it was bound to happen eventually, because the old saying is still true, “you can’t win ‘em all.”
i can feel that sentiment extra strongly today because i feel like i lost at work today too. i took the family for lunch at satchel’s and when i went in the kitchen to smile and wave, the tv was on, the rap music was blaring too loud to converse, and there was a general feeling of confusion in the air. i tried to coach things back to normal but things only got worse. i sped the family home, skipping the publix stop as planned, and sped back to work. i bailed out the dish guy. i made it to the oven to find a burnt deep dish that was left from the previous shift, and it belonged to table 4 who were waiting patiently for it. i’m talking BURNT. the kind of burnt you have to be an idiot to not see. they’ve been waiting an hour. do i try and re-make this pizza? do i send them home without dinner? how am i going to climb out? we send them the burnt pizza and they report they do not want another. i apologize as they eat it. we give them free cannolis, free everything, and send them away with a card for a free pie next time they come in. i am embarrassed. no respectable cook should find himself with a burnt dinner for 6 people who have been waiting an hour for their food. i don’t even know how long they waited for the table! of course, i try and figure out who’s “fault” it is.. the guy who put it in? the day cook who left it there? the guy who moved the ticket away from the oven? ultimately, it’s my fault. it’s my kitchen and i obviously do not have the proper system in place to locate a black deep dish cooking in the far corners of the oven during a shift change.
i wish i could say things got better. there was another very questionable deep dish that got forgotten when i was out back checking on lightnin’ salvage. again, my fault. i love the other cook’s response when he looks at it… “it’s to-go…” meaning, all we have to do is shut the box and forget about it…

i probably should have sent a free pizza card with that second one too. i think my pride was so beat down by then, i was afraid i might break down and cry if i had to admit that that second dark deep dish was actually ‘burnt.’

and to top it off, when i went to rock 104′s website to listen to the gator game, there was an online poll asking, “where is your favorite place to get pizza?” and we were in 4th place, behind “Other” (meaning none of the pizza places listed), pizza hut second place, and papa john’s third place.
here i am thinking i have about the coolest pizza place in the entire planet, and come in 4th in a local online pizza contest, with other, pizza hut, and papa johns in front of me.
so, yes. we lost to auburn. two years in a row. satchel’s is not the world’s best pizza. we are 4th in gainesville. urban lost his first game in the swamp, and satchel basically burnt two deep dishes in the same night.

i just hope we can open the doors on tuesday.

quite slammed tonight. things went smoothly for us in the kitchen. we didn’t have a single mistake.

i played bocce ball after work. me and div against ron and geoff. me and div won. just had to write that, for the record.

i am working a lot these days but not in the kitchen. i am trying to realize some visions i’ve had, organizing on many fronts at once, feeling a bit fried in the brain and body. i have all the burners on high and there are more skillets than i have hands.
i can’t really get into many details for various reasons.
i can tell you that we are going to phase out some of the live music nights because they are not well attended. but we’ll keep them all going for another month or two. i’m bummed that we get such great musical acts and sometimes they play to no one. my vision for that was either off point, or just premature. no worries, we’ll just move on to the next thing.
there are new t-shirts, black v-necks with a gold chain and satchel’s pendant. they were mark’s idea. some of the employees really like them. the camo satchel’s is for rednecks shirts are not moving just yet. actually, we have about 10 different designs now so if you were thinking about getting a shirt, now is the time.
shout out to brent, co-founder of LSE, who came to check in on things this past weekend. we had our regular founders meeting and decided that LSE should have it’s own day, Lightnin’ Salvage Day. but the date for that is still to be decided. i think maybe sometime in mid december. we could announce the pine cone contest winners and throw a little party to boot. keep a lookout for that.
hope everyone is feeeling well and happy. we made a scarecrow here on monday and even though there aren’t many crows around to scare, it does startle me a bit when i pull up in the yard.

