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Dear Bay Area HNers: I will cook for you
122 points by shalmanese on Feb 27, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 34 comments
Dear HNers,

I'm heading down to the Bay Area March 6th - 21st to start my job hunt (details here: http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/career-transition/).

Cooking is one of my huge passions* and I know from experience that every time I travel, I literally get itchy fingers if I spend more than 3 or 4 days not cooking.

So here's the deal: On the nights I have free, I will come to your house/apartment, we will go shopping together, you pay for the ingredients & I will cook you a 3 course meal based on what you like & what looks good on the day.

A couple of caveats:

* You need to be somewhat flexible on the date, I don't know what my plans are for when I'm down there so I can't guarantee anything.

* Groups of anywhere between 2 & 8 people are fine. If you have more than 8 people, I'll need a helper.

* I've produced some pretty tasty food in some pretty dire kitchens in my life but if your kitchen comes equipped with at least the basics, it's going to be much easier for me to produce something amazing.

* If you're interested in cooking, feel free to help in the kitchen and I might be able to teach you a couple of things. If you have no interest, that's fine too.

* I'm an inveterate meat lover but I can also do very tasty vegetarian food.

If this is something you're interested in, shoot me an email at hang@bumblebeelabs.com and tell me a little bit about yourself and we'll see if we can get it done.

Thanks HN!

*For my 21st birthday, I cooked 21 courses of food over 21 hours for 21 people. Pics here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019448&id=219000104&l=9edeae22ea




I'd love to take you up on this. Would it be fun to make it into a Hacker News dinner party? I think so. In fact, I'd love to host a HN dinner party no matter what. Is anyone else interested?

My partner and I live in Mill Valley (just over the GGB). She's in tech also. I eat meat. She doesn't. I think we can support twenty or so folks.

Our kitchen is well stocked, we're the local drop off for a CSA so we have fresh veggies, we both can help, etc. If we do meat, I'd like to do it in a smoker outside.

I'm tony@tonystubblebine.com


Oh wait, I'm supposed to say something interesting about us in order to make the dinner invite compelling. I have a social software company, CrowdVine. I'm big into bootstrapping. I'm a rails programmer. I wrote the Regular Expression pocket reference. I'm very interested in deliberate practice and whether the clicker training I did with my dog could be applied to my own behavior. I haven't been able to sleep since seeing the "Ten points for toothbrushing" talk at DICE.

Sarah, my partner, has a background in publishing, founded O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing conference and is now co-chair/GM for the Web 2.0 Expo. She also wrote books on Google and Twitter.


yeah, I'd prefer a group dinner party as well. Mostly because I don't know how I'd pitch my girlfriend on "hey, this guy from the internet is going to come to our house to cook".

Will send you both an email.


Sounds good, let's do it!


Sounds good. I'm in the area and can join. Thanks for hosting.


I'm a student who loves programming and food.

I think I'll come.


This is one of those times I wish I lived in the Bay Area.


We have a mini kitchen at the Hacker Dojo (map here: http://bit.ly/hackerdojo) and there are always starving hackers that work here. Feel free to stop by and use our fridge to cook for us all! We have a fully stocked spice cabinet and various cookery equipment.

You might even find your future job here... Feel free to contact me, my email is in my profile.


Funniest YC post in a while, I hope you find someone ;) To bad I'm in NYC :(


The Hackers and Founders group in SF Bay Area always looks for excuses (ahem ideas) to get together. May be you can hook up with them. They would love to have a feast for a gathering. http://www.meetup.com/Hackers-and-Founders/


We're having a meetup on the 11th in Mountain View. You're more than welcome to stop by. You can't cook for me, but I'll be happy to buy you a beer.


Cool, it's in my calendar.


This is pretty awesome, Hang. It might be cool to have you as an honored guest at one of the dinner parties I run/attend fairly regularly: either here in Berkeley with a collection of East Bay scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, or in SF with the same crowd (and more of a social gaming slant...)

Send me a message at dani.fong@gmail.com

PS: The 'I Will Cook for You' strategy netted me a couch to sleep on for a month and a room thereafter, plus a bunch of new best friends.


I'd love to throw a HN dinner party with you at my house when you're in Seattle a month from now. I basically live in a mansion with 6 roommates -- the continuous [living room, kitchen, dinette, dining room, parlor, foyer] is nearly 1000ft². There's a well-appointed gas kitchen, two fridges and a freezer, an enourmous backyard, etc. We actually just threw a big party on Valentine's day for my roommates' wedding reception, so now we have 2x 3-pot chafing dishes and an electric flat-top griddle for freeing up the countertop gas grill...

I could seat 30 people without even breaking out the folding tables (though I'd need more chairs to use them).

I can absolutely help you with the cooking and I might be able to teach you a couple of things. I think we can pull off more than three courses :)

It's way up in north Seattle, but it's very accessible by bus, it's right off the Burke-Gilman trail, and there's tons of on-street parking. I'm blasdelf@gmail


We'll see how I feel after this SF cooking extravaganza but it sounds cool. Send me an email as a reminder & I'll email you when I get back.


I was amazed that you were able to prepare that much food. Then I read the part about drinking 21 drinks while doing it. Impressive!


Would be cool if you'd put up a video and recipes, I'm always looking for new ideas!


I'll most definitely post writeups of all the HN dinners I do.


If you're looking for a place to publish I've been working on a food oriented website, and I'd love to host it!


I emailed you with some basic info. I hope this works out, and you aren't a crazed murderer.


I'm really short on time over the next couple weeks, but keep me posted if you do anything vegetarian-friendly near the Stanford campus - if I can make time, I'd be happy to show up and chip in for food. School address is rof@


This sounds great. Some guys I know have regular dinner parties in San Francisco for 20+ people (Broadway / Divisidaro). Email founders@ my company for an intro, I'm sure they'd love you to come up and cook for them.


2 questions: 1) what's Wagyu?, 2) what did you do to that poor cake.


Wagyu is the breed of cattle commonly called Kobe Beef in the US. In proper usage, Kobe is a geographical designation like Champagne so "American Kobe" is a contradiction in terms. Hence, I prefer to call it Wagyu.


1> I live in atlanta 2> I think your 21st was hilariously delicious looking 3> Good luck!


Looks like you should think about an east coast tour... Boston>NYC>Philly>Atlanta!


Hey, all the best jobs are in Boston!

OK, maybe that's not true ... but a guy can try...


I second this guys opinion!


Wow this sounds amazing... wish I was back in the Bay Area


If someone wants to get a group together for this, I'm in.


Have fun!


This sounds like an awesome way to meet new people. I know a woman (@sfsouplady) who did something similar when she moved here .. She started giving away soup in front of bars in her neighborhood, which landed her a job in the first week (not cooking) and a huge group of friends.

While you're here maybe you should look up @marcup13. He's a noted food hacker and probably has some suggestions or would be into cooking with you.


What a terrific offer. :3

i'm several thousand miles away tho :(


This gives me an idea for a startup... maybe i'll call it StrangerCookup.com




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