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Hello, Everyone:

Cheryl is one of those women of a certain age who ignored everything her mother did when it came to housework because she figured that while covering foreign wars and famines, she wouldn't need any practical skills. (She never took home ec or typing in an effort not to be ghettoized by her womanly skills.) Consequently, she has spent most of her adult life teaching herself to cook, sew, type with two fingers and do the basic household chores without the safety net of maman looking on. (Paul and his mother Sophie helped immeasurably with the learning to cook part, and Sophie was certainly never shy about commenting on the housekeeping.) Consequently, Cheryl finds herself drawn to old-fashioned Hints from Heloise type missives and particularly alert to comments such as "Remember, a full load dries faster than a small one."

This stupid piece of advice has been noted in several movies about parents sending their kids off to college recently, and it's really bugging Cheryl. She's tried it, and the full dryer loads take forever, ends up smelling a little mildewed and frequently gets tangled and wrinkled. So she asked Paul, who was taught to do laundry by his mother (who was taught to do laundry by nuns in the orphanage in France, albeit without the benefit of electric appliances.)

"That's ridiculous," said Paul, who doesn't do much laundry but always has lots of advice and criticism for those who are doing laundry. He also likes to help other people drive. "It might take longer to dry one thing by itself, but if you pack the dryer, everything gets twisted up."

So she asked Thomas, our waiter who is something of a laundry connoisseur. "I don't think it dries them faster, but it dries them fluffier for my money," Thomas said.

So why does this piece of laundry advice keep appearing in Hollywood movies?

A consumer guide in the Magazine Japan Inc. confirms Cheryl and Paul's rather obvious theory that "drying fewer items, and spacing them out, makes them dry faster," at least on clothing racks and clothes lines. In the Japanese language, folding racks are called "mono boshi sutanndo." This has nothing to do with electric dryers, but it's a nice little nugget. There was no advice there about electric clothes dryers, largely because most Japanese apartments are too small to accommodate major appliances and because women run the risk of having their panties stolen if they use commercial coin- operated laundry machines in Japan (called coin randori.)

A Frigidaire dryer manual suggests that clothes won't dry quickly when the dryer is overloaded because the "items need room to tumble freely for even drying." But the same manual also indicates that clothes won't dry properly when the load is too small. "Drying only one or two items does not save time or energy. Add similar items to the load to improve tumbling."

Cheryl suspects that energy conservation is at the root of the bad advice to pack the dryer. Sort of like when you tell a tall busboy not to stack dirty plates over the heads of the customers because he's going to spill food on them and he interprets that to mean:
"Never stack plates. Ever. Carry the dishes back to the kitchen one fork at a time." All hail the law of unintended consequences.

An energy-conservation pamphlet put out by Consumer's Energy: "Fill your clothes dryer, but don’t overload it. Your clothes will dry faster when they have room to tumble." The same pamphlet also advises to dry your laundry in consecutive loads "to take advantage of a heated dryer. Your laundry will dry faster and use less energy."

Jeffrey Orloff's "Your Guide to Saving Energy" further suggests:
"Separating heavier cottons from lighter weight laundry saves energy when drying. Lighter weight clothing dries faster, thus using less energy. When combined with heavier cottons, their drying time increases. When you separate clothing, try to make sure to wait and wash a full load. It costs practically the same amount to wash a small load of laundry as it does to wash a full load. If you do two small loads of laundry, you have just doubled your energy costs."

Our Pink Plate Special this week will be veal scallopine, sauce chasseur, that is, veal cutlets with field mushrooms, red wine, tomatoes, herbs and Madeira.

Chasseur literally means hunter's sauce, and it was originally used to disguise the flavor and texture of badly shot or tough old game birds. If it's effective for that, think how good it will be on melt- in-your mouth tender veal cutlets.
It is thought that Chasseur sauce was invented by Duke Philippe De Mornay (1549-1623), Governor of Saumur, and Lord of the Plessis Marly in the 1600s. He was a great Protestant writer and called the Protestant Pope. It is said that he also invented Mornay Sauce, Sauce Béchamel, Sauce Lyonnaise, and Sauce Porto.

The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY. For $30 per person, you get your choice of soup or salad, the featured entree, two selections from our cheese board or one of a couple of featured desserts, plus coffee, tea or espresso.