it was a slow friday night for us. i’m sure it seemed busy to the people waiting, but in the kitchen we never had more than a few tickets up at a time. i forgot roasted red peppers on one pie and we added them after the fact. other than that things went well, except for joey, who is always giving me a hard time, telling bad jokes, and not putting enough basil on pizzas. he doesn’t care, he’s going to be a lawyer soon, what does he care?
i’m ready to see some gator football. i’m pretty glad it’s a day game because i don’t have to be at work until after the game.
what else? i’m noticing more and more and more students at satchel’s. i think the word is out. i like seeing the students. they are so fun and nice. i sent out some beautiful pies tonight, no doubt. and tomorrow night i’m cooking again, so come on out.

sorting through things to make a collage tonight… in lse.
folks are starting to shop for christmas gifts at lse.
2 new benches beside lse, very very nice benches. quality. cement precast baby.
i can’t stop saying, ‘don’t taze me, bro.”
you must see LSE.
ch-ch-ch-changes…
me? i put in a 14 hour day and since it’s after midnight i guess i’m working thursday hours now.
computers are my best friend and worst enemy.

from the looks of this picture our place is in a jungle or something…
soooo, i must admit i was not giving the gators enough credit… win by 7. i am embarrassed of the prediction but i honestly did not know they were that good. sure, they can be really good against troy, but i thought tennessee might give us a run… anyway, i’m glad i was wrong. this sure makes the season into an interesting one. the gators look really hard to beat. we did get the rush of fans after the game. even some new faces we have not seen. the wait never went too long. i think only one table waited an hour. for us, that is good for a saturday night. we watched the game in the kitchen on a real fuzzy screen tv.
i really do have a soft place in my heart for the employees. they work so hard and do such a good job. makes me happy and proud. i like seeing them all, enjoy working with them all. we have a pretty good time up there.
so, we’re gonna take a couple days off. we’ll come back tuesday and make some pizza that will rock your world. oh, i meant to mention that last night i think i had the best pizza of my life. it was a slice of tempeh, red onions, carrots, and zucchini. perfectly crispy and just the right amount of everything. by the time i was chewing that last bit of crust i was certain i would wait an hour and a half to get a table and get a slice like that. in reality, i had waited about 6 hours for it, since i had gotten to work. i see all these pies go out all night and it sure makes one hungry. my cheese slice tonight was definitely a top 10 ever. i wonder what they do that makes it so good? ha

you might see this.
my friend john takes the best photographs. when he gives me a disc of photos they are always the prize of my library. so, we are printing up new postcards. garden, junk shop, sign, ridgeline…
i have been crazy about this song and it’s ringing in my head. by the deep and holy sea. let me see if i can find a link…
the deep and holy sea
i mean to tell you, october 3rd is your big chance to catch something unique. the song ‘a fierce and panick squall’, it makes me crazy it is so good.

tonight was quite busy. this is the second week in a row i have heard the song ‘kickass’ come on by the silos and all he says the whole song is “she’s kickass.” and both times i think, this must sound strange to somebody… on fridays lots of times they let me listen to the house music in the kitchen. they tolerate my gospel, bluegrass and country because i throw in some alternative, big names, and downright classic good music too. if i leave the kitchen for more than 4 minutes, my music is off.

the place is reaching a critical mass. tonight we stretched the limits of our capabilities. but we had a crew that could win a reality show. i could name off the 17 or 18 of them but i’m tired. tim asked me what i thought was going to happen in tomorrow’s big game, and i told him this…
“you know, you just can’t win every game, but against tennessee i think the gators may win by 7. ”
i’ll be listening on the radio, making pies for the smartest fans… and the non-fans.

here it is thursday late, practically friday, and somehow i forgot to tell you that monday, tuesday, AND wednesday, i went to buddha’s belly, for lunch. parker owns the place, dustin is the head cook, how can you not hope for their success? the fries i had were the best in town. skin-still-on fries. the sweet potato fries were perfect too, but the fried zucchini was the best. i know, i know, fried fried and fried, but i tell you, you gotta eat something fried once in a while so you feel alive… and it might as well be at buddha’s belly… (i wonder if christians will go there?)
the burger was good. i love the beehive bakery bread they use.
the steak and the chicken were both slightly overcooked but c’mon, it’s only the 1st, 2nd and 3rd day they’ve been open.
they have fanta orange which i love. they have outdoor seating which is key. they have lots of curry and rice dishes, tempeh, portobella burgers, and lots and lots of coconut milk. if i were you i would get a bite there and start to decipher the menu. the food there will be good, but like steamers you will have to figure out what is your thing. do you want the twister on a bun with tempeh? or the steak on greens with extra hot sauce? like rolls and bowls, you have to figure out how to order. i’m so happy they are open and even though i haven’t actually seen it yet, i think they will be serving 6 flavors of sweet dreams ice cream which is a real treat to now have at that closer location to me. i like closer location because i gotta eat something besides pizza once a week whether i want to or not.

