mickey and me

Yesterday, David told me that we would be making jams all day today because we had a lot of berries and fruits that needed to be used. However, when I showed up today, all we had left were 12 pounds of blackberries, so we would only be making black berry jam.

I am pretty familiar with the jamming process by now, so I knew that there was a point where we would have to wait for the mixture to reduce for a while and figured that during this waiting period I could slice and fry the shallots for the day.

Apparently, I was getting pretty close to the end of the shallot I was slicing and sliced a piece of my thumb instead. Fortunately, the blade was on a very thin setting, so I didn't slice off much of my thumb. I immediately put some pressure on my thumb and went to get a bandaid. However, I couldn't any bandaids and neither could anyone else. Right as we were about to give up, Judith (one of the women who works in the restaurant's office) walked by and remembered that she saw some bandades and went to get one for me. As luck would have it, they were Mickey Mouse bandaids.

Now, I don't know if these were really good bandaids or if that thumb has gotten used to getting sliced (I had sliced off the tip of the same thumb about 4 years ago), but it did not bleed as much as fingers usually do when they're cut.

After I was properly bandaged, I resumed slicing and frying the shallots. Next it was time to jar and process the blackberry jam. Right as I finished with processing the jam, David returned from lunch and mentioned that he saw Jane Lynch shopping at the Whole Foods where he was getting his lunch.

I realized that we were getting pretty low on breadcrumbs, so I would have to make some more. I processed the pieces of bread and began pressing them through the tammy (drum sieve). After a good hour of pressing shreds of bread through even smaller mesh holes, I decided that I needed to start shaping the pimento cheese fritters for the night.

Shaping the fritters didn't take long, so I got back to making breadcrumbs. Not long after I cam back to making breadcrumbs, Woody asked if I would help him with making potato chips for the bottle shop. I agreed to help and took over frying the chips so that Woody could get some other things done.

There were a lot of chips that needed to be fried, so I was to get nervous about finishing the chips and still having time to bread the pimento cheese fritters before service. Turns out that I would have nowhere near enough time to finish both of the tasks, but there was a new guy that was training today (Chris), so Ryan asked me if I would show him how to bread the pimento cheese fritters because Chef really likes them when I make them.

I was a little bummed because I know that Chef wants the fritters to be perfect and I have gotten pretty good at making them perfect, but Jason wanted me to keep frying chips, so I taught Chris the breading process for the fritters as quickly as I could, and went back to frying potato chips.

Even with my undivided attention on frying potato chips, there still wasn't enough time to finish them before Woody had to leave for the bottle shop. So, Woody took over frying the chips for me and I went to organize the walk-in (something that Gavin asked me to do).

Everything was pretty crazy because I was scrambling to find containers for everything that was just in boxes in the walk-in, Woody was trying to get everything together for the bottle shop, Ryan was trying to train Chris, and everyone else was just getting into service for the evening. I figured that, at that point, it would be best to have one less body in the kitchen and it was already past time for me to leave. So, right when I finished with the walk-in, I bagged and sealed the breadcrumbs that I wasn't able to finish (that I will have to do tomorrow), cleaned my station, and told everyone goodbye for the night.

Tomorrow, I restart the long process of pushing bread through wire mesh along with everything else that I usually have to do for the day.

Till next time,

Ben

211 hours left

complements from the chef

David was back at work today.

I was wondering how this would work out since I now had my own agenda of things that I needed to do. Turns out that it worked perfectly because now I didn't always have to ask David what I could do next. However, both of us would stop whatever we were working on whenever we got a new shipment of produce in so that it would get put away quicker.

First problem of the day was that I couldn't find enough oil to fill up the fryer for the potatoes, shallots, and parsley. After searching high and low and asking everyone if they knew where more oil was, I decided to wait until Woody or Jason got to work and ask them what to do. I did, however, continue to slice the potatoes and shallots on the mandoline so that I didn't have to do that when we were finally ready to start frying.

Eventually, Woody showed up to work and after checking to make sure that we were indeed out of oil for the frier, he sent me to Holeman and Finch to transfer some of their oil to us.

Next problem of the day was that I could not find the scoop that I had used to portion the pimento cheese fritters. I ended up using one of David's scoops and decided that I would go back and make sure that they were the right size once the official pimento cheese scooper showed up.

The official scooper never did show up, but I found one that was close enough and went back to make sure that all the fritters were the same size and shape. As I was reshaping the fritters, Ryan and multiple other cooks mentioned to me that Chef (Hopkins) was thoroughly pleased with the pimento cheese fritters from last nights service. I just laughed it off, said thanks, and went about my business. Then, as I was putting the fritters in the walk-in to firm up before breading, Chef Hopkins came in looking for something and told me, "Ben, the fritters are perfect. It was a pleasure plating them." I didn't know what to say, so I said, "Thanks Chef." and went on my way.

While I was waiting for the fritters to firm up, I helped David with preparing food for family meal. My gob was to trim the ends off of and cut up pole beans, which are like flat green beans. There was a whole deep cambro of them, so it took me a good while to get through them all.

Once I finished that, I cut up some squash, drizzled them with oil, and seasoned them with salt and pepper before roasting them for family meal. Later, but before they were finished roasting, David sprinkled some herb parmesan cheese on top of the squash and put them back in the oven to finish roasting.

By this time, I figured that the fritters should be firm enough, so I took half (38) of them out for breading. I floured them, dipped them in the egg wash, and floured them again before taking them back to the walk-in. I had decided that I would get all of the fritters to this point in the breading process and then bring them all out for the final step (one last dip into the egg wash and then into the breadcrumbs).

Last problem of the day. Turns out that I decided to set my tray of fritters on something that was slightly unstable and the tray fell onto the floor of the walk-in. More than half of the pimento cheese fritters for the nights service were gone. To add to the devastation of this mishap was the fact that we were about half an hour away from service and because the fritters are the amuse bouche, they would be the first things out to every single table.

I was angry and frustrated, but decided that I needed to make some more fritters and I needed to make them quick, so I got to work. From the time the tray fell on the floor, to the time that I had gotten the new pimento cheese fritters to the stage of the breading process that the fallen fritters had been on, only 20 minutes had passed. Somehow I had managed to get everything together just in time for service.

When I was finished with the pimento cheese fritters, David asked me to help him because he still had a lot of things to do before he could leave for the day. David quickly and masterfully threw together a mixture for squash dumplings which they needed for service. David put the mixture in a piping bag and gave it to me to pipe into molds. It took a while to pipe and bake all of the dumplings, but once they were all baked and put into containers, it was about time for me to leave.

As I was about to leave for the day, Ryan cam up to me and asked me if I had time to do something for him real quick. I said of course I did and Ryan showed me what he needed me to do for him. Remember those 5 different potatoes cooked in 5 different fats with 5 different herbs? Well, Ryan had been plating them and wanted me to cryovac the plates of potatoes and label them as large or small plates. This was easy enough and I was done and headed home in a matter of minutes.

Till next time,

Ben

219 hours left

blur

Well, because of another storm and another tree, I won't have internet access at my house until Sunday at the latest (hopefully). You may be asking, "Ben, if you don't have internet access, then how are you writing this post that I am reading?" Well, I'll tell you.

In order to not fall behind with my blog again and have to catch everyone up with mega posts (which is not fun), I have been going to restaurants that offer free wifi with my laptop. So there's your answer.

Now that we have that all cleared up, on to what you're here to read about, my day at work.


