Last Day

As I sit here writing this, I am officially finished with my internship at Restaurant Eugene.

My last day started off with mentally preparing myself to jar and process okra all day, but I got some good news when Jason told me that they were ordering specific jars for the okra and we don't have them in yet, so there is nothing I can do with the okra.  What a relief.  I really didn't want to spend my last day at work doing one thing the whole time.  Instead, Jason got me started on making a pomegranate simple syrup that would be used to flavor the 100 pounds of cherries that we have been preparing for the bottle shop all week.

Chris (the intern from Auburn) had been the main person working on the cherries as he had pitted 70 of the 100 pounds.  I helped chris drain the water that the cherries were being kept in and poured the pomegranate simple syrup over them.  As we were working on this in the walk-in, Chris and I were talking about this being my last day at work when Jackson walked in and said, "Ben, this is you're last day here?  That makes me really sad.  I almost teared up a bit there."  It was pretty obvious that he was joking, but at the same time, it was also obvious that he really meant some of what he said.

After finishing with the cherries (for now), I got to work on jarring and processing the leftover bloody mary mix.  As I was walking out to the back to get more jars, Woody called my name and just kinda sighed and rose his hands from his sides.  I asked him what was up, and he said, "It's you're last day.  I can't believe it."  I just laughed and said, "It's not over yet, there's still the rest of the day."  I swear I told everyone that August 6th was my last day, but I guess people forgot about it and it crept up on them.

While I was jarring the bloody mary mix, Jason approached me and asked if I could make pimento cheese fritters because we had a lot of reservations (100 if I remember correctly) and they wanted to have something to serve people while the wait.  I was more than happy to make the pimento cheese fritters, and thought that it was fitting that I would get to make one of the only things that I get to make for service on my last day of work.

I noticed that there were a lot more people in the kitchen than usual.  That was because Holeman and Finch were hosting a baby shower, so all of the prep cooks from Holeman were working with us at Restaurant Eugene.  This means that the kitchen was very very crowded and working space was at a premium.  Space got even more valuable when the deliveries from the farmers market started to come in. At one point I had five watermelons and 20 jars of bloody mary mix as I was working on forming the pimento cheese fritters on the 1/3 of a workbench available to me.  Very cramped.

All that changed, though, at 2:00 when there was a large staff meeting.  At 2:00, we went from having 20 people in the kitchen to having three people in the kitchen, Juan (a dishwasher), Chris, and myself.  We went from having very little space to having the entire kitchen.  Chris and I were a little bummed that we weren't invited to the meeting because we felt like we've earned being able to go to a meeting that involved everyone.  But at the same time, we are only interns and what was being discussed in the meeting most likely didn't involve us since we would both be leaving fairly soon (even sooner for me).  Though, we both agreed that Chef Hopkins probably  talked about food at some point, and that is what we were interested in hearing.

After an hour of having no one in the kitchen and getting a lot of work done, everyone in the meeting rushed back into the kitchen and was hurrying around to try to catch up on the time they missed while in the meeting.

I got about halfway through forming and breading the pimento cheese fritters in flour when it was time for my last family meal.

Last Supper

Family meal consisted of lasagna made with homemade pasta, marinara, ground beef, and ricotta.  It also included a chocolate chip cake with fresh whipped cream.  Definitely a great last family meal from work.

Once I was finished with the pimento cheese fritters and had boxed the bloody mary mix, i got started on cleaning a tray of chanterelles for Woody.  As usual, this took a good bit of time, but Jason was breaking down fish right next to me, so we got to talk while we were both working which was pretty nice.

By this time, the night's service had already started and Ian needed some cherry tomatoes peeled.  There were a good amount of cherry tomatoes and Chris didn't have anything else to do, so we peeled the cherry tomatoes together to finish them twice as fast.  Chris and I get along very well since we're both the same age, in college, and are doing many of the same tasks around the kitchen.  That being said, Chris is a much better cook and has much more experience than I do, so it was also pretty cool hang out with him during work and get tips from him.

