The Joys of Crowdfunding
August 19th, 2013 | Rachel
Remember my first catering gig at the film set? We did it as a barter for our Kickstarter video. Well, the video is not only finished and awesome, the whole campaign is coming to an end in less than two days. Please check out the video and consider supporting my new food business as we expand from a catering company to a food truck.
Initially, I thought I wanted a truck because they are trendy and a great way to test a food concept in a range of geographical areas. Now that I have done some outdoor catering, I know that having a truck also reduces the amount of heavy equipment that has to be unloaded and loaded (and sometimes rented) and includes everything we need to be up to health code (a catering tent at a public event in Sonoma County, for example, requires netting, hand and utensil washing facilities, and lots of sterno and ice to keep the food at the proper temperatures). And customers think trucks are way coolers than tents.
Check out our video and consider donating to our cause in exchange for some pretty cool rewards. The campaign ends at midnight Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, August 21.
Here’s the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1208035185/financial-fuel-for-the-drums-and-crumbs-food-truck
Unexpected Results: Redux
July 20th, 2013 | Rachel
Wow, another month passes. I can’t believe the week is over much less a month since I last posted something. The business is slowly crawling toward our vision, and if you want to see what we have been doing, check out our Facebook page: http://facebook.com/drumsandcrumbs.
It occurred to me tonight that while I wrote about taking the California bar exam, then failing it (by just a few miserable points), and taking it again, I haven’t written anything about the fact that I passed! In fact, I’ve already been sworn into the State Bar of California. As a special treat, my mom and grandmother were visiting the week they held a swearing in ceremony in Oakland. [Note: if you found this post after searching for the California bar exam, I wrote a little blurb about that at the end.]
Standing with my proud mother and grandmother
Taking an oath to have integrity… meaningful even if I don’t practice again
My fan section at the swearing in ceremony
Then we had a few post-ceremony celebratory beverages.
Nothing cooler than having a cocktail (or beer) with your grandmother
This was my grandmother’s first trip to California, and we covered a lot of ground.
Hiking in Muir Woods
Driving out to see the Pacific Ocean at Stinson Beach
Strolling along the Embarcadero in San Francisco
Touring a wineries in Napa and Sonoma
Drinking wine at Loxton Cellars
Drinking champagne at Domaine Carneros
It was a very special visit and a fitting way to celebrate my new life in California and, of course, passing the bar.
And now a note to the bar exam takers out there:
Every now and then I check my Google Analytics to see how people end up reading my blog. Around bar exam time, I have been getting a lot of traffic from search terms ranging from “california bar exam overwhelmed” (I totally know that feeling) to “how much studying bar exam” (I’ve seen that one a fair amount). My advice here is specifically for attorneys who have practiced in another state and are taking a second exam after being out of school for several years.
First, the February exam, at least at the Oakland Convention Center, is so much more chill than the July exam. I spoke to a few first time test takers who missed the July exam for whatever reason, but it is mostly second-time takers and attorneys. If you are wondering when to take the exam, I recommend doing it in February. Fresh law school graduates taking it for the first time are kind of annoying. When I took the exam the first time last July, I had several of such test takers try to talk to me during the breaks about the section we just completed. In fact, the kid beside me wouldn’t stop talking to me about it until I told him to stop talking unless he could talk about something besides the exam. At the February exam, I didn’t have anyone try to force that sort of conversation on me.
Second, I talked to several attorneys who had practiced in other states and were taking the California exam for the second time, and we pretty much all felt the reason we failed the first time was because we tried to view the exam as experienced attorneys and not as law students. For the second attempt, I picked up a big book of model test answers for every subject on the exam and re-learned how to answer an essay like an unsophisticated law student. That made answering the questions a lot faster, and I’m certain I was able to rattle off more than the needed number of points of law and whatever to achieve passing scores on each essay. I checked in with a few of the attorneys who I had talked to about this mistake the first time around, and they all passed the second time.