Today flew by for some reason. We weren't very busy or backed up or anything like that, but the day was still over before I knew it. I swear I had just gotten back from getting family meal (which is at 4 everyday) and looked at the clock to see that it was 5:45.

I was looking forward to talking with David about his vacation to Asheville and telling him about the newest misfortunes that had befallen my family and be, but David was nowhere to be found. I didn't ask anyone where David was (though many people asked me) because I figured that he had a good reason for not returning to work and it is none of my business anyways.

So, in the absence of David, I got to work on what had become my usual first task of the morning, slicing and frying potatoes and shallots and crisping parsley. However, the moment i finished gathering everything that I would need, Keron grabbed the mandoline. Surly he wasn't going to use it for the entire morning, so I decided to make some breadcrumbs.

I have already talked about the breadcrumb-making process, so I won't go into that again, but I will remind you that it is a long and time consuming process, which would be perfect because by the time I was done I figured that Keron would be finished with the mandoline as well.

Chef Hopkins was in the kitchen this morning and called me over while I was working on my breadcrumbs. Chef showed me what he was working on, 5 different potatoes cooked in 5 different fats with 5 different herbs. He had the various potatoes, fats, and herbs already vacuum sealed and in the circulator for low temperature cooking. Chef told me that he had to leave in a little but, but wanted me to take out the potatoes when the time came. I told him that I could do that, and off he went.

Now that I had finished making a fresh batch of breadcrumbs, Keron still wasn't finished with the mandoline. Turns out that he would be using it to cut cucumbers to be pickled later for the rest of the day. I figured that this was the case, so I went over to Holeman and Finch to borrow their mandoline.

One of the chefs at Holeman and Finch (Stella) gladly lent me her mandoline, but said that she would need it back in an hour. This would be no problem since all I needed it for was to slice some small potatoes and shallots.

I quickly sliced up all the potatoes and got to the last batch of frying them when Ryan arrived to work and informed me that they were using a different potato cut. The potatoes were supposed to be sliced from side to side instead of from the bottom up (if that makes any sense to yall). So now I had to do all the potatoes over again.

I got about half way through slicing the potatoes when I had to return the mandoline. I didn't know what I was going to do now. Luckily I spotted a small black mandoline, but it had a plastic blade which would make it harder to get a clean cut, but it was better than nothing.

Once I finished with frying everything, I got to work on making the pimento cheese balls for this evenings service. We wouldn't need as many as we did Saturday because we weren't expecting as many guests which was a relief and made it seem like I was done with scooping and shaping the pimento cheese balls in no time.

Over the course of the day to this point, we had been steadily receiving ingredients and people had been steadily placing them on and around my workbench. Eventually I did not have much space to work, but I was finished with shaping the pimento cheese balls and wanted them to firm up in the walk-in before I began the breading process, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to put away all this produce.

I would have made David proud. I was consolidating things into new containers, moving things around to create the most space, and most importantly, got everything into the walk-in with room to spare! It took a long time and a lot of creativity, but it all fit.

Now, I had all the space I needed for the rest of the evening. I breaded the pimento cheese balls, put them back in the walk-in to firm up before the final reshaping, vacuum packed some ginger ale infused peaches for Ryan, swept up around my work station and the inside of the walk-in, and reshaped the pimento cheese balls. By the time I was finished with all of this, it was past time for me to leave, so I said my goodbyes and headed home for the day.

Till next time,

Ben

227 hours left

MEGA post: part 2

TUESDAY

Today was the day that my mom and brother left for Europe to watch my youngest cousin compete in the Special Olympics in Athens, Greece. I was kinda bummed because I was being left behind on what is going to be an amazing trip to Italy and Greece. But the good news is that we got power back at 4am in the morning and that with them gone, I can just use one of their cars to get to and from work instead of having them give me rides every day.

Today, we had to make more pickled green tomatoes, so that is what I immediately got to work on.

As I started doing conversions to scale up the recipe and gathered the ingredients for the brine, David said that he would help out by prepping the green tomatoes which was a big help because prepping the tomatoes is a fairly time consuming task.

While working on the green tomatoes, I noticed that most of the line cooks and Chef Hopkins were already on the line and preparing things. This was unusual as it was still barely noon and the line cooks normally don’t show up until 2:30 or 3. I asked David (who was himself working on a dish) what was going on and he told me that Atlanta Magazine was there for a photo shoot. So, if you subscribe to Atlanta Magazine, keep your eyes peeled for an article about Restaurant Eugene!

Once finished with jarring, processing, labeling, and storing the pickled green tomatoes, I got to work on peeling more beets and potatoes. Peeling the potatoes ended up taking me the rest of the evening because I had a lot of potatoes to get through, but I stayed until I was finished with them and they were cryovaced and stored. Before I left, I made sure to ask if there was anything I could do before I left since I hadn’t had a chance to help prepare for service, but everyone was all set.

When I got home, I was ready to start getting caught up on all the blog posts that I had missed due to not having power. But when I tried, my laptop would not connect to the internet. I asked my dad if there was something wrong with the internet and he gave a short laugh and told me that the tree had knocked out the phone lines too. He called AT&T earlier that day and they said that someone would be there to fix it by next Monday. Great, another week of falling further behind on my blog.

267 hours left


WEDNESDAY

Today was crazy. We had a ton of ingredients delivered today. We received everything from various mushrooms to peaches to six types of potatoes to zucchini to beets to lettuce to radishes to kale to leeks to fennel to tomatoes. Like I said, a ton of deliveries.

Needless to say, consolidating produce, finding containers, and finding storage space took up the better part of my day. And to make matters even more difficult, David was running errands most of the day, so it was up to me to check and find a place for everything. A daunting task, yes, but not impossible.

I did get a bit of personal validation while receiving ingredients because I was able to identify items like crowder peas and purslane without having to ask anyone for help, so I am definitely learning. Also, when David returned from his errands and saw the literal pile of produce we received on our bench he told me that he was impressed because a lot of people would have given up by now given the shear volume of items we had, but I was still finding places and containers for everything. Then David managed to free up even more space when I was almost certain that we couldn’t fit any more in the walk-in. Obviously I still have more to learn.

David informed me that he would be going to Asheville, North Carolina for vacation Thursday through Monday, so he wouldn’t be at work Thursday or Friday. It would be interesting to see how I would handle being at work without David’s guidance in the mornings.

Gavin has developed a routine of coming to me at about 4:30 with things that I can do for him for the night’s service. Today, his task for me was to stem and wash tatsoi (which we just received that day), wash arugula (which we also received that day), and chiffonade and wash collards.

While prepping and washing all the above-mentioned greens for Gavin, my mind started to wander, as is usual whenever I am doing something that will take a while. This time though I was inspired by one of my surroundings to come up with a very very corny joke because I have never heard anything like it before. So, for your amusement, here is my joke:
“Why didn’t the farmer want to sell his tomatoes?”
“Because they were Heirlooms.”

259 hours left


THURSDAY

When I got to work, I realized that I had no idea what to do. I went to the walk-in and tried to organize things, but that didn’t last long. I asked Keron (one of the prep cooks) if I could help him with anything, but he was making pickles all day and there was nothing I could do. However, Keron did tell me that the line always needs lemons cut, butter cubed, shallots peeled, and parsley minced, so that’s what I got to work on.

After I finished with the lemons, butter, and shallots, Woody found me and said “Boy do I have a project for you.” I was relieved because I really needed something to do, I was running out of butter, lemons, shallots, and parsley. “I want you to make the mini BLTs for the bottle shop tonight.”