One of the best experiences of the night was being able to listen to Chef Hopkins expo for the service.  When someone is on expo, that just means that all the food produced has to be approved by Chef before it goes out to the customers.  Whoever is on expo pretty much runs the entire kitchen.  It was really cool to be able to listen to how Chef runs everything and motivates everyone.

As the night's service was beginning to wind down, Chef went around to make sure that everyone was leaving.  Eventually he made it around to me and asked how much time I had left.  I told him that this was it, today was my last day.  Chef said, "Oh, man.  Everyone!  We gotta do something to Ben!  Break out the glucose and flour."  We all laughed about that and people gathered around telling me the things that they were going to do to me.  It was all talk though, nothing happened.  After all that, I thanked Chef for everything and and for taking me and this internship on.  In response, Chef thanked me for my hard work and for the HACCP plans that I worked on for him and told me to make sure that I come back to Restaurant Eugene sometime before I left for college.  I told Chef that I would absolutely be coming to Restaurant Eugene before I left for Clemson.

At this point, I was well over my scheduled 8 hours for the day, but I felt that since this was my last day, I should stick around and try to soak up as much as I can.  So, I pitted the last 10 pounds of cherries so they can begin to soak overnight and would be ready to join the rest of the cherries in the pomegranate simple syrup the next day.  When I was almost finished with the cherries and service was over, Woody told everyone that he was leaving.  I said, "Bye Woody" as he was walking out and he turned around and came back and said, "Ben, I almost forgot that it's your last day."  Woody also thanked me for my work this summer and that they're going to miss having me around.  And with that, Woody was gone for the night and for the rest of my internship.

When I finally finished pitting all the cherries, I decided that it was time for me to say my final goodbyes and leave.  First, I told everyone in the back of the kitchen (Chris, Aaron, and Charlie) that I was leaving and thanked them for all their help throughout the summer.  Next, I moved up to the line where I said goodbye to Ian and Levi.  I also thanked them for helping me with everything this summer.

Next, I said goodbye to Jackson.  Like I had with everyone else, I thanked Jackson for everything that he has done for me and helped me with this summer.  Jackson, along with an handful of other people, had been one of the constants for me in the kitchen.  Jackson thanked me for all the work that I had done and said that I had really come a long way and improved from my first day of work.  Then Jackson added that he doesn't know who is going to doing all the work that I've been doing now that I'm gone and that I have no idea how much the work that I do helps everyone in the kitchen.  These complements really meant a lot to me and I thanked him yet again.

Last, but not least, I said goodbye to Jason.  Jason was the first person that I met at Restaurant Eugene.  Jason is the person who conducted my interview when I was still looking for an internship earlier this year.  Jason is the person who offered to give me a ride home from work at 11:30 after a tree hit my house and my car was trapped in our carport.  Jason is the person that I would always check with before leaving to make sure that there was nothing else that needed to be done before I left for the evening.  So, it was a little weird to say goodbye to him.

It's never been so hard to leave work, even after working 11 hours.





To everyone that I've had the pleasure of encountering and working with at Restaurant Eugene, to Chef Hopkins, Jason, Woody, David, Ryan, Jackson, Aaron, Chris, Ian, Levi, Stella, James, Billy, Jorje, Charlie, Jeff, Rob, all the office girls, all the wait staff, and everyone at Holeman and Finch, I want to say a heartfelt and resounding thank you.  Thank you for teaching and guiding me through everything during my internship.  Thank you for making my internship fun, interesting, and challenging at the same time.  Thank you for being amazing people and co-workers.  I am unbelievably lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all in a restaurant as well respected and admired as Restaurant Eugene.  I could not have dreamed of a better place than Restaurant Eugene and better people to work with for my internship.

For all of that, I am very thankful and forever grateful,

Ben

423 hours and 27 minutes completed.

Final Friday

With this being my last week of work at Restaurant Eugene, it was a week of "lasts" but mainly just things like "last monday" or "last tuesday" and so on.  Today, however, was a day of "last time I'll see you" things.  But, I'll get to all that later.

