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I've been cooking all week for today's company feast, of homemade beef wellington. It's our tradition for the boss to cook the annual feast for everyone.
Alex, my first employee, has been asking for me to make this for years, because he used to work at the famed Mandarin Oriental hotel as a waiter, where he'd serve Beef Wellington to guests, but as an employee he never got to taste it.
I've been practicing for a month, as I'd never made it either, and made 3 practice runs over the weeks. In the end, I changed it up a bit, as I find filet mignon to be bland, and use slow cooked organic Australian beef cheeks instead. King trumpet mushrooms (similar texture to foie gras), browned shallots and black truffles as the stuffing inside a butter puffed pastry. A tried to make a duck liver mousse, as kind of a poor-man's foie gras (and kinder too), but wasn't as successful, and came out more like a liver quiche (yum!).
We've got so much to be grateful for, as the Decent team has really come together this year. I have a hiring policy of letting people have a try at working for us, and not being too fussy about their resume, so they have a stab at getting the job.
I do this because the college I went to, Bates College in Maine, makes SAT scores optional, and weighs the in-person interview as the most important criteria. They do this because they found that test scores and grades were a very poor predictor of future college success. As it happens, Bates was the only school that let me in, out of 14 I applied to. I was in the bottom 1/3rd of my high school class, but in fact, did succeed at Bates.
So, I take that lesson, and apply it to how I run Decent.
The downside is that we do hire more than we need to, and then have a high "drop out rate", just as a College would.
In the end, though, I love everyone who is here now, with me at Decent.
To thank them all for making this work, absolutely every employee got a significant and permanent raise today, right before desert was served.
So thank you everyone who has been reading my posts this year, as you're all part of the great year we've had. We feel all the more lucky for it, knowing how hard and awful it's been for many of you. Let's hope next year goes better.
ps: we are staying open through the holidays, and shipping every day.
Last year, we closed from the 24th to the 2nd, and we got quite a lot of grief from people for the long delay in getting their orders, as well as not having my best staff available to answer tech support. So now, we stay open. We might be slightly sleepy from over-eating, but we'll do our best to help.
-john
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