Sidenote: The H & F Bottle Shop will regularly have wine tastings with food every Thursday and the musical wine tastings every Saturday, so on those days I will likely be working on things for them.

This is not my first experience with the mini BLTs, but it is the first time that I will be making them by myself. You may recall from a few posts ago that I helped Jackson with making the mini BLTs for the banker buyout. All that I did for those, though, was slice all the cherry tomatoes. This time, I will be doing everything. I sliced and baked the bacon, sliced all the cherry tomatoes, and assembled all the sandwiches.

While I was working on the BLTs, we received our shipment of seafood for the day (we receive seafood every single day). Jason took this opportunity to show me what to look for while checking in seafood so that I could do it by myself from then on.

First, check the eyes for clarity. The eyes should be clear and not cloudy. Next check the gills. They should be clean and not slimy or anything like that. Most importantly, smell the fish. Fresh fish should NOT smell like fish, it should smell like the ocean. Lastly, check the firmness of the meat; it should be firm and not mushy.

Admittedly, I had hear all of these checkpoints before, but I had only remembered about the eyes and the smell, so it was good to get a little refresher course in checking the freshness of fish.

Once I finished with all the BLTs, I was asked to portion and cryovac the fish for tonight’s service. I kinda like doing this job because it’s pretty simple and quick. I slide the already portioned fish into the small cryovac bags, squirt some oil into the bag, and finally cryovac the bags and take them to the line. Simple and fun.

Next on the agenda was to clean chanterelle mushrooms. To clean chanterelle mushrooms, I have to take a paring knife and scrape the first layer of skin from the stem of the mushrooms. Then I have to scrape the gills off and any dirt off the cap of the mushrooms. Finally, I simply pull apart the mushroom and put them in a container for the line. Sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of mushrooms and most of them are small, so it can become a time consuming process.

Then, Gavin found me and asked me to prep, wash, and dry collards, arugula, and tat soy. By now I have become pretty good at this job.

251 hours left


FRIDAY

When I got to work, I got started on the butter, shallots, lemons, and parsley since I didn’t know what else I could do. After a short while, though, Jason told me that he had some jobs for me to do.

First job was to make potato chips, fried shallots, and crisp parsley, which will all be used as garnishes for the evening. Jason told me that he wants me to do this every day from now on to make the load easier for Ryan.

I use a mandoline to thinly slice small potatoes and shallots before taking them to the fryer. The fryer is kept at 275 degrees because apparently it is the perfect temperature for frying because it is hot enough to give items that golden brown crisp, yet it takes a long time for items to burn. This was reassuring to know because not I don’t have to worry as much about pulling the potatoes and shallots out at the before they burn.

Next on my list (and what ended up occupying the rest of my day) was making the new amuse boush, pimento cheese fritters.

Now, I am not a fan of pimento cheese, so they could not have picked a better person for the job. I say this because according to my friends (and how often the other chefs come by and take some pimento cheese) the pimento cheese that we make is very very good. But I am not tempted to eat it, so perfect job for me.

For the pimento cheese fritters, I have to use a melon baller to scoop out the right amount of pimento cheese, roll them into balls, then flour and bread them. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong.

I have to keep the pimento cheese cool because it scoops better (not an easy task in a hot kitchen). Also, I have a pint on pimento cheese, which roughly translates to 120 pimento cheese balls. I wish that there some way that I could make the pimento cheese fritters in the walk-in.

Next is the breading process, but before I get to that, I have to tell you about the breadcrumbs. At restaurant Eugene, we make our own breadcrumbs. Under Ryan’s instruction, I sliced the bread into cubes, and put them into the food processer to chop them up into breadcrumbs. Luckily, before I had made breadcrumbs out of all the bread, I took some of them to Ryan to get approval. Ryan said, “Yeah, that’s good. Now just take the tammy (a drum siv) and a bowl scraper and force it through the mesh to get it nice and fine.”

This took forever. I had a mountain of breadcrumbs and I had to force them almost individually through wire mesh. I definitely didn’t expect all of this, but it’s the way they do it, so I’d better get good at it.

Now that I have breadcrumbs, I can start breading the pimento cheese balls that have been chilling in the walk-in. the breading process for the pimento cheese balls goes like this: coat with flour, dip into egg wash, back into the flour, back into the egg wash, and finally coat with breadcrumbs. I had to do this over 100 times.

Initially, I was only breading two or three of the pimento cheese balls at a time, but James came over and gave me some tips on how to streamline the process. James said that usually he’ll coat them all with flour, then take groups of six or eight into the egg wash until they’ve all been coated with their second coat of flour, and then take groups of six or eight into the egg wash until they’re all finished with their coat of breadcrumbs. This made sense, so I started using larger groups of pimento cheese balls, which definitely made the process go faster.

As I was finishing breading my last tray of pimento cheese balls, Jason came over to check on how everything was going. He said that it would probably be a good idea to go back and pack more breadcrumbs and reshape each pimento cheese ball because after sitting at room temperature for a while they sort of melt. So, that’s what I did until I was finished reshaping all the pimento cheese balls and by that time, it was time for me to leave for the day.

243 hours left


SATURDAY

Today was pretty much a carbon copy of Friday.

When I got to work, I got the fryer filled with oil and turned on so it would be ready to fry the potatoes, shallots, and parsley. Then I got to slicing the potatoes and shallots on the mandoline. Once I finished with the potatoes and shallots, Ryan told me that I needed to do twice as many shallots because we had 90 reservations this evening.

To put that in perspective for yall, 70 reservations is a very busy night for Restaurant Eugene. AND we also accept walk-ins, which there is no way to prepare for except to over prepare.

So, I got to slicing more shallots on the mandoline and crisping the parsley, then it was on to the pimento cheese balls.

The pimento cheese balls didn’t take as long as they did last time because I had worked out a few of the kinks in my system. Also, I had leftover breadcrumbs which was a blessing. I was also able to scoop and shape all of the pimento cheese balls in one go, so there was no waiting around for the cheese to get firm. Lastly I worked in larger batches, so the whole process went quicker. We had 161 pimento cheese balls ready for service by the time I was finished.

Next was to make a squash au gratin. I’m sure many of you are familiar with potatoes au gratin and squash is the exact same thing, except with squash instead of potatoes. The most difficult part about this was definitely the layering of the squash, but eventually I got all of the pieces on there and into the oven.

The last thing I did before I had to leave was clean chanterelles for Chris (the newest line cook). I talked about cleaning chanterelles in my last post, so I won’t bore yall with that again.

Like I said, today was like I was reliving Friday, except this time I didn’t need anyone to explain anything to me because I already knew what I needed to do and how to do it.

235 hours left

Till next time,

Ben

MEGA post: part 1

Hello again everyone. Sorry I haven’t been posting as regularly as I used to, but I have a good reason. A tree fell on our house.

Yall may remember that storm we had in Atlanta on Wednesday the 15th. Well, apparently there was a microburst of wind that exceeded 90 miles per hour right on top of our house and it knocked down a tree in our neighbors back yard.

Luckily, there was very minimal damage. Upon seeing the tree in our carport, I thought that it landed right on top of my car. I thought that my car was crushed. But, the only damage suffered was a broken taillight (and apparently there is a fuse or something in the taillight that can pretty much short out the entire car, so it’s proving to be a lot more trouble than we first anticipated). Also, the tree pretty much fell in the best place possible, right on our driveway. It did hit the edge of the carport (the edge where we have the power and cable lines), so we weren’t completely unharmed, but very lucky nonetheless.

