The upcoming book is in the 'Cover Design' stage. I hope the publisher has experts because I have no idea what the cover should look like. If you have a suggestion, please send it along.

Answers to a couple of questions:

1. Can the book be pre-ordered. Answer: Probably, but not yet.
2. Will you sign the book? Absolutely, until my arthritis says 'stop.'
3. Which Weblogs are in the Book? Here is the table of contents for the first three chapters.

During a recent lunch meeting, my guest asked me what led me to have a 40+ year career in the restaurant business. I blamed my mother, but for a very unusual reason.

My first restaurant job was as a crewperson at a Carrol's Restaurant, at the time a McDonald's equivalent: same prices, same products, different packaging. My first day on the job, the first thing I was asked to do was to make a strawberry shake. I put the shake cup under the spigot where the strawberry syrup was located, pushed down on the pump and shot a line of syrup right down the front of my clean apron.

I was moved to the counter area shortly after that and became pretty good at speedy service. Eventually I worked the grill area and did a little bit of part-time managing through the start of my sophomore year of college.

But let's go back to the beginning of the story.

When growing up, I was the oldest of eight children, and you might say that all of our meals were what would be referred to today as ‘bulk meals.’ With so many family members, our dining room was actually converted to, and needed as, a bedroom. So, we took all our meals at the kitchen table, which was actually an eight-foot picnic table. Oh, it was classy enough with a Naugahyde cover on the top and the benches. It was pushed against the wall during non-meal periods to allow some flow in the kitchen and pulled out for meals.

We did have assigned seats, and we did eat dinner in shifts. What was put in the center of the table for dinner was what was available for dinner. It wasn’t "use it or lose it," it was "eat it or lose it." 

I am a very fast eater to this day and that stems from the days when a plate of Weaver Fried Chicken was put on the table and when it was gone it was gone.

But, by far, the most memorable food from my childhood, were french fries. Here is why.

When my mom made them, she made them right. Frozen fries weren’t invented yet, so she’d take potatoes, a lot of potatoes for a family of nine or ten, peel them, slice them and rinse them. 

The magic happened after she removed them from the cooking oil. She’d place them in a brown shopping bag, (yes, the kind of bag that used to be free at the supermarket), dump in some salt and shake the bag to evenly coat the fries and remove the excess grease. 

Those fries were gourmet level, and I could eat them all day every day. I loved french fries.

I had started working at ten years old with an afternoon paper route that generated between $5 and $10 a week. When I was about thirteen, I graduated to nights and weekends as a clerk at the corner store in our neighborhood and became independently wealthy making $20+ per week.  

One day, after I turned sixteen, my mom took me aside and told me that a new fast food hamburger restaurant was about to open less than half a mile from our house. I looked at her quizzically because I had no idea where she was going with this information. 

She told me that if I got a job there, I would probably be able to eat free while I was working and they served, wait for it, french fries. With the chance to eat free french fries and make $1 an hour, or more, I was super excited.

I am not sure if I ran to the new Carrol’s Restaurant or rode my bike, but I was there in a hurry, eventually was hired and my dream really did come true. 

Every eight hour shift we got a 15-minute meal break. I would fill a tray with a literal mountain of french fries, sit on a milk crate outside the back door and eat french Fries for my entire break period. (There was no inside seating, even for employees).

As if that dream job wasn't enough, I also became very highly skilled at making french fries. I learned to:

• Lug the 50-pound bag from the storeroom to the barrel peeler, a round drum with grit paper inside. If you put some potatoes in, and spun them around, the skin came off. It was a real skill to know how many potatoes and how long to spin.
• When the potatoes were ‘peeled’ they were dropped into a sink of cold water, just like my mom used to do, to remove some of the starch.
• You then picked up a whole potato with a large fork, placed it in the dicer and pushed down, shooting the newly formed french-fry-shaped potatoes into more cold water to remove even more of the starch.
• After draining the sink, you’d place the potatoes into a fry basket, and fill it one-third, and ‘blanche’ the fries, meaning placing them in the fryer for a minute or two at a lower temperature. You might call it pre-cooking.
• When it was time to cook and serve, those potatoes would go into the fryer again for a couple of minutes and come out golden brown and after salting, they came in a close second to my mother’s french fries.

I was so good at my passion that I received several five cent raises for my french fry making performance over the three years I worked there.

Then, to those of you worried about artificial intelligence replacing key functions, the frozen french fry was invented and my french fry skills were no longer needed.

Those first frozen fries were a curiosity to us. They were all exactly the same length. We opened the bag and ‘manufactured’ three-inch French fries fell out. A short time later, maybe a shipment or two later, they started having varying lengths. 

Shortly after that, the potato peeler was removed. The dicer was removed. The washing sink was removed. The blanching stopped. The frozen french fries took over, and the very first restaurant work skill I mastered, was no longer needed.

I lost my enthusiasm for the "french-fry-only 15-minute breaks" and grabbed a burger or two but kept my broken heart to myself.

However, the love of french fries, ignited by my mom, had started me in a restaurant career that has taken me all over the country and to restaurants that served breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between. Not all of them served french fries, but my wife makes them the same way my mother did. Fresh potatoes, hand sliced, blanched, fried, salted (once in a while in a brown paper bag).

As I was writing this I remembered that I proposed to my wife when I realized that I loved her more than french fries, and I told her so. She was skeptical, but it's mostly true.

You may have never heard of Carrol’s Restaurant Group, but today they operate about 1,000 restaurants. In the mid-70's they converted their locations to Burger Kings and are now the largest franchisee in the world of that concept. They also have other concepts including Popeyes. They are based out of Syracuse, New York.

This is an actual patch from the uniform I wore at Carrol's Restaurant on Quincy Avenue in Braintree from 1967 through 1970. I finally found a use for it, after all these years.

I remember working the grill and cooking 24 burgers at a time. I remember picking up the parking lot because so many lazy slobs would just throw their empty bags and cups out the window. And I remember eating French fries, lots of French fries.

My sister Joanne also worked at Carrol's, but I don't think she had the same feelings for french fries that I had and have.

39 Days until the BAA Half-Marathon in Boston, leaving from Franklin Park Zoo and roaming along the Emerald Necklace of the city. Lots of hills. This will be my sixth half-marathon, and I was only terrified preparing for the first one.

My injuries from the summer appear to be healing nicely. Sunday, I ran 7 miles, and on Monday, I could still walk. I am building up to probably ten miles before the event. Ideally, I would run a practice half-marathon before the real one, but I have to see how I feel.

Last year I ran the route in three hours and four seconds in the 41-degree rain. This year my goal is three hours and three seconds. I want to be incrementally faster.