First thing I did when I got into work today was to start draining the okra from the day before.  For the okra, I had to drain all the pickling liquid, then let the okra soak in ice water for three hours, and finally rinse them again before they were ready to be jarred.  Because this took so long and because we had not mised out everything else for the okra, we had to stop after we rinsed the okra and it will be my task to jar and process the okra tomorrow.

Once I got the okra drained and soaking in the ice water, I got the ketchup from yesterday and started to bring it to a boil with the rest of the ingredients so that we could finish the ketchup today.

Finished Ketchup 

Now that I had everything from yesterday going, I could get started on the list that Woody left for me.  Tomorrow, Woody will be working an event and he left lists of things that he needs prepped for the event.  On my list was to crisp 200 pieces of bacon, slice 10 pounds of tomatoes, and shred 10 heads of lettuce.  First thing I started on was the bacon because that would take the longest.

As I was slicing the bacon on the industrial slicer, one of the restaurant office girls approached me and asked if I had time to sit down for an interview for the Restaurant Eugene blog.  I told her that I would love to and that I would be finished in a few minutes.

When I got to a good stopping point with the bacon, I sat down to the interview.  From what I understand, they wanted to do a blog post about me and my internship since it was almost over.  Kinda just get an idea of how I'm liking the internship and what I'll take away from it and things like that.  There were some pretty easy questions like, "You're a rising senior at Clemson, right?" and "How did you end up at Restaurant Eugene?"  Then there were more difficult questions like, "What are your plans for after the internship and after graduation?" and "What will you take away from the internship?"  I say these are difficult questions not because they were hard to answer, but because there was so much involved with the answers.  All in all, I think the interview went well and I can't wait to read the blog post.  I visited Restaurant Eugene's blog earlier and didn't see a new post, but hopefully it'll be up soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

After the interview, I got back to makin' bacon.  Before long, though, I had sliced and baked more than the required 200 pieces of bacon and could officially cross that off my list.  On to the next one.

By now, the okra had soaked for the required three hours, so I drained them again, gave them a final rinse, and drained them one final time.  Now the okra is finally ready to be jarred, but that won't take place until tomorrow.

Next on my list was to shred the lettuce.  I had to wait a little bit because we didn't have the lettuce until it was delivered about half way through the day, but we had it now, so I could get to shredding it.  Shredding the lettuce was pretty easy since I used the industrial slicer, but it was really because the industrial slicer has an automatic setting.  While shredding the lettuce was easy, it was also messy.  There was shredded lettuce everywhere which meant a fairly extensive clean up.

Two items down, one item to go.  Before I could get started on my last list item, though, Ryan asked me to jar and process the bloody mary mix that he had been making that day because he had to leave a little bit early.  This didn't take too terribly long and since the jars have to process for 30 minutes, that gave me time to work on the my last list item, slicing tomatoes.

Once I finished with the bloody mary mix and the tomatoes, it was past time for me to leave and this meant saying goodbye to the people that would not be at work tomorrow (Ryan, Jorje, and Billy).  I haven't talked about Jorje (one of the dishwashers) or Billy (one of the pastry chefs) very much but they were both very helpful whenever I needed anything.  I've talked about Ryan a lot because we worked similar hours and worked on a lot of the same projects.  I'm going to miss joking around with Ryan to pass the time during the mornings when no one else is around.  As odd as it was to think that I won't be seeing these three people that I've been with almost every day for two and a half months, it's going to be even more odd tomorrow when I have to say goodbye to everyone else.

Till next time,

Ben

410 hours completed

402

Well folks, this is my last week of work at Restaurant Eugene.  It's a little weird to see my time at Restaurant Eugene coming to an end.  I've been learning and working in this place for two and a half months and, though I have learned more than I ever anticipated, I still feel like there is much more to be learned from working at Restaurant Eugene.  But, it's not over yet, I still have a week left, so let's got to it.