Besides not having power (which means on A/C), the worst part was that all four of our family’s cars were trapped in the carport. I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to work the next day, which wouldn’t be good because I had already missed days for being sick, and did not and could not afford to miss any more days of work. However, a family friend lent us on of their cars for the next day and I got a ride to work.

So, long story short, I haven’t posted anything in 9 days because we didn’t have power from that Wednesday (the 15th) until the next Tuesday (the 21st). Then, once we did get power, we didn’t have internet until this past Saturday (the 25th).

Unfortunately, I don’t remember everything as well as I do right when I get home from work (which is usually when I write my posts), so most of these will be shorter posts and highlights of things that I can remember. But I’ve still got LOTS to talk about, so lets get to it!


WEDNESDAY

First thing I did when I got to work was to label and store the jars of pickled green tomatoes from the day before. And that’s all I have to say about that (see, can’t really remember much).

Next, I peeled roasted beets, which is surprisingly easy and very messy to do. All that is required to peel roasted beets is to cut the ends off, and then the skin will practically slide right off the beet. Beets, however, are very juicy and very closely resemble the color of blood. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when Woody walked past and said, “Did you kill someone in that corner?”

David asked me to help him with a dish that he was making for family meal, which was roasted eggplant. My job was to press the excess water from the eggplant, baste the eggplant with olive oil, and place them in the pan so they could be roasted.

Once I was finished, David pulled out a HUGE 5 pound sack of peanuts and told me to shell them. Being from a baseball family, I have shelled many a peanut in my day, so I got right to it. However, it was still a 5 pound bag of peanuts and pretty much kept me occupied until I was supposed to leave and Gavin asked me for some help.

Gavin came to me and asked if what I was doing (shelling peanuts) was really important at the moment. I figured that I had a fairly large amount of peanuts shelled, so I told him that I could probably stop for the day. That’s when Gavin took me too the walk-in and pulled down one of our largest containers which was filled with smaller sacks of peanuts. Then Gavin said, “and you wanna know something? These peanuts are already shelled.”

Now knowing that I had been shelling peanuts for hours while we had tens of pounds of already shelled peanuts, I went to help Gavin with whatever it was that he needed my help with.

302 hours left


THURSDAY

The day after the tree fell.

I got a ride to work from my mom who was using our friend’s car for the day. Right as my mom was dropping me off, David was coming back from taking the compost bin to his truck. So, naturally, I introduced my mom to David and David to my mom. This also gave me an opening to tell David about what happened the night before. I told David that the reason my mom dropped me off was because of the tree. This lead to some conversation and storytelling on my part while we worked on our project for the day.

The project for the day was making blueberry jam. We had almost 8 pounds of blueberries to used for this jam which was pretty simple consisting of the blueberries, apple cider vinegar, sugar, fresh vanilla, lemon zest, and pectin.

The longest part of the procedure was waiting for the jam to concentrate and reduce to about ¼ of the original volume, so while I was waiting I peeled potatoes.

While I was peeling potatoes and checking the jam, Jason called my name and asked, “Would you be able to work an event tonight? Rob was supposed to work it, but he had a family emergency.” I told him, “Well, I haven’t told you this yet, but a tree kinda fell on our house last night, so I have someone coming to pick me up at 6 today.” “Oh, okay. Well, I’ll see if David can do it.”

After about three minutes of peeling potatoes and thinking about it, I went back to Jason and told him that I could work the event. Jason said that he didn’t want to keep me from home since we had a lot going on there, but I told him that there’s not much that I can really do because of the tree and that I would just have to arrange to get picked up later. After finding out that Jason lives about 10 minutes from my house, he offered to give me a ride home after the event, so we were all set.

The event that I was working was a wine tasting at the H & F Bottle Shop (which I didn’t know existed until I was asked to work the event). The whole thing would be pretty simple; all I had to do was plate food to the tasting. Everything was already prepared, so all that was left to do was plate the food and a few last minute touches. There would be two rounds, one at 7:30 and one at 9:30.

I was to leave for the bottle shop after family meal, so I jarred and processed the jam

and peeled the potatoes until David said, “You’d better go get something to eat before it’s just chicken heads left.” I laughed, said okay, and went to get my family meal.

Turns out that David wasn’t joking about the chicken heads. When I got to family meal, almost all that was left were chicken heads and chicken feet. Fortunately, I found some pieces of chicken that didn’t have eyes or talons, which I snatched up before they were gone.

A little while later, David took me, the food (fried chicken, corn bread, and lady pea salad), and utensils that I would need for the event (cutting board, towels, etc.) down to the bottle shop for the event.

For those that don’t know, Holeman and Finch Public House is not only famous for their 10:00 burgers but they’re also famous for their impressive cocktails. This is where the H & F Bottle Shop comes in. The intended purpose for the bottle shop is to sell everything that you would need to make their amazing cocktails at home. However, at the moment, they can only sell wine, so they have wine tastings and feature food from Restaurant Eugene and Holeman and Finch.

When we arrived at the bottle shop, David got me all set up in the back, showed me how everything should look in the basket, and left me to it.

All the people at the H & F Bottle Shop are extremely nice and even more knowledgeable about the wines that they sell. Not knowing much about wine, I was interested to observe and listen to everything they were telling customers. But before long, it was time for the first round for the wine tasting and for me to get to work on plating the food.

It wasn’t until one of the employees asked what the salad was that I realized that “Lady Pea Salad” could easily be misunderstood as something else. I’m sure it gave some people a good laugh though.

Both wine tastings went off without a hitch and we had about half of the food leftover which was perfect because now the bottle shop employees and I got to snack on the delicious food. In appreciation, the bottle shop employees asked if I would like a small glass of wine. Since about all I know about wine is that they can be red or white, but I am interested to learn, I told them that they could pick whatever they wanted. I was a little nervous about what they would choose for me, but I am glad to say that they did not disappoint.

After a while, Woody came to pick me up and take me back to Restaurant Eugene. He asked about the event and I told him that everything went great and that I had a lot of fun. Woody then informed me that they were going to let me have that Saturday off since I worked 12 hours straight. I thanked him, but added that I can still work on Saturday if they wanted me to (trying to make up for my lost sick days).

When we got back to Restaurant Eugene everyone (including the line cooks) was cleaning the kitchen, so I grabbed a squeegee (which I am very familiar with from working in the Clemson creamery) and did my best to help.

289 hours left


FRIDAY

When I got to work after getting dropped off again (this time because my car was in the shop because of the taillight fuse that essentially shut down my car), I got to work on labeling the blueberry jam from the day before. David was eager to hear about last night’s event and about the status of our house. I told him all about both topics throughout the course of the day.

Usually when I take pictures for this blog, I try to be discreet about it (which the flash is not very good about), but David caught me taking a picture of a tasty tomato sandwich that he gave me.

David said, “You are too funny.” I decided to tell him that the reason I take pictures is because of this blog and not for recreation purposes (his guess). So, now David knows about this blog, which will make taking pictures easier since he now knows the reason and won’t think that I’m a weird kid that takes pictures of everything.

While looking for a place to put the jars of blueberry jam, we realized that we did not have much storage space. To remedy this, we decided to take some items that we don’t use very often to the storage unit. This included a lot of heavy lifting on my part and moving items to David’s truck. As we were in route to the storage unit, David told me that after all that, the people up in the office want me to move all their heavy stuff for them too and that “They want your body”. This made me laugh.