I only failed the first time around by 16 out of the 2000 points, so it would have only taken small adjustments to push me over. That being said, a lot of attorneys do pass the first time around, so don’t think it is impossible :-)
I’ve gotten emails in the past from people asking about the exam, and even though I’m no expert, I did take the California exam twice (after passing New York without question on the first try) and I’m happy to talk to you if you want: rachel (at) idratherbeinfrance (dot) com.
Oh, and don’t be an idiot like me and bring a digital watch into the exam. Not only will they confiscate it and never give it back, they’ll give you a scary Notice of Violation of Exam Rules (which didn’t effect anything).
If you are taking the bar exam at the end of the month, good luck!
Good Eatin’ (Or Good Buyin’)
June 19th, 2013 | Rachel
Bounty from the farmer’s market
I wouldn’t call myself particularly health conscious. My love of cocktails and pie should be beyond question at this point. I also sell fried chicken for a living.
The constant ebb and flow of fad diets and exercise routines in my Facebook newsfeed inspires an internal eye roll on a nearly daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a steady workout routine. I happen to love going to the gym, and I am currently getting into long distance cycling. I also am fully cognizant of the temporary nature of these fads that have been so clearly illustrated through status updates and photos.
I started thinking about all of this today as I sat down to eat a plate of local organic salad greens topped with local organic tomatoes and homemade hummus and pesto, the latter of which was made with herbs grown in my own garden.
Local spring mix with tomatoes, almonds and homemade hummus and pesto
When I moved to California, I instantly lost ten pounds. I credited it to the fresh air and need to drive to the bars (and not knowing anyone with which to spend time at said bars). Now that I live in Sonoma, I can honestly say I feel the healthiest I’ve ever remembered feeling. The contents of my daily meals has drastically improved from whatever I was eating two years ago.
For example, I eat vegetables. So what, you say? Well, I’ve never really liked vegetables. Some people talk about craving a big plate of leafy greens. I talk about how crazy those people are. I also eat a lot of fruit, something that usually did not appeal to me because the fruit sold in most grocery stores doesn’t really taste like anything and has a terrible texture. I don’t regularly eat meat anymore, and except for what I sell, I have just about stopped eating processed sugar and flour altogether (and even then I bake with organic flour and sugar). I’d even say a gross majority of the food I eat is organic.
All of these things fall into a number of the fad diets I chastised above. At various points in my life, I think I even consciously tried to adopt some of these principles but never followed through. Yet, somehow here I am eating homemade organic granola and local berries for breakfast and couldn’t feel more satisfied.
First batch of homemade granola… so much cheaper to make at home!
So what gives?
The difference, and the reason I even bring this up, is the motivations behind not the food consumption but the food purchases.
Specifically, these motivations are my concern for and support of the local community and economy and the effect certain agricultural practices have on both a global and personal health level. I’m not going to go into these things in detail. They are all complex issues with no real consensus.
Suffice it to say, and without diving too deep, these are beliefs that I hold that are fundamental to my identity as a human being on this earth. I’d put this kind of motivation right up there with primal instinct and religion.
The motivation to fit into some societal norm or even to feel better or be stronger can certainly inspire change. But even those things are somewhat amorphous. On the other hand, these social, economic, global and personal health motivations were strong enough to convince me to leave a city that I absolutely adored and start my own business in a town of 20,000 people (and hopefully become mayor of said town one day).
What’s the point of all of this, you ask, other than sounding like a Northern Californian cliché? The point is, I know a lot of people out there struggle with eating “healthy” (which will mean different things to different people).
For me, once I made the conscious decision to buy local and organic (or otherwise responsibly farmed) and to start preparing more food at home, the rest took care of itself. I never thought to limit my meat or processed flour consumption (which probably would not have been successful because I really really really like cookies). It just happened without me even noticing. As an added level of inspiration, I find eating homemade and home grown food to be exceptionally gratifying. The most exciting radish I’ve eaten so far is the one I pulled out of the dirt myself and rinsed with a garden hose.
First pick from the garden
In my experience, the moment I tell myself I can’t have something is the moment that thing is the only thing I can think about. Had I cut myself off from beef, I would be dreaming of hamburgers and boeuf bourguignon. On the other hand, now that I’m trying to stick to locally sourced and responsibly raised meat, my beef consumption is limited by both price and availability. That is not to say I wouldn’t take a trip to Peter Luger in a second if I could. Mmmm….Porterhouse for two.