Tuesday
I started off the day by figuring out what all I would need for the garlic confit, but realized that I wouldn't have enough duck fat to use all the garlic.  So, I started doing the usual line prep, cutting lemons, picking and chopping parsley, picking thyme, and peeling shallots.

While doing all the line prep, I noticed that there weren't anymore breadcrumbs in the walk-in.  This made me kinda nervous and frustrated.  Frustrated because I had made about 6 quarts of breadcrumbs the week before and now they were all gone, and nervous because if they had used all those breadcrumbs then I am going to have to make a lot more breadcrumbs and fast.  After I had cut and dried out all the bread that I was going to use and started actually making the breadcrumbs, I realized what had happened to all the breadcrumbs from the week before...they were frozen so that they could last longer.  Oh well, now we have more breadcrumbs.

Next, we got a pretty large delivery of produce, so I started putting it all away and organizing the walk-in.  I noticed that there were about six large boxes of okra for the bottle shop at the front of the kitchen.  I was told that I needed to wash and store that okra as well.  This was a wrench in my plan since I had already fit everything into the walk-in and now had to find enough space for six boxes of okra.  Eventually, I made enough space.

Family meal today was provided by Holeman and Finch and consisted of fried fish, a spicy bean salad, an ice cream sandwich, and mini cheeseburgers.  For those that don't know, Holeman and Finch have (in my opinion) the best burger.  I never dreamed that I would get to eat one of these culinary masterpieces for family meal.

After family meal, Jackson had me pick some herbs for him for service (which took up the majority of the two hours that I have after family meal) and I spent the rest of my time organizing the walk-in and making sure that everything was labeled.





Wednesday
Today I finally got to make the garlic confit.  The reason I hadn't made it earlier was that the confit needs four hours to simmer on the stove before I can jar and process it.  So, because it needs so much time, the confit was the first thing I worked on when I arrived at work.

The rest of the day, I worked on receiving deliveries and storing them in the walk-in.  We had about six different deliveries and that was more than enough to keep me busy for the entire day.  After a lot of time and a lot of moving things around in the walk-in, though, I was finally finished with all of the deliveries just in time for family meal.

Family meal consisted of sausage and peppers, potato chips, and some delicious garlic bread.  I had three pieces of this garlic bread, it was that good.

The rest of my evening was spent jarring and processing my garlic confit and the chow-chow that Ryan had been working on for the majority of the day.

Garlic Confit

Chow-chow

Thursday
Today was almost entirely spent making ketchup for Holeman and Finch.  I mised everything out for a double batch of ketchup while the tomatoes cooked on the stove.  The only problem was that we had to bring the tomatoes to a boil and then reduce them to a simmer for two hours.  However, we couldn't bring the tomatoes to a boil because then they would scorch and ruin the ketchup, so we had to bring them to a simmer slowly and let them cook longer.  All in all, the tomatoes cooked from 11am to 4pm.  Then, we had to mill the tomatoes for the ketchup and bring them back to a boil and add more ingredients, but since it was already 4pm and they needed the stovetops for service, that part of the ketchup making process would have to wait until tomorrow.

While waiting for the tomatoes to cook, I worked on the line prep with Chris.  This was pretty fun because Chris, Ryan, and I were joking with each other the whole time while we were working.

Next, while the tomatoes were still cooking, Chris showed me how to make part of the amuse with compressed melon.  I took cantaloupe, cut the rind off, and took the seeds out.  Then I made a simple syrup with with water, sugar, and lemon juice and added some fresh basil at the very end.  The simple syrup had to cool before it could be put in the cryovac bag with the melon, so I put the simple syrup in an ice bath.  Once the simple syrup was cool, I put it in a cryovac bag with the melon and compressed them in the cryovac.  What this does is take all of the air out of the cantaloupe and replaces it with the simple syrup.  After this is completed, I took the cantaloupe out of the bags and cut them into cubes.  These cubes are used as part of the amuse.