Upon our return from the storage unit, Woody told me that he wanted me to make pickled eggs for an event that the bottle shop was hosting on Saturday (a wine tasting with a musical guest). Woody showed me how to use the oven to make perfect hardboiled eggs.

This is probably a good time to describe the magic ovens that we have at Restaurant Eugene. These ovens are amazing. Like most ovens, you can choose the temperature that you want and it comes with a timer. But that and the fact that it has a door that opens and closes are where the similarities end. These ovens are touch screen, and with these ovens you can choose between dry heat and steam heat which is pretty cool, but that’s not all. I haven’t gotten to play with they dry heat as much as with the steam heat, but with the steam heat, you also have the choice of what percent of steam you want. So cool.

All that is pretty cool, but this is where it gets magical. Instead of choosing the dry heat or steam heat, you can press the “chef hat” button. Once pressed, you can choose from many different options on the screen ranging from lamb to chicken to fish. But for me, I wanted the egg button. I pressed the egg on the screen and was presented with more options. Small, medium, or large egg? Soft, medium, or hard-boiled? Then a timer told me when the oven was ready and once the eggs were in, a timer told me when the eggs were done.

Once the timer went off, I took the eggs out and put them right into cold water so that I could peel them easier. Every single egg was perfectly hard-boiled. Magical.

I slipped all the eggs into a jar, poured the brine over them and I was finished.

That’s when Woody found me and asked if I could come in to work a little bit on Saturday. He said that all I would have to do is make candied bacon for the bottle shop and once I was done, I could leave. Excellent, another opportunity to make up for my lost sick days.

280 hours left


SATURDAY

Like I said earlier, my only job for the day was to make candied bacon. I got dropped off a little early because I figured that if I got there earlier, I would have more space and would be finished and out of the way earlier. Woody got me all set up and explained the procedure to me. I had to thinly slice bacon on the industrial slicer,

lay them out on silpats,

sprinkle them with brown sugar, bake them at 320 F for 12 minutes, lightly sprinkle with Creole seasoning, and place them on the cooling rack.

Of course, I had to taste a couple pieces of the candied bacon to make sure they tasted all right and boy did they taste good. You could smell these things from a mile away, which I guess is true of anything with bacon. They tasted smoky from the bacon, but sweet from the caramelized sugar, and slightly spicy from the Creole seasoning. Amazing.

I had to do 140 pieces of candied bacon and quickly got in a groove of preparing the next couple pans of bacon while a couple of pans were baking in the oven. It didn’t take too long, but doing 140 of anything, especially when that anything has multiple steps, is going to take a while.

After all the bacon was baked (bakin’ bacon), I had to put five pieces of the finished candied bacon into small bags and tie them closed with a piece of twine.

These bags of bacon, along with the pickled eggs I made the day before, we going to be sold at the musical wine tasting event at the bottle shop. And that was it for the day.

276 hours left

Till next time,

Ben

return of the chef

"Today, it's all about green tomatoes." This is what David told me this morning as I showed up for work. "You're going to be making pickled green tomatoes and we have 20 pounds of green tomatoes, so you might want to get started."

First thing I did was convert the recipe to figure out how much of each ingredient I needed to get. Next, I worked on preparing the ingredients that needed some work. This included peeling and slicing onions, peeling garlic, and coring and slicing bell peppers. All the other ingredients were spices and such and only needed to be measured out.

While working on getting my ingredients together, Chef Hopkins walked into the kitchen with some fresh basil from his garden. Chef Hopkins had been gone for an entire week. I'm not exactly sure why Chef Hopkins and his family were gone, but I think I overheard someone talking about Mrs. Hopkins' mom passing away earlier in the week, so I assume it had something to do with that, though I never asked about it. I didn't want to be insensitive.

A short while later, Ryan (one of the line cooks) showed up and mentioned that he threw out his back last night while helping his grandmother with something. Chef Hopkins told him that his father deals with that sort of thing and that when he's laying down, he should be in a position like he is sitting up straight in a high backed chair. It's best to have some pillows under your legs to help or to just retain that position as you lay on your side. This helps relax the back and is the best position for it. So there's a little bit of chiropractic advice for the day.

My first problem arose while coring the peppers. We didn't have enough red bell peppers for the recipe. The recipe calls for 3 pounds and I only had 1 pound 10 ounces of pepper. Luckily, we had just received some sweet peppers and David said, "Just use these. It'll be fine. Just cut the stem off and toss them in the bowl and we'll process them like that." This was great, less work for me, or so I thought. The next problem came as I was slicing all the peppers after removing the core and seeds from all of them except for the new peppers. I went to David and told him that the recipe called for the peppers to be sliced, so I asked if he wanted me to slice them and leave the seeds and everything. David told me that I'd better go ahead and remove the seeds and everything before slicing them. So, I went back to coring and seeding peppers.

This recipe was a fairly simple one compared to the other pickling recipes. For this recipe, we just had to combine everything in a pot and bring it to a boil. Once it had been brought to a boil, take it off, jar it, and process it. Simple. Other recipes call for adding different ingredients at different times or bringing something to a simmer, adding an ingredient, then bringing it to a boil. It gan get pretty confusing, but this recipe was refreshingly straightforward.

A little while later, a new guy walked into the kitchen. I recognized this guy because he was at Restaurant Eugene the day I was sick to interview, take his food test, and take his cooking test. His name is JM and he's eventually going to be one of the line cooks. Today was his first day, so he was shadowing everyone and doing lots of prep work like I usually do. That's about all I know about JM. That and the fact that he's a pretty outgoing guy and likes finding out what everyone is working on.

At this point, well after noon, Woody had still not shown up for work. I could only assume that it was his day off. This doesn't sound all that unusual except that today was the first day since I had begun working at Restaurant Eugene that Woody had not been there. He has become somewhat of a staple and a person that I can always go to if I need help or if I need a new task. So, it was kinda weird not having Woody around.

By now I had all my ingredients prepped, measured, and combined into a pot. All of my ingredients except for the tomatoes which David wanted me to save until the last minute. All I had to do for the tomatoes was cut them into 8ths and remove the stem. Nothing difficult, but there were 20 pounds of tomatoes.

When I finished, David was gone to buy jars for me to put the pickled green tomatoes in because we had run out of jars. Over the course of the day, we had received some produce and nobody had put it was just sitting in the walk-in, so I got to work on getting some of getting everything organized and into cambros. Then we got 3 more shipments of produce. It just kept piling up. I was way over my head. Luckily, David showed up and took over. He told me that he was just going to get everything into the walk-in and we'll deal with it in the morning. So, I got back to work on pickling the tomatoes.

While waiting for everything to boil, I went to get family meal.

Todays meal was pulled pork with roasted squash and a salad. By the time I got there, there were mostly burnt pieces of pork left, but I found some good pieces too. However, I found that the crunchy, burnt pieces were a tasty and interesting change of texture. The best part of the meal, though, was the salad dressing. It was like a ranch dressing, but had a little bit of spice. Delicious.

Now that everything was boiling, it was time to jar the pickled green tomatoes.

David told me that ideally we were supposed to get equal parts of onion, peppers, and tomatoes in the jar, but once he tried to demonstrate, he said, "Nevermind. Just put everything in the jar and try your best to get everything equal, but it's no big deal if it's not." This definitely will make the jarring process easier.

