Assembling the pickled okra took up the vast majority of my day. I had to measure out ingredients for each individual jar, then stuff the okra into the jar until no more okra could possibly fit, then had it off to David who would fill the jars of okra with the brine. We filled 77 8oz jars, 29 12oz jars, and 2 16oz jars. That's almost 1000 ounces of pickled okra.
What made this pickling process different from any other that we had done before is that nothing needed to be cooked. Typically the brine is cooked to dissolve sugars and combine flavors, but this brine was practically just salt water. Because nothing was cooked, we had to process the jars for 30 minutes instead of the usual 12 minutes.
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| Pickled Okra |
Once we did finish with the pickled okra though, we had to process them. David had to leave for the day, so he left the processing of the okra to me. While waiting for the okra to process, I cut cherry tomatoes for Jackson and peeled garlic.
Before this internship, whenever I would have to peel garlic, I would just smash it with my knife because then the skin would come right off and I would be mincing the garlic anyways, so it didn't really matter that it was smashed. However, we don't use smashed garlic in the kitchen, the garlic clove has to be whole. This is frustrating and time consuming because the skin sticks to the garlic and comes off in small pieces. This time, though, I was given a tip. Put the cloves of garlic in a bowl of water for a little while and then peel them. The water loosens the skin and prevents it from sticking to the garlic. This tip made peeling garlic so much easier and faster.
Today, I immediately got to work on boxing up the pickled okra so that we could easily deliver them to the bottle shop later. Once finished, I got to work on peeling even more garlic. At about noon, we figured that someone would be at the bottle shop, so I made the short drive with all of the pickled okra and delivered them to the bottle shop.
When I got back to Restaurant Eugene, I ground up some blocks of parmesan that was to be used for dumplings and various other dishes and cubed up some bread to dry out for making breadcrumbs later in the week. Next, Jackson got me working on washing and ribbing some kale that was in the walk-in. Then, Jackson told me that he wanted me to help him prep for family meal. He needed me to cut scallions, dice onions, and dice bell peppers.
When I finished with all of that, I asked David if there was anything that I could help with to which he replied, "This may be your lucky day" implying that there was nothing that needed to be done. Because there was nothing that needed to be done, David told me to shuck all of the cobs of corn so that there was one less thing to do when someone needed corn.
I was almost finished shucking the corn when it was time for family meal. For the past few days, there has been a family meal war between Restaurant Eugene and Holeman and Finch to see who can put up the best family meal. This is great for me because now I get amazing family meals every day (not to say that any previous family meals were not amazing). Today, we were the ones putting up family meal and put together a pretty stellar meal, if I do say so myself.
Curry chicken (in the bowl), okra and vegetable stew, vegetable rice, naan with garlic butter, and a chocolate chip cookie cake. While consuming family meal, I was convinced that the vegetable rice would be my favorite component, but then I tried the naan with the garlic butter. Words fail.
After family meal, I scrambled around to find tasks to keep busy and ended up picking and chopping parsley, cutting lemons, and cutting cherry tomatoes for the rest of the evening.
While I was doing one of these tasks, David came up to me to tell me that he was leaving for the evening. Normally, this wouldn't be out of the ordinary, but this time was that last time that we would see each other for the rest of my internship. David will be gone for the rest of this week and all of next week to take care of some things. I knew that David was going to be gone for the rest of my internship after today and wanted to thank him for everything, so last weekend I went out and bought a nice vegetable peeler to give him as a gift. My choice of a vegetable peeler may sound odd to many of you, but it was a way to say thank you and also a replacement for a nice vegetable peeler that he let me use and I lost on my first day of work. So that's the reasoning behind the vegetable peeler.
David was very appreciative of the gift as I am sure that he wasn't expecting a gift at all. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and David wished me luck with pretty much the entire rest of my life, school, my career, my choices, and whatever life has in store for me.
It was weird having to say goodbye to someone who has essentially been my mentor throughout my internship while I still have a week and a half left for my internship. David graciously shared his physical space, knowledge, enlightening conversation, and tools (even after I lost one of them on my first day) with me for almost two and a half months, and now he's not going to be there to share those things with me anymore. In one hand, it's sad to know that he won't be there to help me for the rest of my internship, but on the other, it's like I'm really on my own now and I have to rely on my own knowledge for the rest of my time at Restaurant Eugene.
David has been a great influence and an even greater friend during my time at Restaurant Eugene. It just feels weird that the person that I spent the most time with and learned the most from is the first person that I have to say good bye to....and a week and a half early at that.
Till next time,
Ben
51 hours left
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