Anyway, if you are struggling to eat healthier, perhaps you should reconsider your motivation.
Thanks for reading…. Now let me brag about my garden :-)
This is a photo of my garden at the very beginning (note self-installed automated irrigation):
And here it is today!
It’s Alive!
April 20th, 2013 | Rachel
Self portrait from the Drums & Crumbs test kitchen
Last night my business had its very first job. We catered a film set for a short film called Dub Step that one of Arthur’s buddies is directing. Over the course of the day, things went from nervous and excited to confident and prepared to borderline disastrous to actually kind of successful. I’m thankful our first large-scale project (25 people) was for a forgiving friend. We have plans to practice this volume a few more times before we take a chance on client who doesn’t already love and adore us.
But first, let me back up a few steps and say that Drums & Crumbs is roaring along.
Most excitingly, we have a logo!
Our “look” is also going to incorporate a gingham patter in both the blue and this really fun pinkish red:
Now that we have that part figured out, we are working hard on getting a proper website. I’ve been working on a lot of the content, like the “Our Story” text and the menus. I think the funnest thing I did last week was draft our catering menu (which probably doesn’t sound very fun, but I loved doing it).
Arthur and I are also putting together a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the final 15% of our start up/first year budget. That will be launched as soon as we can get a video together (which will hopefully be in May). I don’t want to spoil all of the surprises, but one of the rewards is going to be choosing a dish to be named after you or someone else that will be sold during your birthday week. And you’ll get a special birthday shout-out on the website. We have to replace our $150 level reward because ours involved wine and you can’t include alcohol as a reward, so if anyone has any ideas, do share. At our highest level, we’ll cater your 75-person wedding, complete with packaging in your wedding colors.
In addition to a logo, a website-in-the-making, and potentially all of our financing (really it’ll depend on securing a truck lender, which will be easier after the Kickstarter campaign), we also have a pretty well-tuned product! We’ve been in the test kitchen for the past two weeks experimenting and refining our recipes.
Arthur in the test kitchen
Some of the dishes, such as our cole slaw, collard greens, cobbler and biscuits, are pretty close to our vision. Our chicken recipe is perfect, but we are still working on the actual cooking process. The only recipe still in the air is the macaroni and cheese. I’ve gone through five in the past two weeks and still haven’t found what I am looking for, although someone did tell me last night that it was the best mac n cheese they’ve every had.
Leftovers from a test batch
We had an opportunity to cater a 10-person lunch earlier in the week but declined because we didn’t think the product was quite ready. As a result, the job at the film set was our official debut. The menu was straightforward: fried chicken, cole slaw, mac n cheese, biscuits, cobbler, iced tea and water. We had successful made all of those things multiple times before the big day, although the most servings we had done at one time was eight. The estimate for the film set was 24.
In the past two weeks, we have purchased the ingredients several times and have stocked up on most of the necessary preparation and cooking supplies. We are starting to get a grasp of the order in which we should do the unpacking, washing, chopping, boiling, mixing, melting, frying, baking and washing.
From talking to other caterers, apparently the standard practice is to start out of one’s kitchen, but we’ve opted to run a legitimate operation and are working out of licensed commercial kitchens. It does cost money to rent the kitchen space (around $25 an hour ‘a la carte’ but less if you commit to a certain quantity of time), but advantages include copious prep space, a ten-burner gas stove, four ovens (two of which are high capacity convention ovens), a high pressure pre-rinse sprayer and a deep three-compartment sink, a dish/pot/utensil sanitizer with a 60-second cycle, and walk-in fridge storage. Its also the legal way to operate a food business, which my lawyerly background can’t ignore.
When we do get the truck, we will have to do all of our prep and cooking in a commercial kitchen, so its also good practice for that.
