i love my job. i love my pizza and salad. i love my co-workers. i am truly blessed to be in such a position. seems that i am still challenged by my job as well. we had a very busy weekend and there is a lot to think about with so many folks waiting for us to make their perfect lunch or dinner. we have a journal we keep in the kitchen where we keep notes about techniques for making the perfect pie. in a few years we may have to publish it but then everyone will know all the secrets… like the poker champs who write books about how to win at poker… every position has it’s challenges. the dishwasher has an incredibly difficult job. not once tonight did i hear, “we need plates” or “we need silver.” the salad station is insane too, as one can have more than a dozen salad tickets to make and each one is made to order… the expeditor has to make sure each pie had the right ingredients and gets to the right table…. the 3 pizza positions have a list of challenges each…

anyway, it’s fun. it’s fun because it is challenging still. we mess up sometimes. i made 2 mistakes friday night and 1 tonight. no one else made any… well, that’s not true, a calzone got put on the oven that was supposed to go out to a guy waiting. he finally checked back an hour later when his buzzer never went off. mistakes do happen. sorry for that guy, if you’re reading. we’ll buy you a beer next time, or give you a piece of cake.

my mistakes were missing toppings on pies, and we made it right. we heat them up in a skillet and add them after the bake. it works better with some toppings than others. but i should be more careful. pies were looking awesome tonight. i hope you got one.

… to get some pizza after drinking at the ole barn.

well… it’s been a crazy day for me. i’ve had this stiff neck for 2 days. i could barely move yesterday and it is still with me today. the only reason i could go to work at all was because my wife rubbed it for half an hour. i went in at lunch and as soon as we got completely slammed, i was notified that all of the employees cars had been ticketed. we’ve been parking on the right of way of a nearby street and someone with the christmas spirit decided to complain and so i’ve got 11 parking tickets to pay. merry christmas.

so, instead of working bussing tables and helping in the kitchen, i spent the next few hours trying to figure out where i was going to park my many employees… the stiffness in my neck only worsening…

i came home for about an hour and then went back up for the dinner rush. lord have mercy, it was quite the rush. i don’t know but it might have been one of the busiest days of the year. i spent the entire night stressing out in the kitchen trying to figure out how i could help speed up the orders, but the kitchen is crowded with 6 people and my 250 pounds makes an unbearable seventh. i finally settled down in front of the oven, manning the cooking pies so the other guys could concentrate on making pies… now i’ve got a pretty severe headache to add to my terribly stiff neck. and the lightnin’ salvage cash register died in the middle of it’s busiest day of the year…

however, i do not mean to sound ungrateful for all the business, as i love to be at work when it’s busy and i love to be in the middle of it all. i bottled 20 salad dressing bottles tonight because our prep guy had underestimated how many we would need on this our biggest selling salad dressing day of the year. today we sold over 50 bottles of dressing.

the new t-shirts that came out recently are flying off the shelves. but alas, now that christmas is upon us i imagine things will start to settle back out. i am so happy about the next 2 days off and seeing the kids on christmas morning and spending time with my mom and in-laws. we’ve got lots of great meals planned together and none of them are pizza. i’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing.
merry christmas

ok. i’m trying something new. i’ve uploaded a lot of pictures to make a pizza quilt… and if you want to see them better you should be able to click on them and get a slightly bigger version. i’m interested to see how this looks… i’ve been having an awesome time making pies this weekend. when i got back from new york, jeff cooked the pies that friday night and i hurt my finger pretty badly (smashed it in a door) and so i let josh cook saturday night last week and i wore a bandage and glove and just made pies. but this weekend jeff was graduating and so i ended up cooking both nights. since i was in new york and saw how hot their ovens were and how quickly they cooked, i decided to crank up the ovens 25 degrees and just pay close attention. man, was it ever fun. not only did the pies get as crispy or crispier than ever, but they cooked a lot faster. with the ovens so full and me having the doors open so much, i think we need the extra heat on the weekends and it helps us move the pies faster too, it just takes some extra focus and skill. this weekend it seemed like the pies were better then ever. i don’t know if it was the hotter ovens or just that i was well rested and happy about the holidays but i’ve never seen such great looking pies in my life. so tonight, saturday, at about 8:30, i finally decided to get out the camera and get some pictures. now, these are just a few of the pies coming out at the end of our weekend. i realized that there may be some people reading the blog who haven’t even been to the pizza place and so some pictures would be helpful. i talked to a pizza man a couple weeks back who has a shop in georgia and he found our website and said he had read the blog. so, here’s some pictures… it might look to some outsiders like our pies are too loaded with toppings and i might agree if they weren’t still so crispy. nobody likes a soggy pie and so loading them down and keeping them crispy is a great combination. anyway, i was very excited to cook some great food this weekend. there was a graduation at UF so i know we fed some graduates and their families, and with the holidays here, i know we fed some out of town visitors as well.
we’re always trying new stuff. this week it’s thumbnail photos and hotter ovens.

