Breadcrumbling

Todays post will be short because
A) I forgot (and remembered upon my arrival to work) my notebook which I use to jot notes about the day so that I can remember them for this blog,
2) I also forgot my camera, so there will be no pictures, and
III) I only did about 5 things for the entire day.

This week is going to be tough for me.  Not because I'm working later than I'm supposed to or because I'm doing more difficult and therefore more stressful things in the kitchen, but because it is VBS week at my church.

I've been helping with VBS at my church for at least the past 5 years (most likely more) and I have been with the same group of kids for the past 3 years.  Every Summer I look forward to spending the week with these amazing kids and this year is the last year that they will be young enough to attend VBS, so it was going to be my last year with them as well.  As much as I want to spend the whole week with these kids, I've got a grown-up job that I need to go to, so I reluctantly told the people that I could only be at VBS for one day (Monday, one of my days off) this year.

Monday I went to my only day of VBS and had a blast (off).  It probably wasn't a good idea for me to go to VBS at all because now I want to spend the whole week at VBS more than ever.  So, I started thinking of ways that I could work VBS and still go to work at Restaurant Eugene.  I came up with the plan to ask Jason if I could come into work at noon and stay as late as needed until Friday.  I figured that they may allow this since Ryan had moved from the garde manger station to day prep, so we had an extra person in the mornings.

I never proposed my plan to Jason.  When I got to work this morning, I was talking with David and told him that I was a little bummed because I wasn't at VBS and explained everything to him but did not tell him about my idea of coming in late.  He was sympathetic and everything but told me that Keron was no longer working with us at Restaurant Eugene (and no, he was not fired nor did he quit), so we were now behind the 8 ball in the mornings.  I don't know if David was implying that they needed me to be there in the mornings, but that's the way I took it, so I decided that I shouldn't even ask about coming in late for the rest of the week.

Last week, Jason told me that at the beginning of this week he wanted me to work on making Persian Pickled Peaches, so that was the first thing I got to work on this morning.  I had to peel and slice a case of peaches before I knew how much of the other ingredients I would need for the recipe, so that's what I did.  After getting all the peaches ready, I figured out how much of everything else I would need and that's where I ran into a couple of problems.

I calculated that I would need about 4 gallons of white wine vinegar (which we didn't have) and a cup of minced ginger (which we also didn't have).  I told Jason and Woody that we didn't have everything that I needed for the recipe and they told me that they would order the ingredients and we would have them by tomorrow, so my project was put on hold for the day.  I measured out the ingredients that we did have and stored them in the walk-in so that I would be all ready to go in the morning.

Nest on the list were breadcrumbs and a lot of them.  Jason pointed out 6 loaves of bread that he wanted me to make into breadcrumbs.  To put this into perspective, one loaf of bread can make enough breadcrumbs to last 3 or 4 days.  To also put this in perspective, it takes about 2 or 3 hours to turn one loaf of bread into breadcrumbs.  Needless to say, I was making breadcrumbs for most of the day and still have more bread to make into breadcrumbs for tomorrow.

David gave me the tasks of processing the pickles that he made today and putting away a delivery which I would do to take breaks from making breadcrumbs.  One of the ingredients we got in the delivery was a whole box (imagine a box the size of 2 1/2 shoeboxes) of thyme.  I managed to get all of the thyme into one of our cambros and was going to the walk-in to put it away when Jason came out of the walk-in and asked, "what's that?" referring to the cambro.  I couldn't resist.  I quickly and nonchalantly answered, "All the thyme in the world." Jason couldn't help but laugh.

After a few more hours of making breadcrumbs, I got to a good stopping point for the breadcrumbs for the evening, so I asked if there was anything that needed to be done.  Woody had some baby golden beets that needed to be peeled and a chicken stock to be strained, so that's what I worked on.  Once I finished with those things, Ryan had a pork jus reduction that needed to be strained, so I did that for him as well.  After I finished with that, though, it was past time for me to leave, so after checking to see if there was anything else that needed to be done, I went home for the evening.

Till next time,

Ben

147 hours left