Manami

About Me

Hello all, thank you for visiting My Page but forgive me for it is a work in progress! :) As I am sure you have noticed I changed my Chef Name to Manami which means love & beauty. ;) Just thought I should get with the program - my geisha & my icon! :) Don't fret, I won't change it again!

I am 70 years young and I live in a nursing home, which is out of this world, I am treated like a princess and the world is my oyster! I have a private room and during the season I do taxes for most of the staff, as well as my personal clients that have been following me since I left the business world about 25 years ago. I was rear-ended by a van and it turned my whole world upside down. Why dwell on that?

I am an American Jew (from NYC) who moved to Havana, Cuba when I was 2 1/2 years old, lived there until a few days after Castro took over and vamoosed it out of that country as fast as my legs would carry me! I was on a forced hiatus from the UofM, due to illness.

From there my sister, mother and I went to NYC to work and my father went to Haiti in Port-Au-Prince, where he and my uncle had purchased some tiny cocoa plantations & a chocolate factory - for the choccolate liquer - to make baking chocolate (the real bitter stuff). We joined my father about 2 months later where I spent 2 of the most carefree & wonderful years of my life! It is the stuff that movies are made of! (A la Grace Kelly - even my clothes were like hers)> 

I then continued my studies in upstate NY and hated it because it was too, too cold!:( Went back to NYC to work and see what I wanted to do with my life - I was all of 20 years old and had to drop out of school because of illness and then because of the weather! Yuck - so I got a job in a Textile Buying Office as a receptionist and soon I found myself buying trimmings! Loved it and was very happy with the work I was doing.

However, I got an offer from two young guys who had a factory in Cleveland, Ohio, where they made Maternity Clothes and they wanted me to be in charge of the shipping dept, keep inventory and in my spare time - help with the designing!! I couldn't pass it up - the offer sounded so great and the salary was twice what I was making in the NYC. So I went to Cleveland, got married, had both my children and got a divorce 15 years later.

Then my children and I moved to South Florida and have been here since 1978, I can't count that far back :)

Learned how to do taxes with H&R Block and worked simultaneously as a Supervisor in 2 offices for them for 15 years. Then after the accident everything went spiralling downwards until I could no longer walk alone even with a walker - so the next step was a wheelchair. Stayed at home with a lot of help (nurses, PT therapists) fixed the bathroom so I could bathe myself and fixed the kitchen so I could help warm-up meals (was taught how to cook in rehab) and so forth and so on.

However, the fire department had other plans for me, I called them too often to pick me up off the floor - how embarassing! So they gave me a choice - either a home or they would have to call HRS! :( (very sad)

It was there, in my home where I was robbed!  All my cookbooks (all my Julia Childs Cookbooks, my Settlement Cookbook which had been my mothers - published in 1939 - with all her notes) my mother's cookbooks from Cuba & Haiti, all my handwritten recipes. They also took all my Delft collection, some antiques that I had in the kitchen like my rolling pin, a beautiful old & used wooden bowl, a charcoal-iron that was brought north when my parents left Haiti, it was hand-painted & was gorgeous, as well as all the other things that are too numerous to mention!

That proved to be the last straw & from there it was an ALF, which was horrible, and then on to another home where the administrator of that home became the administrator here and voila, here I am.

I have a beautiful large private room with a private bath, furnished to my liking: eclectic!  My room is large enough to house my "office" and all the other odds and ends with which I like to surround myself.

During tax season, mostly, my room is always full (of course I love it that way)! I have a blanket my daughter bought for me in New Mexico and that is on my bed. You guessed it - that is where everbody sits or on my great grandfather's arm chair which is in great shape.  Update 01/11/2008 that time is here again :) Have started doing taxes already and not just regular taxes but corporations, partnerships and 1040X - ammended returns! Whoopee! I love the feeling I get when this time comes around and I get into gear!!! I love it! :)

The head chef, the kitchen supervisor & the dietician enjoy the recipes from Zaar; the ones that I post, as well as, the others. We are in the process of changing the menu right now - so we have been doing a lot of figuring. The administrator is so cute because every once in a while she asks for a recipe and then she gives me a pack of paper so I can print them.

I am president of the resident council and most of the family members come to me to take care of their grievances - this way I do my part - and the staff can take care of the larger problems! It has been working for 10 years - why change if it ain't broke?

Well, it's time to say "hasta luego" folks.