There are a few regular Chez Sophie customers we haven't seen at our new location, and we suspect it's because we never see them during the summer, which is basically when we opened in our new location in downtown Saratoga. So we thought, how can we signal to these faithful off-season regulars that summer is definitely over and we miss them?
Then we realized that the first of the local butternut squash is ready from removal from the vine and we knew we had the perfect answer.

Chef Paul and his long time cohort, souschef Mark Lawrence, make an exceptional handmade pasta stuffed with squash. We serve this with a sauce of butter and sage, and for those not observing vegetarian abstinence, a sprinkling of smoked bacon.

We take great pride in our vegetables at Chez Sophie. They are always fresh, and whenever the local growing season permits, many are local, and they are never overcooked (unless someone who really can ONLY eat mushy carrots begs us to leave them in the pan longer than we think is wise.) Chef's Paul's father, Joseph, has been known to threaten to withhold dessert from those who don't show proper respect to our veggies by devouring them.

So it is with some degree of unhappiness that we address something that we know many of our customers have heard about and are worried
about: bagged spinach. The Food and Drug Administration issued a voluntary recall on bagged spinach last week because of several incidences of E. coli linked to commercially packaged baby spinach, known in the industry as Cello bagged spinach. Since then, every leafy green thing on our plates have been eyed suspiciously by customers, who are afraid that way up in Saratoga, we don't know that spinach can kill you.

First off, let us say that we didn't have any Cello bagged spinach in the house when the voluntary recall was announced, and we hadn't for quite some time. It's not a bad product, and sometimes we use it in winter, but given the fact that it's summer, we have a ready supply of field greens from our local farmers. Rather than bagged spinach, this time of year we usually feature mixed spicy greens from Sunset Hill Farm as a sautéed side vegetable. There may occasionally be spinach in this mix, but it usually features a variety of kales, arugula and other greens. The key is, it's grown on a small farm in upstate New York that supplies us and a small number of other restaurants. The greens are grown in a pesticide-free hydroponic greenhouse, so it isn't doused with cow manure, which may be the source of the E. coli.

The E. coli outbreak has most recently been linked to a variety of leafy green products and the FDA has yet to identify the source.
There have been 9 cases of E. coli in New York and incidences in 22 other states. More than 100 people have gotten sick and there has been one fatality.

Composer Cole Broderick plays cool jazz on the baby grand in our lounge on Tuesdays and Fridays and during Sunday brunch, as well as during parties and special events. Cole is not only a talented native son, but has also received a "Critic’s Choice" citation from Billboard Magazine for his four CD set "Seasons of Saratoga." His newest solo CD, "In a Dream" was recently released.

Cheryl is getting very excited about the kids Halloween party on Tuesday, October 31. The other night she constructed a costume for Nico (court jester seems appropriate, ne c'est pas?) and ordered a bunch of glow in the dark skeletons and cobwebs for the courtyard, as well as majorly cool items for the goody bags. Her Mom is even talking about flying up from Arkansas for the festivities. The idea is that there are very few places to take kids on Halloween, especially if it falls on a school night. We took Nico trick or treating last year and barely ran into any other kids, so we assume everyone was at the mall begging for candy from the store employees.
We decided to use the upper dining room for a kids party, with games, magic tricks, crafts, prizes for the best costumes and a little kiddy buffet. The parents can come and have dinner in the lower dining room while the kids party and pop upstairs at will to enjoy the fun.

Notes on Nico and Léo:
Papa to Nico: "Did you sleep well son?"
Sleepy Nico: "Mmm-hmm. I had a dream."
Cheryl: "What was it about?"
Nico: "It was about when Daddy put the cloth on the table so it would dry."
Pause.
Cheryl: "Well. It looks like you inherited mundane dreams from your Mommy."

Our night manager, Scott, walked into the restaurant office and found Nico studiously playing games on the bookkeeper's computer. "Do you need this?" Nico asked politely. "No, I'm good," said Scott, stopping to watch the three-year-old dexterously maneuver on the computer.
"Can you read this line to me?" Scott asked mischievously.
"No," Nico replied. "I don't read Spanish."

We hope to see you soon,

The Parker family
at chez sophie
518-583-3538

Chez Sophie was founded in 1969 by sculptor Joseph Parker and his French-born wife, the late Sophie. The business moved to a vintage stainless steel diner in Malta Ridge, New York, in 1995. It is owned today by Sophie and Joseph's son, Paul Parker, and his wife, Cheryl Clark. In June of 2006, they moved the restaurant into their current location in The Saratoga Hotel on Broadway..

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