well, last night guerilla grass played lightnin’ salvage. they are good. there weren’t many people back there experiencing it, but it was a nice time nonetheless. there is now the story of the guy last night who went up and tipped the band 20 bucks. then he sat down and listened for 25 minutes. then as he was leaving he stopped and told the band how good they were, even though he couldn’t always hear the vocals. he handed them a hundred dollars. let me tell you, something like that gets talked about a lot and the band was stoked too, as you can imagine.
tonight, at LSE, the klezmer kats were back to their old tricks, packing out lightnin’ salvage with fun, high intensity music that makes you feel like you’re dizzy and in a dream at the same time. when they play, i feel like LSE is finally living up to it’s potential, like they are the quintessential junk shop band (with due respect to blitzbergen of course.) people are dancing, eating pizzas and salads, kids are playing. it’s surreal.
october 3rd will be our first late night show in months. it should be a cool fall evening with some really nice laid back bands. mark your calendar because it’s a wednesday night and it will be awesome. show starts at 10pm.
some of you might have seen the alligator ran an opinion piece about satchel’s. i responded to the writer without even imagining that they might print my letter to him but they did. which is fine but i might have actually taken a little more time to put together a response had i thought they would print it. silly me, it only made sense to print my response the next day. annyway, i’m sure it is good advertising for the students. we do see more and more of them out there. we get all sorts of clientelle. locals, working class, upper and middle class, black, white, asian, students, very very old and very very young at our place. maybe every place is that way but ours seems especially so. that is probably my favorite thing about the place, the diversity of our customers.
i got things to do besides write here all night. i’ll talk to you later.

honestly, it takes me all day sunday to recover from my week at work. i guess it’s probably that way for everyone, except some people may do their major recovery on saturdays. i am physically and mentally worn out and i am really trying to come to terms with tha simple fact that i’m getting older. i always thought somehow i would be like the yogis who stay limber and clear headed into their 80′s. i think about old men who can do crazy yoga poses and they always seem so young and vibrant and glowing and in the back of my mind, i thought it would be like that for me. except i do not do yoga, and i can’t really even touch my toes very well. as much as i tell myself that i’ll stop eating chocolate all day and drinking beers and eating burgers, i keep on doing all of those things with gusto. ah, the struggles of life…
today our calendar said it was grandparents day. well, that suited me fine because i really needed a home cooked meal and a nap. so over to grandmothers and the kids are having a blast and i get to take a long nap too. that was the best nap i can remember. the phone never rang one time. the house was silent because the kids were at grandmothers, and even the yappy dogs didn’t yap. this was a sunday to remember. laid back, ate well, watched usa vs. brazil in soccer, ate 2 mom cooked meals and homemade chocolate chip cookies. that is hard to beat.
on a quick work note, there is some jerk who loves to tag the mens room with 911 conspiracy theory websites. he brings his sharpie marker in there every week or two and i’m close behind with my green paint. i really want to take my sharpie in there and write stuff like, “the guy who tags this bathroom every week is a jerk and makes my life more miserable.” but i don’t think it would make any difference. give me a break already, like it’s not hard enough to make all the pizzas right, and keep checking to see if they dump the dumpster on the right day, and fix the broken fax machine, or deal with a flood in lightnin’ salvage, and now i’ve got some idiot thinking it’s cute to tag my bathroom every week. i’d install a camera in there to catch the guy if it didn’t seem like a perverted thing to do.
he’s got me. he’s in the most private place, the door is locked, he’s got a sharpie and a mission.