When I was finished with the compressed melon, it was time for family meal and for me to have a meeting with Chef Hopkins.  You may or may not remember, but at the very beginning of my internship (aka 400 hours ago) Chef Hopkins met with me and asked me to make HACCP plans for all the low temperature cooking and cryovac recipes.  My meeting with Chef Hopkins today was to show him what I had done for the HACCP plans and to see if that was what he was looking for.  Turns out that what I had done was exactly what Chef Hopkins was looking for.  He seemed impressed and excited to have the HACCP plans for the low temperature and cryovac recipes and was very appreciative of my hard work on them.

When I got back from my meeting with Chef Hopkins, I got to work on soaking the okra for the bottle shop.  The okra has to soak in water and pickling spices overnight before we can jar them.  The biggest problem with this was that I had to find a place in the walk-in for these two huge boxes of okra in pickling water.  After flexing some amazing jenga and puzzle skills, though, I had made enough room in the walk-in for the containers of okra.

The last thing I did for the evening was mill the tomatoes for the ketchup.  Even though we couldn't completely finish the ketchup today, I figured that I could at least finish that part of the ketchup making process.

Till next time,

Ben

-2 hours left.  Yes, that's right, -2.  That means that I am two hours over my required 400 hours for my internship.  So, I am technically finished with my internship, but I will not officially be finished with my internship until this Saturday, my last day of work.  That being said, after this post, I will be changing the  "hours left" count to a "hours completed" count since I am now past the number that I was counting down to.

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

The Beginning of the End

Tuesday was an uneventful day.  I began the day by riding with David to the storage unit to put all of the jars into storage because we would not be preserving anything else for a while and to get a newer dish rack for the kitchen.  Once we returned from the storage unit, David and I worked on assembling pickled okra that was going to be sold at the bottle shop.

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.

Pickled Okra

To give you an idea of how long pickling the okra actually took, family meal marks the 3/4 point in my day and after family meal had come and gone, we still had about 20 jars to finish.

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

Family or Food

Thursday I was going to finally get started on finishing the pickled watermelon ring and the bread and butter pickles, but David asked me to help him finish shelling the last bit of edamame.  Even the last little bit of edamame still took a good while to shell, but once I was done, I was finally done with all of the edamame.

Next, I worked on the pickled watermelon rind.  I had already peeled and sliced the watermelon rind, so the toughest part of the process was already finished.  I gathered all the other ingredients and put them in a pot to bring to a boil while the watermelon rind simmered in fresh water.  Once the rind had become tender, it was added to the rest of the ingredients and brought to a simmer for about 15 minutes, then jarred and processed.

Now, I could get started on the bread and butter pickles.  I was excited to work on these because I had pickled just about everything except pickles and now I was getting my chance.  I drained the sliced cucumbers from the salt water and gathered the other ingredients.  This took some figuring out because the ingredients were in some odd measurements (like I had to make a gallon of sliced onions) but eventually I got everything together and into a pot to bring to a boil.  Next, as always, was to jar and process the pickles.

Bread and Butter Pickles

All of that took a good while, so before I knew it, it was time for family meal.  Today, family meal consisted of empanadas and a cucumber salad.

After family meal, Chef Hopkins brought me a jar of olives that he wanted me to juice for him.  I'm not exactly sure why he wanted the olive juice, but I think it was to use for an olive capsulation.  When I got to thinking about it, I didn't know how I was supposed to juice the olives.  After some consultation with Jason and Woody, we decided that I should puree the olives and press the puree through a chinois.

Once finished with the olives, Jason told me that he needed me to cut some corn off the cob for him.  He was going to show me how to use a special tool that they had for taking corn off the cob, but we decided that it was a little too dangerous.  Next, Jackson got me working on bagging and cryovacing halibut for service.

The last thing I did before I left was to organize and consolidate the walk-in.  I just had to make sure that everything was labeled and in the right size container.





Friday, David told me that I needed to sort through the edamame and pick out all the ones with spots (and here I was thinking that I was finally finished with the edamame).  Once finished with sorting the edamame, I cut about four loaves of bread to use for making breadcrumbs.