The day of the film set job started off great. The client wanted the food served at 7:30pm, so we needed to be at the kitchen, which is 45-minutes away, by 3:00pm. This meant we had to leave the house at 1:45pm to get the perishable ingredients. The drive between Sonoma and the kitchens we’ve been using is rather stunning. Imagine a two-lane highway through rolling hills covered in grapevines and vast pastures with clusters of dairy cows, sheep and picturesque barns. Usually we ride with the windows down and the radio on. Its not a bad way to spend an hour and a half each day.
Our time in the kitchen also started off pretty well. We unpacked and got to chopping and shredding. I chopped the cabbage and other vegetables for Arthur’s cole slaw, and he shredded the cheese for my mac n cheese (I really don’t like manually shredding things and need to research more efficient methods). We knew the chicken was going to take some time because we had 50 pieces to cook and we were doing it on the stove. The sides and cobbler were finished without a hitch, but the chicken ended up taking quite a bit longer than predicted. Two and a half hours longer, actually.
As a result, we were almost three hours late to our first catering job. Stress levels were elevated, but we held it together. I was expecting the worst but trying to commit to make the best of whatever happened. We arrived (after some difficulty locating the set at the dark and desolate marina) just as they were finishing filming the first scene. The original plan had been to feed everyone before they got started, but we got everything set up in time for them to take a break between scenes and before a lot of the extras went home.
We hadn’t investigated the venue, something we will certainly be doing before our next catering job. Otherwise we would have realized we would be serving the food in an empty dirt parking lot under a single street light. We ended up recruiting a second vehicle to park next to us and had ourselves an old-fashioned tailgate out of the back of the cars. When the camera crew arrived, they added some of their LED lights to the set up to illuminate the food. It was not at all how we imagined it to be, but the actual serving was accessible and fluid, and there were enough random objects in the vicinity for people to perch on while they ate.
Catering the set of a short film
I think most of the people assumed we were right on time, and our “client” didn’t seem upset about the three-hour delay. I’m just thankful it happened under those circumstances, and now we have time to improve and practice our process to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
It is crazy to think that I have a food business that is actually up and running and open to the public. The food got rave reviews last night, and a lot of people took our business card and said they would refer us to their friends. Even with the chicken problems, I was pretty proud of what we produced. I’ll be even more proud when the chicken is cooked correctly and the sides are served while they are still hot. I’m interested to look back at this experience six months from now after we’ve done this many times to see how much better things are. By the way, Future Rachel, if you are looking back at this and things aren’t better, then you are doing something wrong.
On Choice
April 2nd, 2013 | Rachel
Wow, is it April already? I’m sorry, I know I have been neglecting you.
It’s been a weird time for me the past couple of months. I officially announced my new business and celebrated my 30th birthday at the end of January and then took the California bar exam (again) at the end of February. I won’t even pretend to predict how I did because I thought I did just fine last time, but I’m comfortable with my performance. I won’t find out the results until mid-May, and I’ll be two busy slingin’ fried chicken by then to care too much (which is a lie, I will inevitably care a lot while pretending not to). Then last month I had the mixed experience of breaking up with my boyfriend and moving to a new city. Despite this being my personal blog, I’m not going to say anything else about the former, but I will speak at length about the latter.
Yes, I am now a resident of the beautiful Sonoma, California!
Farewell to the prettiest town on the Monterey Bay: Capitola, California
My plant babies are all packed up and ready to go
Hello, Sonoma!
A sneak peak at my new house complete with an awesome backyard!
Oy, lots to unpack
In case you are late to the show, the reason I left a perfectly delightful coastal town on the central coast of California is that my business partner, Arthur, and I realized that Sonoma County would be a much better place to launch our food business. I was just past the one-year mark in Santa Cruz County when I left, so it was definitely bittersweet. I’ve always thought it takes a solid year to really feel like you live somewhere, and the past year was no exception. The thought of having to wait another year to start to feel like I finally belong somewhere again is a little tiresome.
Nonetheless, here I am, and both the business and I will be better off because of it.
I moved into a tiny house in the tiny census-designated area of Boyes Hot Springs. The house was built in the 1940s close to the shipyards on the bay but was later moved to this area. The whole neighborhood is made up of those cute, old houses. To complete the whole Mayberry-feel, I don’t even get mail service and had to get a post office box, which is within walking distance. In fact, I think I could get by with just a bicycle quite easily.
