Hot Sauces and Car Curses

Thursday I got to work and David wasn't there to give me things to do.  This wasn't a very big deal since I have worked without David before, but back then I had my own agenda of things that I needed to do like making the pimento cheese fritters, fry the shallots, and fry the potatoes and things like that.  This time i had nothing to do.  So, I started doing what I usually do when I have nothing to do, cut lemons, chop parsley, cube butter, and mince shallots.  Once I finished with all of that stuff, I started making breadcrumbs.

After I finished with the breadcrumbs, Woody found me and told me that he wanted me to make hot sauce out of some peppers that we got in that day.  I didn't know how to make hot sauce, so Woody briefly ran me through the process.

First, I had to process the peppers in the robocoup.

Before processing

Who knew that something so Christmasy could be so spicy?

Then I tossed the processed peppers in salt and packed them into the bottom of a cambro.  Finally, I packed salt on top of the peppers to create a crust, covered the cambro with cheese cloth and placed it on the dry storage rack.  In on and a half month, we will have hot sauce.

Peppers with the salt crust

Once I finished with making the hot sauce, we had some deliveries come in, so I worked on getting all of the new produce stored and put away in the walk-in.

After a while, it was time for family meal.

Family meal consisted of pulled chicken with a spicy sauce, pesto pasta salad, and grilled raisin bread.

For the rest of the evening, I peeled garlic because Woody and Jason kept stressing to me that we needed to get all the garlic peeled and preserved before it started to go bad.

Friday, I got straight to work on peeling the garlic again.  I was determined to get all of the garlic peeled that day so that I could get started on preserving them on Saturday and wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.  While peeling garlic, our newest employee (another Chris) offered to help peel garlic with me because he had nothing to do until Woody and Jason got to work.  I was glad to have the help.

Since peeling garlic can only be so interesting for so long, Chris and I got to talking about things and getting to know each other better.  Turns out that Chris is a senior hospitality management major at Auburn University.  Naturally this lead to talks of college football since our teams played each other last year and are scheduled to play each other again this year.  After a while, Chris revealed to me that he almost chose to go to Clemson for college.  So, we got to comparing our majors and aspects of each school and I'm pretty sure that I convinced him that he should have gone to Clemson instead of Auburn... Clemson 1 Auburn 0.

Chris and I also discovered that there is an "employee car curse" at Restaurant Eugene.  Chris told us that last night after work, he was read ended by Levi (another new employee) at a red light and that both cars needed to have work done.  After hearing this, we concluded that there was indeed a car curse because Ryan and I both had our cars hit by trees within our first few weeks of work, another employee had his car totaled on his way to his first day of work at RE, and now, Levi rear ended Chris.  Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

The protesters from the past few weeks are still trying to deter people from coming to Restaurant Eugene because we serve foie gras.  They claim that the production of foie gras involves animal cruilty, but I urge everyone to read Chef Hopkins' statements about the foir gras that we use and the meetings with the group that is leading the protests against Restaurant Eugene.  Whatever your view is on the production of foie gras, it helps to know both sides of the story, and this is our side.

Eventually, Chris was assigned something else to do, but he helped me make a huge dent in the mountain of garlic that I had to peel.  I continued to peel garlic until time for family meal when I reluctantly forced myself to stop because I had some other things that I needed to get done that day.

Family meal consisted of pulled pork sliders with your choice of three barbecue sauces, corn on the cob with a spicy butter, and home made oreos.

After family meal, I made some more breadcrumbs and got started on making tabasco hot sauce.  When I first heard that they wanted me to make tabasco hot sauce I was confused because I was pretty sure that tabasco was a brand of hot sauce, but tabasco is actually the pepper used to make the hot sauce, so I made tabasco hot sauce.

Pretty different from the Tabasco we're all used to, huh?

Turns out that I managed my time very well today because when I was finished making the hot sauce, it was time for me to leave for the day.

Saturday, I got straight to work on the garlic.  There wasn't much garlic left to peel, but it still took a good while before I was finished and could start on preserving the garlic.  Turns out that I wouldn't have enough time to preserve all the garlic because it needed to simmer for four hours on the stove and there wasn't enough space for me to take up four hours of space on the stoves.

Like every saturday, we got the leftover produce from the farmers market that morning, so much of my day was devoted to getting everything into the walk-in and making sure that the walk-in was nice and organized.

Before I knew it, it was time for family meal.

Family meal consisted of macaroni with ground beef, potato salad, and roasted squash with pesto

After family meal, I made even more breadcrumbs, cut lemons for the line, minced shallots for the line, and peeled baby beets for Jackson.  I had peeled beets before and they're not very difficult to peel, but for some reason, these beets weren't peeling as easily as others.  I was told to put the beets in the oven with foil over them for about 15 minutes to make them easier to peel.  Turns out that for some reason, putting the beets back into the oven made them even more difficult to peel.  So, I spent the rest of my evening peeling baby beets.

Till next time, 

Ben

24 hours left