I created The Curiosity Project as a way to satiate my ever growing curiosity about the world around me. What is it like to change oil every day? How do restaurants really work? What would it be like to be a bartender? A barista? A maid? A gardener? A baker? I want to know and learn and do it all.

The first Curiosity Project adventure I had was in the kitchen of Bin 707 Foodbar. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love this restaurant! I was lucky enough to design their 2014 menus and Bin is definitely where my husband and I will head for a date night. (Bin is where we gathered with our families for brunch the day after our wedding.) The food at Bin rivals any restaurant I’ve been to, anywhere, and their now retired, gluten-free fried chicken is on my list of all time favorite meals. After working in the kitchen for a day, I now know why the food is so good.

Bin 707 is located in the Alpine Bank building in Downtown Grand Junction (just a couple of blocks away from Tangle). Executive Chef, Josh Niernberg and his wife Jodi, opened Bin 707 Foodbar downtown in 2011. The 1800 square foot restaurant has a modern feel with maroon chunky stripes on one wall, funky framed posters, perfect lighting and a copper bar. Just about any time of the day the restaurant is bustling with people. Happy servers skim around the crowded bar to serve up fresh, modern food, like the famous Bin Burger with fries and Truffled Aioli or the Colorado Lamb Tenderloin with Apple and Fennel Puree.

I arrived at Bin on a Thursday morning at 10am. Most of the kitchen prep staff had been there for hours already, pre-frying french fries (they go through 300lbs of potatoes every single day!), slicing cheese, baking desserts, etc. Josh introduced me to Production Chef, Clint Schaefers, who I had the pleasure of working with. When I got there he was pulling the oatmeal cookie that goes into the Crack Pie out of the oven. (Best part of working in the kitchen at Bin? Taste testing!) While the oatmeal cookie cooled, we got to work making Cherry Bread Pudding.

The prep area of the restaurant is TEENY. It is sheer genius that can create such amazing food in such a small space. The pantry and walk-in fridge are in the basement of the building, so dozens of times per day, the staff treks up and down the stairs (or rides the elevator) to carry food up and down. I made at least half a dozen trips down to the cooler while I was there. And before we began our bread pudding, we had to go down to the cooler to gather ingredients. Before we headed down, a chef or two would ask Clint to grab certain things for them, or take certain things back down. (This is how it goes: bring food upstairs to prep, bring it back downstairs to store, bring it back up to serve. Just think, no gym membership required with all those stairs!)

After we got the bread pudding baking, we worked on the next step of crack pie. Wonder why crack pie is like… crack? Butter and sugar and more butter and sugar. SO good! While the crack pie baked for the second time, we checked on the bread pudding and started on some White Balsamic Dressing. Clint knows exactly how to get a perfect emulsion every time. (Thank you Alton Brown for teaching me what an emulsion is.) And we stored that perfectly tangy dressing in the cooler downstairs.

At that point Chef Griff Chiono, the Chef de Cusine, arrived for the day and I watched him meticulously mince the ingredients for the house-made lemongrass sausage, which is just one component of the cioppino (possibly my favorite thing on the menu…), while I leaned up against a wall eating some Berkshire Pork Tacos. (I think Clint could hear my stomach growling so he took pity on me and made me some tacos. Delicious!)

While Clint took a break, he assigned me the task of making the savory Mushroom Sage Bread Pudding. Even though I cook all of the time, I was so nervous! I carefully followed the recipe and, I’m sure, took twice as long as anyone else would, but I made it, all by myself.

Next, we got to make the house aioli. If you’ve had the house aioli, you know that it’s so good you could basically drink it. I definitely order an extra side of aioli any time I have fries, it’s SOOO good. Between the house aioli and the Truffled Aioli, Bin makes 35 GALLONS of aioli each week! I squeezed a million lemons with the fancy lemon squeezer while Clint got the ingredients ready. I love that every part of every recipe is made with the best, freshest and local, if possible, ingredients.

While we watched the aioli whip up in the giant mixer, Chef Griff was finishing the last step of his house-made head cheese. (It’s really made from the head of a pig – I saw a snout.) Everything was carefully sliced and wrapped and tied. The attention to detail is AMAZING. Each chef thinks about every single bite you’re going to take. And truth be told, I think that’s why they are in this business. They love seeing people’s faces when they take that perfect bite.

After the aioli was finished and stored in the cooler, it was time to make the dough for the flatbread and we started the rosemary infused agave simmering on the stove. At this point it was about 3pm and I was SO tired. Clint made a perfect dough in the giant mixer while some of the other kitchen staff started to show up for the evening shift. They were standing nearly shoulder to shoulder, working hard to prep for the dinner rush. The camaraderie in the kitchen was fun to watch. You can tell that everyone working there really respects each other.