Then, I went to David to see if there was anything that I could do for him.  David told me that I could do the end of the week inventory for him.  The end of the week inventory consisted of me going through all the produce in the walk-in and weighing it to find out exactly how much of each ingredient we had.  Needless to say, this took a long time to complete.

As I was getting ready to get family meal, I overheard a conversation between Jason and Jackson where Jason was telling Jackson that there are two things that all chefs cook inconsistently, and those two things are toast without a toaster and rice.  i just thought that this little tidbit was both interesting and funny.

Family meal today consisted of enchiladas and a cucumber salad.  You may notice that the family meals from yesterday and today are very similar and in fact, they both used the exact same ingredients.  The reason for this is that Jackson (who is usually the one who makes family meal when we host it at Restaurant Eugene) wanted to one up the Holeman and Finch family meal from the day before.

After family meal, I sliced eggplant on the industrial slicer that was going to be used to make the eggplant gratin that would be served that night.  Next, I got was asked to assemble tarts for service.  Then I strained a chicken and lamb stock into better containers for storage.  Lastly, I organized the walk-in just like the day before before leaving for the evening.





Saturday I started making the breadcrumbs from the day before.  Now, we definitely had enough breadcrumbs for a good while.  Next, we got some deliveries from the farmers from the farmers market earlier that day, so I spent a good while making sure that everything made it into containers and into the walk-in.

Next, I began to make the pimento cheese fritters for the evening.  The pimento cheese fritters aren't normally on the menu anymore, but I had some family coming to dinner that night and they wanted to try the pimento cheese fritters because they're one of the things that I am involved in.  So, because I was already going to be making the fritters for my family, Jason decided that we should just put them on the tasting menu for the night.  After doing a few odd jobs around the kitchen, the fritters were ready to be breaded and finished.

By this time, we were just starting to get into the nights service, so I helped Chris with making croutons for his soup course.  I had to slice bread and butter it, then put the slices in the oven for a little while and finish them in a hotter oven to crisp them up.

Next, I halved an entire of sheet tray of cherry tomatoes for Jackson to sue during service.  Then, I cryovaced foie gras for Jackson and changed out the ice for all the seafood in the walk-in.

After I finished with all of those things, Emily (I'm not exactly sure what her title is, but she's like and assistant maitre'd) found me in the back of the kitchen and told me that my family wanted to know if I could come out and see them.  Ever since my family arrived that night, multiple people were telling me that my family was there and were asking me if I had a twin brother, it was pretty humorous.

I had to make sure that I was presentable before going out into the dining room in front of all the guests.  It was weird going out into the dining room because I could almost feel everyone looking at me, but it was nice to get to talk to my family for a little while.

Once I got back into the kitchen, I got to work on chopping some parsley for the line and lastly deboned some fish after Jason showed me how it was done.  Finally, I organized the walk-in (as usual) before leaving for the evening.

I was going to meet my family after dinner because we figured that we would be finished at about the same time, but they had just been served dessert when I was finished and there was no room to wait for them at Holeman and Finch, so I decided to go on home.

When I was walking to my car, the first thing I noticed was that the foie gras protestors were back.  This time though, they were more vocal and as I noticed that they were having some pretty intense arguments with Holeman and Finch and Restaurant Eugene customers.  I later found out that some of these arguments got pretty out of hand and the protesters were harassing our customers so we had to call the police.  I'm sure no one was arrested and they were just warned, but still, crazy stuff.

The Protesters (argument on the left side)

Till next time

Ben

67 hours left

Hometown VIPs

On Tuesday, I started working on making pickled watermelon rind again.  I couldn't get very far with it because the watermelon rind needed to be soaked in saltwater overnight, so I just prepped the watermelon rind and peeled it so that I could get right to it the next day.  While I was peeling the watermelon rind, though, I peeled parts of my fingers not once, but twice.  I couldn't believe that I had cut myself twice doing the same thing.  I was more upset with myself about cutting my self twice than I was about actually being injured.

Next, I cubed up four loaves of bread so that they could dry out to make breadcrumbs tomorrow.

After cubing up loaves of bread, David got me working on shelling edamame.  Was I supposed to stay uncool, please remind me?