Once everything was jarred, they had to be processed for 12 minutes. I had to do the processing in batches because I could only use one oven and the jars are too tall to fit in two racks at the same time. So, while waiting for my pickled tomatoes to finish processing, I saw that Jackson was putting some portions of fish and oil into individual cryovac bags. I asked if he wanted me to cryovac the bags for him. He said that would be great, so that's what I did.

Eventually, all the jars had been processed. However, seeing as how I had 5 minutes left in my shift, I wasn't going to be able to stay there to wait for them to cool, label them, and store them. So, I flipped them upside down and left them to cool on the back table. That's when Gavin saw that I wasn't currently doing anything and gave me a task.

I had to take some fish that we had received that day, cut it to fit in the large cryovac bags, seal it and put it on ice in the walk-in. then I had to change out the ice for the other fish that were already in the walk-in. I ended up staying an extra half hour, but it's all good cause I could use the extra hours.

And with that I gathered my things, told everyone goodbye, and headed home for the evening.

Till next time,

Ben

310 hours left

chop your parsley, son

My first task of the day (as has become the norm) was to organize the walk-in so that we would have space for new deliveries. This always takes a good amount of time because I have to go through all the produce, decide if they could be moved into a smaller cambro or consolidated into a cambro with other produce, find the right size clean cambro, and move everything around so that all the cambros will fit. While working on all of this, I also have to receive the new produce, put them in cambros, and fit them in withe the other ingredients. Unfortunately and fortunately, we don't receive all the new produce at the same time. This is good because I'm able to focus on getting that ingredient all put away, but it's also bad because I don't know if I'm really finished or if we'll be getting another shipment of ingredients.

On this day, we received everything from squash, to carrots, to onions, to butter beans, to komatsuna. We even got in some of the first green beans of the season. Woody made me taste some right when we got them and they were so sweet and delicious.

My next task was to cut lemons for service that night. I had to turn lemons from this...

... into this...

The lemons are used to add lemon juice to dishes, so I have to try keep as much of the lemon on the peel as possible. The leftover middle of the lemon is kept and used to make lemonade for the staff. Just something different to drink other than water. While cutting the lemons, I was reminded of a fact: If you have any sort of cut on or near your hands, lemon juice will find them.

Now that I was finished with the lemons, Jackson told me that he needed a deli container (about a pint) of minced parsley for service tonight. I have minced parsley many many times before, so I was pretty comfortable about being able to do this for Jackson.

Before I had even finished mincing the parsley, Jason and Woody both gave me things to do so that I wouldn't have to come looking for something to do while they were getting set up for service. Jason gave me a bag of shallots and tole me that he wanted them peeled. Easy enough. Woody had just finished searing some leeks in a pan and needed them separated into rings.

These leeks smelled exactly like the onion rings from The Varsity. This made me think, "what if the onion rings from The Varsity are actually leek rings?" But before my mind could wander too far with that concept, I thought, "Oh, it's probably just because they're both absolutely saturated with oil."

The family meal for the day was some pulled pork with green beans (pictured at the top of the post). The pork was very tasty and had a hint of cinnamon which I thought was very interesting. The only draw back was that there was a lot of fat on the meat, so I ended up getting less meat that I thought I did.

Next, Jason came back with another task for me. I was to take cherry tomatoes that had the middle removed, fill them with baba ghanoush, and put the top back on.

I didn't know it then, though I kinda suspected it, but these tomatoes would be used as the nights amuse bouche.

An amuse bouche, or amuse for short, is a single bite-sized appetizer that serves as a "muse" for the rest of the meal. Amuses are often complementary and are meant to tease you or get you ready for the impending meal.

Next, I had both Jackson and Gavin come up to me with meets that they needed cryovaced. The cryovac machine is essentially a vacuum that sucks all the air out of the cryovac bags and keeps items fresh or infuses items with whatever liquid is added to the bag. Once ready to use, the bags are placed in extremely hot water and heated for a couple minutes before being torn open and ready to be cooked. For Gavin, I had to put wrapped squab into individual cryovac bags and seal them. For Jackson, I had to seal bags with halibut and olive oil. It's not a very difficult or time consuming job, but we were getting close to service time so they needed these items as quickly as possible.

By the time I finished with the cryovac, dinner service had already started. I ventured up to the line and dropped off the meats for Jackson and Gavin. Then I asked Jason if there is anything I can do. Jason asked, "Have you ever been up here on the line for a service?" I told him that I haven't. "Well, go watch what Jackson is doing."

At this point in the service it was still fairly early, so the kitchen wasn't very hectic yet, so Jackson, who was on the fish station, showed me all about his station and walked me through what happens when we receive orders. Not too long after that, though, orders started pouring in, so I got out of the way and just watched everyone do their jobs.

I felt bad that I was just watching because I felt like I should be helping out in some way, but at this point, everything was prepped, everything was ready, all that was left was to put it all together. With two hours left in my shift, I had nothing left to do but watch and learn. It was awesome.

Eventually, things started to get a little crazy, so Jason gave me a job on the line. Jason was working on the cold app and salad station, so he let me prepare and plate the amuse for the rest of the time I was there. I was to put a small dot of baba ghanoush on a small plate, place one of the filled cherry tomatoes on the dot of baba ghanoush, and stick a leaf of micro basil under the top of the tomato. The amuse would then me drizzled with a basil infused oil and lightly salted before going out to every single customer that we would get that evening. The finished product looked absolutely beautiful. I wish I could have taken a picture for y'all to see, but there was no time.

Since the line was pretty crowded with and extra body up there, I got to help out with dishes for some of the other cooks. As I was nearest to the deep frier, much of these extra duties including frying things for them.

It was a lot of fun observing, learning, and finally helping with a dinner service. I can't wait until next Saturday when I get to do it all again.

Till next time,

Ben

318 hours left

Jenga

Enough of this being sick stuff, I'm pretty confidant that I'm all better now. I've got my appetite back and the smell of food doesn't sicken me. Now I can get back to enjoying my work.

First things first today, finish with the kabocha squash. I had finished slicing, peeling, and coring the squash yesterday, but we still had to preserve them in jars and that is exactly what David was in the middle of doing when I arrived for work today.

David is a quiet man for the most part, aside from passing remarks to fellow employees. Also, because of his experience in the industry, he is a hard man to impress. This is kinda disheartening because he does not dole out complements very often and it's nice to hear if you're doing something well.

As David was showing me what I needed to do with the slices of kabocha (clean up rough edges and layer them on top of one another in the jar), he said, "Good job on the squash yesterday. That's a job that most chefs don't like to do. It's very tedious work." I was ecstatic. David had recognized that I really am trying to do the best possible job that I can. It was validating. David then went on to tell me that the slices of kabocha need to be perfect because they would come right out of the jar and onto the plate, so they need to be able to pass the critical eye of the customers. He wants perfection? I'll give him perfection.

That is a picture of my perfectly layered jar of kabocha squash slices. It's a lot harder than it looks because not all the slices are even and everything shifts around from time to time, but I got it to work.

Right after I finished my first jar, David came by to check on how I was doing. I asked David if the jar was up to his standards, and he said that it was uber-perfect and that it looked liek a game of Jenga. David then went on to tell me, "I appreciate you precision, but they don't have to be that perfect. Don't lose your religion over it."

Finished preserved kabocha squash.

While working on the rest of the kabocha, Woody asked me if I had ever heard of botarga. I told him that I hadn't and he went on to tell me what it's the roe of fish that is cured (ours had been cured for 2 months on salt), then compressed in cheese cloth to extract all the moisture. What is left is a solid block that we would later use to grate on top of pasta and things like that.