go ahead, click on some of the thumbnails and look at the close-ups. you can see all the toppings… look at that steak and cheese calzone. check out those slices.

so, i wrote my story of my trip to new york and you can read it by clicking here. my friends who understand all things technical both came through for me in making a link. the story is long, so not for those of you in a hurry. i stayed up until 3 am writing it a couple nights ago because the trip was still fresh in my mind and i hardly needed to check my notes. tonight was the satchel’s christmas party at my house and all but 3 employees were able to come. with so many bringing friends, there must have been 70 people over here. since i knew this big event was on the horizon, i wanted to purge and express the last event before it faded away behind me. life is sweet for me. i lead a charmed existence. love to all.

i can’t figure out how to link to my story, my safari quit working, and i had a rough night at the joint.
i hope to get some technical help tomorrow, i’m using my wife’s computer, and tomorrow’s a new day.

i went to new york to see that morandi show… what a show it was… but i also got down on some new york pie. yes, satchel, the king of pizza went to the big city to see what all the fuss is about. i’ll have a report for you soon. just keep checking in. i will tell you what i learned in my 72 hour pizza marathon. i will give you the pro’s opinion. i wish i had the time to break it all down for you, but i’ve got some catching up to do… soon… soon…

looks like we just crossed the 100,000 visitors on the website. that is great news. but not as great as the gators… i woke up and said to my wife, “wasn’t that a great game?” seems like all i did today was think back on that game…

on a side note, here’s a couple photos of paintings by my favorite painter, morandi, who has his first show in america right now at the met in new york…

i could look at these all day… check out more here

you lucky blog readers, you get a sneak peek at the new satchel’s SEC commemorative t-shirt to come out soon. this is a rough sketch of course but you can see how cool it is.

i tell you, i was excited. i had a few friends over and we were pumped. we kept saying over and over, “this is the biggest game EVER!… and it’s happening RIGHT NOW!”
we must have high fived and said that 20 times. the amazing thing about that game was the momentum pendulum. i mean in that third quarter i thought there was no way we could beat that team. they were marching and moving like mad. there guys seemed 100 pounds heavier each and there were at least 2 if not 3 times in the game when they had all the momentum and looked unbeatable. and then the same could be said for the gators. i don’t have to tell you this, you saw the game but man, wasn’t it incredible?
i actually have lost my voice somewhat from screaming.
the restaurant was dead, like we probably should have been closed it was so dead. but we were open and i went in after the game to see if we would get a pop but we didn’t. but i then came home and started drawing away. why i didn’t know to draw this last week or last month i’ll never understand because i knew that we were going to win this thing…

anyway, i had this one bumper sticker idea but not sure if i will do it or not… FIRST OBAMA, THEN THE GATORS… CELEBRATE AT SATCHEL’S.

my mom has a huuuge dining table and it still wasn’t big enough for this past holiday. she always does a nice job of setting the table. i’m pretty sure i showed pics in previous years of the table. anyway, the food was amazing. i’d list everything we had but you know what the deal is, piles of great food… even in hard times it’s amazing what so many of us have… friends, family and food.

so, tonight is a tuesday. the restaurant was real slow. we stay pretty busy on the weekends but there’s usually not a wait on weekday nights these days. lennie kesl and i have a new show up. 8 new paintings of mine and some really great new works by lennie. i’m pretty excited about the gators and jake worked for me last saturday through the uf/fsu game and has agreed to work this weekend too through the sec title game. i need to make sure to beef up jake’s christmas bonus. if we were going to be real busy i’d go ahead and be there but we are pretty dead during the games.

hope all ya’ll had a good thanksgiving. it’s a good time of year to remember to give to charities, they need it more than ever this year. here’s a snapshot of some of the dishes we had, the sweet potato casserole, rolls and pies are on a different counter…