As the kitchen got busier for the evening, I headed out, totally wiped! What a day! I’ve never worked in the food industry before so this was a super interesting experience for me. I was totally amazed at how much work goes into a single dish, let alone a whole menu. The attention to detail and the prep that goes into running this kitchen is astounding to me. One thing I know for sure, anytime we eat at Bin, we’re getting a deal – I don’t think they charge enough!

A few other things:
-The dishwasher arrived at 11am and never stopped washing dishes the whole time I was there.
-Josh was in and out of the kitchen the whole day. He manages the entire staff (63 people), creates all of the recipes, manages all of the ordering, payroll, training, marketing… the list goes on! Running a restaurant isn’t just cooking great food, it’s also having good business savvy, and I totally see Josh’s genius at work at Bin.
-The challenge to Josh and the kitchen staff has been how to mass produce the recipes to feed all of the people they see each week. When the restaurant opened downtown in 2011, they were serving 700 people a week with Josh in the kitchen all day, every day. Now they’re serving 3,500 people per week! Josh has really had to change the recipes and methods to allow for this influx of people and to ensure that everyone else in the kitchen can make the recipes exactly as he would. He told me that he really wishes he could still cook every meal that Bin serves.
-With the sheer amount of work that goes into working in this amazing restaurant, I wondered what brings these chefs to work everyday. Each one, when asked why they love their job, answered because they love feeding people and seeing their faces when they eat the food they worked hard to make. I love that!
-Here’s exactly how the kitchen staff works:
Josh Nierenberg: Executive Chef (manages all the chefs and cooks, develops recipes, dishes and write menus, sources products and work with purveyors)
Griff Chiono: Chef de Cuisine (responsible for quality of the plates that leave the kitchen)
Ryan Sylvester: Kitchen Manager (responsible for development and efficiency)
Clint Schaefers: Production Chef (responsible for consistent prep to par levels)
Andrew Watson: Sous Chef (responsible for line cooks/consistency)
Danielle Hinrichs: Sous Chef (responsible for line cooks/consistency)
-By the end of this month, Bin 707 Foodbar will have served 100,000 Bin Burgers!

Bin 707 Foodbar is open everyday at 10am. If you haven’t had a chance to eat there, I highly recommend it. Try the Bin Burger with a side of aioli and an Original to drink. Or, if it’s lunch time, you MUST try the Cioppino. You probably want to order some Fried Artichokes to start or the Charcuterie and cheese (get the Venison Salami!). And don’t forget to try some Crack Pie or Key Lime Pie for dessert – you’ll be happy you did!

Special thanks to Clint Schaefers for being so patient with me and being a great teacher. And to owners, Josh and Jodi Niernberg, for letting me crash their kitchen for the day. And to my own Josh, Josh Hudnall, for photographing my adventure.

I created The Curiosity Project as a way to satiate my ever growing curiosity about the world around me. What is it like to change oil every day? How do restaurants really work? What would it be like to be a bartender? A barista? A maid? A gardener? A baker?

I want to know
and learn
and do it all.

So every now and then I’m going to moonlight as something new and maybe a little unexpected.

The first place I went was into the kitchen of my favorite restaurant, Bin 707, where I spent the day with Production Chef, Clint Schaefers. Let me tell you, the attention to detail that happens in that kitchen is beyond impressive. No wonder it’s the best place in town to eat!

This project excites me to no end. It’s something that I’ve been talking about doing for YEARS and it’s exciting to see it come to fruition! I’m excited to share my adventures with you, my dear reader, too!

Coming soon: My full account of my day in the life of a Production Chef.

Last night I spent over an hour with Honor reminding him of who he really is. That he is smart and kind and sweet and brave and good at math and reading and computers. He’s been believing the lies that the kids in his class are telling him: that he’s stupid, that he’s a “book worm” (apparently a high insult), that he’s not athletic. Aside from the mama-bear rage that this incites in me, I also feel guilt.

I’m telling Honor all of these things that I know are true about him, telling him over and over again to believe the truth about himself, not the lies other people tell, and I worry that he got this propensity from me. I had to laugh at the irony of ME telling this to anyone. Last time I saw my therapist he asked me, “When are you going to start believing that you’re a really cool person?”

I think Honor and I both get caught up in the fact that, yes, people are actually communicating things that are not true to us: That we are unimportant or stupid, unloved or un-liked, that we are not worth someone’s time, love or attention. I think I needed someone to acknowledge to me, YES, this is actually what someone is saying to you with their actions. Yes, Honor, they are telling you lies. Yes, it’s actually happening, it’s not all in your head. You are validated.