We had some leftover brine after we had finished preserving the kabocha, so David decided that we would use the rest of the brine to preserve some yellow flay, which look a lot like bean sprouts. So, for the next couple of hours, I sliced off the ends of approximately 700 pieces of yellow flay. David added a few cloves of garlic and a few spicy peppers to the jars and after I stuffed them with the yellow flay, they were ready to be preserved.

Next, we got a shipment of mushrooms, so I had to unpack them, label them and find a place to store them in the walk-in. It wasn't a difficult job, but I was glad to do something other that lean over a cutting board for a while. The only difficult part was when I had to identify what type of mushrooms were in each box, but with a little help from Woody, it was smooth sailing.

David had created a potato plate for tonight's service (I never got to see the finished plate though), so I had to wash the dirt off all of the potatoes that would be used in the dish. David taught me a little trick though. He told me to fill a bowl with water, add a cup of vinegar, and let the potatoes soak in it for a while. It doesn't get every speck of dirt off, but it did get the majority of the dirt off, so I was thankful.

While I was working on the potatoes, David was making herb dumplings out of pesto, parmesan, and breadcrumbs, but he wasn't going to be able to finish before he had to leave for the day, so he passed the task off to me. It was pretty fun because I got to use a pastry bag to fill all these little silicone molds for the dumplings.

While the dumplings were in the oven, I went ahead and got my family meal (pictured above). There was the usual salad, a spicy macaroni and corn salad, amazing fried fish, and baked chicken with a walnut and olive crust. Now, I really don't like olives. I feel like the taste is too overpowering. But I decided that if anything was going to make me like olives, then that anything would come from this kitchen. I still don't like olives. Other than the olives, though, the meal was excellent as usual.

Back to the dumplings. I took the first batch out of the oven and they seemed a little under done when I tried to free them from the mold (The one that I tried to free from the mold broke). So I put them back in the oven for a couple more minutes, leaving the broken one for me to try. I mean, we can't serve a broken dumpling, so might as well taste it.

These dumplings were pretty amazing. they tasted like pesto, but had pockets of melted parmesan cheese in them that catch your taste buds by surprise. Excellent, excellent dumplings.

While waiting for the dumplings to finish in the oven, Aaron (our pastry chef) informed me that one of his good friends is a professor at Clemson. Small world. Turns out that his friend teaches neurobiology and stuff like that, so there is no chance that I could have had him, but it's still pretty cool.

The minute I finished with the dumplings, Jackson (one of the line cooks) gave me a bunch of leaves (three types to be exact) and told me that he needed the stems picked off of them, needs them washed, spun dry, and then needs them on the line. This would be my task for the rest of the evening. It doesn't sound like much work, but I assure you, going through each and every leaf and picking their stem off is quite time consuming.

I don't really know what I will be doing tomorrow, but I'm sure it will involve some receiving and storing of produce since Woody likes to go to the markets early saturday morning to order fresh and new ingredients.

Until next time,

Ben

326 hours left

Willpower

Today I had to will my way through a looong day of work.

Usually in the mornings before work I wake up at about 7:45, take a shower, watch an hour of Saved by the Bell as i eat breakfast, 20 minutes of Sportscenter, leave by 9:20, and arrive at work between 9:40 and 9:50 depending on traffic, road construction, or in todays case, a grenade found at a school near Restaurant Eugene.

Today though, I was feeling so bad that I opted to rest instead of watch any sort of TV. I was still not feeling very well when I left for work this morning and was hoping that I would be well enough to get through at least part of the day.

I get to work (after another brief rest session in my car in the parking garage) and everyone asks how I'm felling. I tell them that I'm not 100%, but I'm going to try to make it through the day. As luck would have it, today wasn't very difficult at all.

I started out by peeling, coring, and slicing kabocha squash that was to be preserved.

This took a while because there were about 10 of these rather large squashes that I had to get through. Also, as I had three of the kabocha squashes left, I told David that I was going to take a break to talk with Jason about my HACCP project. David said, "A BREAK? Are you serious, a BREAK?" Then he cracked a smile to let me know that he was kidding. I'm still getting used to his sense of humor...

After my "break" to talk with Jason about my HACCP project, I got right back to work on the kibacha. While finishing up the last of the squash, Woody asked David if he could use me to make the crudite (there's supposed to be an accent over that "e") for tonight's service. David said that would be fine. So, now I had my second task before even finishing my first.

For those of you that don't know (or didn't click on the link), crudite is pretty much an appetizer of raw vegetables with a dipping sauce. A crudite is traditionally prepared with celery sticks, carrot sticks, bell pepper strips, broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus spears, but our crudite was going to be composed of radishes, zucchini, cucumbers, and sugar snap peas, all prepped by yours truly.

By this time, David couldn't think of anything for me to do, so he put me on garlic peeling duty. I have come to find that the line cooks will always need garlic peeled, butter cubed, lemons cut, parsley picked, and lambs quarter picked.

Working in the kitchen today was exceptionally difficult because because of my having been sick, the smell of food had been making me nauseous. So, imagine my discomfort being in a place that is constantly producing the thing that makes me feel sick to my stomach. Alas, I pushed through it all because I knew that I had to get work done and because, frankly, I need the hours.

I would like to take this time to address the absence of pictures in this blog post. I did not realize how few pictures I had taken today until I uploaded them to my computer a little while ago....all three of them. I didn't even have a picture of family meal, which had been in most every post thus far. I know that a lot of people out there like to look at pictures of what I am doing in the kitchen, and personally, I think that they help me tell the stories.

However, there are reasons for the lack of photos in this post.
1) I usually work in the very back of the kitchen, facing the back wall, next to David. This situation affords me the opportunity to take lots of pictures of what I am working on. But recently, I have been working up front on the line, not making food for a service, but physically up front where the line is because the line cooks don't get to work until later in the day. This situation does not allow for many pictures to be taken because people are always walking through the kitchen and I don't want them to think, "Why is that intern always taking pictures of things? Weird."
B) There were a lot of things in the kitchen today that I'm sure some, if not most, people would not like to see. For example, today we received three pig halves. And I mean, these people just cut the pigs in half and brought them to us. Head still on, hooves still on, and even tail still on. Also, family meal today, while it did taste good, did not look appetizing at all. The had some sort of braised beef dish with cubes of meat floating in the liquid as the feature of the meal. All I wanted was some soup or something and that's the option they give me. So, I took a few pieces and reluctantly went back to my station next to the pigs.

When I got back, I asked Woody if there was anything for me to do and Gavin (one of the line cooks) perked up and said, "Oooh. I've got something for him to do." and he wasn't lying. Gavin wanted me to take these huge leaves of something and cut them from the core. Then I was to chiffonade (a knife cut for leafy vegetables and herbs that makes them look shredded) the leaves, put them into water, use the salad spinner to spin them dry, and finally give them back to Gavin. Then I was to use the salad spinner to dry three other buckets of various leafy vegetables and give them to Gavin. After that, Gavin wanted me to partially fill a bowl with water and transfer some mushrooms from their dirty water into a clean bowl of water. Finally, I was to pick a container of Lambs Quarter, put them into a bucket of water, spin them dry, and give them to Gavin. After all of this, it was nearly 6:00 (quittin' time) and I was ready to go home.