Arthur is now my roommate. His plan is to grow the business enough to get him back to San Francisco, although I can tell he appreciates the small-town life more than he thought he would. Its always interesting to live with a new person, and Arthur is no exception. Drawing the line between business and personal life is going to be tricky since we’ll both be working so hard and in close proximity, but we are trying to keep the business talk to formally scheduled meetings, most of which have occurred at the coffee shop down the street. Personally, I am trying to be more intentional with my personal time by engaging in certain hobbies, including cycling, gardening, and playing the guitar. I’m still wondering if I’ll ever meet anyone in this town who is my age. The predominant demographics in Sonoma are families and retirees. There’s not a lot going on job-wise for the young professional crowd.
On the business front, things are getting really exciting. We have been working with a graphic designer the past month or so to develop a logo and a design scheme. We made the final decision today, so I’ll be introducing all of that pretty soon. We battled the state for a couple of months to get a limited liability corporation application processed and finally prevailed. Right now I am working on the dozen or so other permits and certificates we will need. We’re also working with a bank and a lender to get a loan to purchase a food truck, and we are trying to get a commercial kitchen nailed down this week so we can work on our recipes and procedures and do a few catering gigs later this month. On top of that, we’re also figuring out the content for the website and are in communications with several local farms regarding our ingredients. Yeah, its an exciting and busy time. Over a semi-celebratory dinner of Mexican beer, tacos, and enchiladas, Arthur and I were discussing how it was hard to feel like we are accomplishing anything because the to-do is growing a lot faster than we are crossing things off. Arthur says it was a sign we were doing something right.
I had been wanting to write an update on this blog for a few weeks now but couldn’t decide what to write about. I was finally inspired to sit down and write this post after I read this article about living by “default”:
So much of our lives consists of conditions we’ve fallen into. We gravitate unwittingly to what works in the short term, in terms of what to do for work and what crowd to run with. There’s nothing wrong with living from defaults, necessarily, but think about it: what are the odds that the defaults delivered to you by happenstance are anywhere close to what’s really optimal for you?
In other words, we seldom consciously decide how we’re going to live our lives. We just end up living certain ways.
In all likelihood, what you’ve inherited is nowhere near what’s best for you. Chances are very slight that there isn’t a drastically better neighborhood for you out there, a more kindred circle of peers, a much better line of work, and a much more rewarding way to go about your day than the way you do. Your level of fulfillment and sense of peace with the world depend on how well-matched your values are to the life you’re actually living. There’s no reason to believe they’ll match well by accident.
I’d rather be in France. started when I realized I wasn’t living the life I wanted to live. I went to law school out of academic curiosity and sort of fell into a pretty good job at a large law firm in New York City. It was not a “bad” life by any stretch of the word. I made a lot of money, lived in the greatest city in the universe, met tons of brilliant and talented people, and garnered a lot of undue respect due to my job title. Still, it all happened as a default and not as a choice. Today I remembered a conversation I had with a law school classmate after I decided to move to France and open a bed and breakfast. She responded by saying she had been waiting to hear what I was really going to do with my life. I guess I had been waiting too.
I found it interesting that the writer of that article mentions the lack of conscious choice as to where one lives. That is something I have explored myself and has been a recent topic of conversation with friends. I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to move 3000 miles away to a city they only visited once and where they don’t know a soul — only a crazy person would do that. However, I am suggesting that you should live where you live by choice. Similarly, you should do what you are doing by choice. Maybe you would choose the very occupation that you “fell into,” but even recognizing that you had a choice and you made it can add a lot of meaning to your life. I had a therapist in New York who told me she always told her clients who complained about their jobs to start looking for a new job. Most of the time, they would realize that even though there were other options out there, they were already in the better situation. As a result, they were happier with their jobs even though nothing changed. The emotional and psychological difference between activity and passivity is pretty profound.
Anyway, I’m going to stop typing before I start going on a rampage, but I implore you to actively make choices.