I told Honor last night that when someone tells him that he’s bad at math that that’s actually pretty funny because he isn’t bad at math, we’ve got the test scores to prove it. I asked him what he would think if someone told me I was bad at knitting. That’s pretty ridiculous, I’m not, I’ve got the sweaters to prove it. I wanted to normalize to him that people can say things that we don’t have to believe.

I think I have some pretty deep and valid abandonment issues so my default is to always believe that I’m unimportant, unloved, alone. All I want so deeply is to be considered. I’ve come to see that my problem is that I only believe the truth about myself when someone is telling me that I’m important, loved, surrounded.

I need to believe those things are true.
Even when someone is telling me that they’re not.

It’s hard to be 11 and on your way to middle school where the kids are only going to get meaner. (It’s hard to be 33, too.) I want so badly to instill these concepts into Honor now, to give him an inner peace that will get him through anything. I don’t want him to have to be learning these lessons in adulthood when he has 30 years of baggage and lies to wade through. I hope, hope, hope that undoing 33 years of lies I’ve so willingly swallowed will give me the wisdom to help Honor learn to believe what is true about himself.

When am I going to start believing that I’m a really cool person? I think now sounds good.

Dear Eden,
Today you are 13 years old. This is weird. I think over the last year you’ve made it pretty clear to us that you are no longer a kid anymore. You keep reminding us, pushing for more freedom, having very strong opinions of your own, dying your hair in rainbow shades. Your brother is still a kid and you are not and that’s a strange transition for us to make. I always say that I trade you guys in for the next model every so often and you are definitely the next, teenaged model.

I’m pretty proud of the way you’re stretching your wings though. I like that you just want to explore the world around you. I was shocked the other day when you wanted to walk to Dairy Queen by yourself after school, but I think it’s really brave. You are really brave. I’m also proud of what a hard worker you are. I’ve been so impressed with the way you’ve learned the guitar basically all by yourself. I never had that kind of motivation and follow-through when I was 13. Josh says all the time how much smarter you are than he was at 13.

Probably my favorite thing about you is how thoughtful you are. I know you always notice if someone is sad and you are the first to defend your brother when he’s getting in trouble. I think it’s pretty amazing that you think about your parent’s happiness and how you effect that. I love that you care so much about social injustice.

You’re pretty cool, Eden. And I’m glad that you’re mine.

Love, Mom

Today Honor told me that he wishes he could be in middle school now so he wouldn’t have to go back to his school. Apparently some of the kids have started a rumor that Honor is paying someone to have sex with him. He’s 11.

He doesn’t know who started the rumor but his classmates keep coming up to him asking him how much he’s paying.

Kids can be such dicks.

Eden singing at her Holiday Choir Concert

The bar from our Christmas Party.

Making yearly dream boards had been a tradition with a few friends of mine since 2009. Life has taken over and we haven’t been able to get together the last couple of years, but it’s a tradition I’m not ready to let go of. I love having the stack hanging up in my creative space like a tiny snapshot from the years past. Love.

I’ve been writing my Year in Review since 2005. You can read past year’s reviews here.

2014 in a nutshell: We got married. Or we moved.

2014 saw some of the biggest changes we’ve experienced in life. Josh and I got married. A couple months later we moved out of the house the kids and I had lived in since 2001. Moving was (hopefully) one of the last big consequences of the divorce. I stopped running the free clinic for the church due to budget cutbacks and our community really changed. 2014 felt like for everything I gained, I lost something equally as valuable.

I’m going into the new year living life a little slower than I have for the past several years. I’m shifting my extra time towards Tangle and really focusing on taking care of myself and my new little family. I’m finding myself more content with what I have, learning to sit with loneliness and not run from all of the feelings that come and then go. I spent some time in therapy this year, working through all the “leftovers” that have come up now that I’m safe enough to deal with them. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that I do the best when I let my heart be broken for the world around me and focus on all the good I have. Thankfulness and hope are the “drugs” that get me through. I’ve also learned that the value other people communicate to me does not have to speak louder than the value I find in myself. It’s been a season of boundaries and pendulum swings that are settling me right in the middle of where I need to be. I’m learning to trust myself when all I’ve ever been told is that I can’t and shouldn’t. It’s been work, but it’s been worth it. It’ll keep being worth it.

Travel
•Josh traveled quite a bit for work doing tech support for some new technology (iBeacons) he implemented for one of his conference apps.
•We took a few trips to Denver to soak up the city and shop for wedding clothes.
•We honeymooned in Denver, San Fransisco and San Diego. It was relaxing and perfect.
•We got to hang out on the Green River for the 2nd annual Riverpalooza.
•Had our second annual family reunion at my grandma’s place in Wyoming.
•Went up to the mountains to celebrate my cousin’s wedding just a few weeks after ours.
•I rafted/camped with all the boys over Labor Day Weekend.