Earlier in the day, James (one of the chefs and apparently the butcher for Holmen and Finch) told me that we would be getting the pig halves and a suckling pig in today and that he wanted me to help him with them.
Let me take a minute to introduce y'all to James. James, for some reason, likes to talk to me and give me advice. This is not unwelcome advice as he has been in the industry much longer than I have and I'll take any advice that I can get. Every once in a while, James will come over to the Restaurant Eugene kitchen for something and will sometimes end up near my station where we will chit chat. He asked me what I planned to do after I graduated from Clemson, to which I answered that I was planning to go to culinary school. James then decided to give me a bit of advice, "Don't waste your money on culinary school." This kinda shocked me. James said that Places don't put much importance on where you went to school, but rather look at your experience in other restaurants. I don't know if I want to accept his advice or not, but we'll see how everything pans (no pun intended) out as far as my future goes.
Anyways, I asked James what he wanted me to help him with, hoping that it would be something quick and easy to pass the time between then and 6:00. James told me that he wanted me to make a brine for the suckling pig and started listing all the ingredients that he wanted me to round up. This was not going to be a quick task.

At about the time that I realized that we didn't have any of the ingredients required for the four pounds of mirepoix (onion, carrot, and celery) that I was supposed to make for the brine, Holeman and Finch got a delivery of produce. When I asked James what I should do about not having the mirepoix, he told me that they have everything I need on the Holeman and Finch shelf in the bakery and that I should put all the new produce into cambros (large storage boxes) and take them to the bakery, put them in the walk-in, and come back with the ingredients for the mirepoix. At this point it was well after 6:00. James asked me if that was okay, I said, "Yeah, sure."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, I am supposed to leave at 6:00..."
"Well, this will build character then!"
And off I went to organize and store new produce for a restaurant that I wasn't even working at.

When I got to the bakery, I found the head baker and told him what I was supposed to do. He showed me the walk-in and gave me one rule. "You can't have anything sticking out off the shelves cause we have to be able to fit this rack (for dough) in front of it. Thus began my game of tetris with the Holeman and Finch shelf in the bakery walk-in refrigerator.

Eventually I got everything to fit on the shelf overcrowded with Holeman and Finch products, such as the pimento cheese...

...which I hear is very very good, so I took a picture for my friends who love it.

When I got back to to Restaurant Eugene, I told James (who was still breaking down pigs) that I got everything put away and he asked where my ingredients for the mirepoix were. I had forgotten them. I told James that I forgot the ingredients, but had everything else for the brine measured out. James told me that it was fine, thanked me for my help, and told me that I could go on home (Finally!). It was 7:00.

After a long day of work (9 hours), I am feeling a lot better.

Till next time,

Ben

334 hours left

Trying to get better

Well, today was disappointing.
I didn't feel very well last night and still didn't feel well this morning, but went to work with the hopes that I would feel better by the time I got there. That was not the case, I still did not feel well. I went to find David and he began to get me started on making another batch of kimchi, but when he asked how my weekend was and I answered with an unemphatic, "okay...", he inquired further and I admitted to having stomach issues. David asked me some questions concerning my symptoms and then asked if I thought that I would be able to work. After some internal deliberation, I told him that It would probably be best if I didn't work today, just to be on the safe side. He said that he completely agreed.

However, I asked if he thought it was okay for me to stick around and work on my HACCP plans because I had planned to meet with Jason at 11:00 anyways. Plus, then it wouldn't be a complete waste of a day. David said that that would be fine, so I got all my stuff together and waited in the bar area for Jason to get to work.

I was disappointed that I couldn't work today because I was ready to get back to work. Over my days off, I had purchased a new short-sleeved chef jacket, a new knife case, and new shoe inserts to help with my foot and back pain, and I wanted to try everything out! Now, I not only didn't feel well, but I also felt bad because I felt like I was making more work for everyone else. I know that it's best that I wasn't in the kitchen, but I still felt like I needed to do something to make the day easier for everyone.

Jason had a meeting to interview another guy at 11 and then I was supposed to meet with him after he was finished, so I had some time to kill before I could actually do anything. I noticed that Rob (the Director of Events) was in the dining room moving tables and chairs around. I told him that I wasn't going to be able to work in the kitchen today and asked if he needed any help. Rob told me that he was setting everything up for two large parties that we were hosting that night and that we needed to clear the tables of the silverware and dishes so that we could iron the tablecloths, so he could definitely use the help.

Rob then left briefly and turned the classical music up in the dining room. I thought, "Great. This will give us something to talk about." This past semester at Clemson, I had taken a music course where we studied everything from Gregorian chat to jazz, so we made small talk about the music. He told me that he loves to work to classical pieces and that his father used to play classical music for him to fall asleep to, so it's also a nostalgic thing for him. I asked Rob if he played any instruments and he said that he has a guitar that he strums about once every year. It was some very pleasant small talk while we cleared tables.

Rob, I must say, is the perfect for the Director of Events job. The Director of Events is the person that you talk to when you call to make reservations, the person that calls you back to confirm your reservations, and the person you talk to if you are planning an event at the restaurant. Because of this, the Director of Events should be charismatic and Rob is extremely charismatic. In the small percentage of calls that I witnessed, calls that could have lasted 5 minutes took 10 or even 15 minutes because these people wanted to talk to Rob and Rob wanted to talk to them.

After helping Rob with the table setups, I still had a good amount of time on my hands as Jason was running late, so I flipped through an issue of The Atlantan Magazine. I read some interesting articles, but was drawn to the back of the magazine where they give brief reviews for local restaurants because I saw a review for Restaurant Eugene...

"Executive Chef Linton Hopkins embraces local farmers, growers, and producers, and bases his restaurant's menu on the organic ingredients they harvest daily. Small plate favorites includes chicken livers with grits and pickled peaches; skillet greens with sorghum gastrique; and lamb shoulder with glazed turnips and mint. Tasting menus, Sunday supper and Cheese Eugene are also wildly popular"

That's right, they were talking about the pickled peaches that I made!

By this time, the guy Jason was supposed to interview had shown up and had begun taking his food test (a test they administer to everyone to gauge where you are), but Jason still hadn't shown up. I decided to walk around and take a good look at the dining area.

I had often wondered where the names for Restaurant Eugene and Holeman and Finch Public House came from and I found a plaque on the wall that gave me a lot of answers. The plaque was about Eugene Holeman, Chef Hopkins' grandfather.

Eugene Holeman grew up on a farm near Memphis, Tennessee and was a chemist by trade but later became the President of the Tennessee Food and Drug Administration. When Chef Hopkins was a child, he would often go with his grandfather to inspect farms. It was on these trips to farms that he taught his grandson that food comes from someone - a person. Eugene would cook everything at home and often used ingredients and produce from his own garden. Chef Hopkins has said that his grandfathers homemade peach ice cream on a hot summer day is is fondest memory. Eugene Hopkins also taught his grandson that cooking goes hand-in hand with bringing food to the table. His combination of cooking and graciousness is what shaped the vision for Restaurant Eugene. After reading the plaque, it is easy to see that Chef Hopkins' grandfather was not only the inspiration for the name of Restaurant Eugene, but also the inspiration for the restaurant as a whole, as well as a monumental influence on Chef Hopkins both as a person and as a chef.

At this point, I had come to the realization that when Jason does arrive for work, he won't have enough time to conduct his interview and sit down with me to talk about the things I need for my HACCP plans, so I reluctantly headed home for the day to try to get better before 10am tomorrow.

Till next time,

Ben

0 hours worked today, so still 343 hours left