on a brighter note, the weather sure is getting nice, eh? cool breezes… we didn’t even use the a/c the last couple days.

if we actually get all the things done on the lightnin’ salvage website, it will take you a week to see it all. but it may take us a few years to get there… i probably spend too much time on this computer…
go to the gators and what a weekend it was. we are much busier than i would have expected on saturday and slower than i expected on friday. goes to show that you just can’t predict so good in the restaurant business. you just can’t tell when folks will be hungry.
velveeta underground played LSE tonight. you can’t help but like those maniacs. the pies were top notch again but we did have a few mistakes and the biggest one i made. i sent out the wrong pizza to a table at the end of the night. and they were so hungry they just ate it. we got some late after the game gator fans in. i love to see all the dressed up gator fans on game days. warms my heart.

i was so busy tonight at one point that i did not have 3 minutes, honestly 180 seconds, to stop and say hi to my mother and her friends who were at table 11. i can’t believe it was that busy but i was honestly about as behind as i could possibly be and leaving the kitchen for 3 minutes would have thrown a huge wrench into the program. i love going into the dining room to chat. i’d chat for an hour with some lunatic trying to sell me insurance. but i was just to slammed to leave my post for even a minute, much less 3. in a way it seems like the whole operation is just balancing on a wire sometimes, like a thin dime rolling on a tight rope wire… ready to slip to a tinkling crash at any moment. we work hard in there to roll on the rope.
i might have to just end the blog in december. it might just be my fate.
all will be revealed, stay tuned.

oh, i did want to mention the scene cuisine review from last weeks scene magazine… satchel’s got a pretty nice review. they used old photos but gave us good remarks. david carlson, the restaurant critic, even got it right about the van, that it’s a 60′s ford. it was perfect timing since this is pretty much the slowest time of the year for us, so the article gave us an unexpected bump. cheers to d.c., whoever and wherever he is.
speaking of restaurants, buddha belly is slated to open friday night. i’m excited to have a new spot to eat. i can’t make it friday night, but i may get ther for lunch on saturday. parker is a really nice guy and i think he’ll have a winner in that new place. get this, he tried to rent the old kentucky fried chicken on main street but they wouldn’t rent to him because he’s not a big corporate place. isn’t that a joke? i have no doubt he could do twice the business as kentucky fried chicken did, but some idiot wants a corporate fast food chain there instead of a thriving local restaurant. good thing he found another spot, because restaurant locations are hard to come by in this town.
i went to the new haile breakfast place, sisters, about a week or two ago. very nice. boutiqey. good food. big city sort of atmosphere. we sat outside. it was fun. i won’t be out that way much early in the morning but it could be a saturday or sunday destination once in a while.
tried to find the korean bar-b-q place tonight but it seems to have gone away. the sign on the door said they were moving but we could not figure out where.
tonight was new song night at lightnin’ salvage. anyone can sign up to play a few songs. it was nice. a good crowd, laid back, cool people. i think it’s going to be a hit… the first wedesday of each month.

last weekend kicked my butt. we were slammed friday night and saturday night. the wait was over an hour and a half both nights and to-go food was that long too. we were just getting hammered and in retrospect it all seems fine but when we’re in it we’re blown away. if my weekend at work was a hard drive, it would have crashed. i was stressed to the limit of my abilities, using every ounce of energy i had to get through the onslaught of orders.
my actual computer will never be quite the same. i am noticing all sorts of new personality traits with this new hard drive. i wish i understood how these things worked. right before it crashed i had 4 work emails download, customers asking me things, and then it crashed and i have no way to write those people back. this makes me feel bad because i am so good at being responsible and answering emails and now there’s going to be a couple folks out there who just think i’m bad at my job.
i remember having so much to say over the weekend but no computer to tell… now, my head is in a different place and i don’t have much to say. i have this one plan, to stop this blogging by the end of the year. it’s a long story as to why. maybe i’ll tell it some other night.

my hard drive crashed which is why i haven’t been posting. i’m getting things set up now and we will be back with plenty to ramble about soon.