Eden
•Lost both of her pet rats to sickness. They’re buried in the backyard of our old house next to her pet snake, Lightning.
•Wrote a beautiful and heartbreaking poem about her family.
•Turned 12. We celebrated with a plethora of giggly girls (not) sleeping in the living room.
•Grew taller than Carrie.
•Was awarded the Directors Award for all of 6th grade choir.
•Graduated 6th grade and started 7th.
•Dyed her hair hot pink.
•Sang her first solo.
•Learned how to play the guitar.
•Dressed up as Strawberry Shortcake for Halloween.

Honor
•Graduated 4th grade and started 5th.
•Had a seriously hard time with moving out of the only house he’s ever known.
•Turned 11 and celebrated with his buddies in our new family room.
•Became a pescatarian.
•Dressed up as a ninja for Halloween.
•Competed in his first Lego League competition.

Me
•Through my new little company, Kindred Creative, I got to design the menus, including a custom font, for my favorite restaurant, Bin 707. I also got to design several wedding invites/suites, logos, postcards and other business marketing materials. So much fun.
•Got to tell my redemption story at church with this video.
•Started working on my personal manifesto.
•Spent most of the year sick with sinus infections. I think my body was finally done with the extreme stress and fast pace I was living at.
•Talked about vulnerability on Carrie’s podcast, Honestly, Dear Listener.
•Started running Downtown Coffee for the church after we got back from our honeymoon. We’re open just on Sunday mornings. It’s so fun being a barista.
•Spent some time with Elliott when his mama was super sick with her second pregnancy. Got him to say my name.
•Turned 33.
•Dressed up as a vampire for Halloween.
•Had fun with the girls at the 2nd Flower Potluck.

Josh
•Developed some really cool apps. One for Oprah, one that tracks the People in Space and one that allows you to email reminders to yourself to name a few.
•Spoke at The West Leadership Conference.
•Designed and developed the new website for Downtown Grand Junction. It was a fun collaboration with me because I’m on the marketing committee for Downtown GJ.
•Became a parent to two kids in one fell swoop.
•Turned 33.
•Shaved his beard for his Halloween costume. It took me two weeks to recognize him.
•Built a heated dog house for the dog and cat to share.

We
•Got engaged.
•Established a family tradition: Sunday Morning Breakfast
•Also established “family dinner” with Seth and Carrie on Thursday nights.
•Designed some killer invites for our wedding.
•Got married on a perfect June day with all of the people we love surrounding us. There was great food and drinks and candles and balloons and twinkle lights and flowers in my hair.
•Packed up our little, yellow house and moved a mile away to my favorite Main Street. Now we live on the same street as Tangle, just 10 blocks away.
•Celebrated our Pumpkin Carving Party –  abbreviated this year with just a few friendies.
•Hosted THE Christmas Party, giving Amy a break. Our new house was perfect for celebrating.
•Celebrated real hard when our terrible neighbors moved out. They were the only downfall to our new house.

Tangle
•Got some cute, new shirts. (designed by me!)
•Took out our first loan and expanded our fabric.
•Got a new sign.
•Hosted our first pop-up shop with 3 Leaf Floral.
•Installed our temporary knitted art installation, Knit on the Corner. Then had it all destroyed by a “prominent” member of our community. Really.
•Turned 8.
•Got an Instagram.
•Started advertising on bus benches.

Our Year in Instagram:

Some of my favorite tweets from 2014:

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how often I get to walk with people through broken hearts.  I never knew how much good would come from my own broken heart, but I’m SO incredibly thankful that I have gotten to talk about it. Through telling my story I have been able to help people over and over again. It’s so humbling and I feel so honored.

Several years ago, when I was watching my family fall apart, NO ONE was talking about going through what I went through. I searched everywhere but couldn’t find anyone who was willing to talk about what it was like for them. I found one friend who was going through something super similar and we clung to each other. I was determined that no matter the outcome of my marriage, I was going to talk about it. It wasn’t going to be a secret. I wasn’t going to let one single person go through what I was going through without someone saying to them, “Me too. I went through that too. You can make it.”

I’m so thankful that I’m at a point now that I can say,

“Hey, you, with the broken heart! I PROMISE it will get better. I promise that even though you don’t know what life will look like in 6 months, it can be good if you do the work. There is so much hope, and before you know it, things will start to look sunnier. Hope will start to seep in and soon, you’ll even be able to say that you’re happy. You might even be thankful for the lessons this broken heart taught you. It’s gonna be real good. Pinky promise.”

Saturday
Chicken green chile with tortillas and cheese
Sunday
Bacon wrapped jalapeño hot dogs (go Broncos!)
Monday
Linde’s soup
Tuesday
Enchilada soup
Wednesday
Pasta with spicy Italian sausage
Thursday
Out
Friday
Beef stew

(I see a theme emerging here…)