I have shelled edamame before, but as a snack or appetizer, never to be used for something.  That's why it was interesting to learn that there are three layers of edamame shell, and I had to remove all of them.  Believe it or not, I shelled edamame for the rest of my shift and only made it about 1/4 of the way through all the edamame that needed to be shelled.  Luckily, I had shelled more than enough for the night, they just wanted it all shelled because it would have to be done at some point anyways.

Family meal today was....interesting.

We had a salad, roasted chicken, and a pasta salad.  It wasn't that it was bad food, because the food was pretty good.  But it wasn't until Woody asked if I was enjoying my ketchup chicken and blueberry pasta that I realized how odd the meal actually was.  However, the ketchup was homemade, and I avoided getting the blueberries because I though they were olives, so it wasn't so bad.

After not possibly being able to shell any more edamame, I organized the walk-in before I left for the evening.  However, I opened the door to leave the walk-in to see all the line cooks and prep cooks standing there.  Then Jason looked at me and said, "A table of 12 just requested pimento cheese fritters. Do we have any?"  After telling him that we don't have any fritters (remember, they were removed as the amuse boushe a few days ago), Jason asked if I could make some really quick.  I told him that I could do that and everyone offered to help me out.  Woody and Jackson started shaping the fritters and breading them while I began to make the breadcrumbs.  After a short while, we had finished all the pimento cheese fritters for the table and I was able to leave.

Turns out that Chef Hopkins was taking some friends to dinner and he was the one that requested the pimento cheese fritters.





Today, David got me working on slicing cucumbers which we would use to make the bread and butter pickles.  Finally, I have pickled just about everything except pickles and now I was finally getting to make the bread and butter pickles.

As I was slicing the cucumbers (which also needed to soak in saltwater overnight) Jason came up to me with a menu and told me that a corporation had bought out the restaurant for lunch and dinner and he needed me to make pimento cheese fritters and BLTs for the dinner that night.  I was pretty excited because they wanted me to make the appetizers for the buy out, this was a big deal given who had bought out the restaurant for the evening.  Who bought out the restaurant you ask?  I'll give you a hint....

The Coca - Cola Board of Directors.  Yeah, pretty big deal.

The minute I finished slicing the cucumbers for the pickles, I got right to work on making the pimento cheese fritters.  I wanted to make sure that I got them done fairly early because then I could have the rest of the time to focus on making the BLTs.  Once I had shaped the fritters and they were firming up in the walk-in, I made some more bread crumbs with the bread from the day before.

As I was making the breadcrumbs, Woody called me to the line to help them plate the entree for the lunch portion of the buy out.

My job was to take three slices of (very hot) roasted chicken and fan them out on the bean salad.  Above is what the plates looked like after my job was finished.  The entree would be finished and garnished by Chef Hopkins after I placed them on the pass.

The dessert portion of the lunch buy out was a peach clafloutis with vanilla ice cream.  The best part about buy outs like this is that we always make more food than we need, so we get to snack on the leftovers in the kitchen.  That means leftover roasted chicken (which we would later use to make a chicken salad for family meal) and peach clafloutis.

These things were like personal peach cobblers and they were amazing.

Next I got to work on making the BLTs.  I had made the BLTs before, but every time at least one aspect had already been done for me.  This time, though, I had to do everything.  I had to slice the bacon, bake the bacon, slice the tomatoes, slice the bread, toast the bread, pick the basil (because we didn't have any lettuce), and lastly assemble the sandwich.  The only thing I didn't make for this sandwich was the mayo, but it was homemade as well.

When I finished with the BLTs and took them to the line, the dinner part of the buy out was about to get started and a man (Muhtar Kent) came into the kitchen and thanked us in advance for the wonderful meal.  After the man left, Chef Hopkins informed us that that was the CEO of Coca-Cola.  "Just like President Obama, they don't allow him to drive.  They took his license and credit cards.  He's that important.  He could sell his stock for hundreds of millions of dollars." Chef informed us.

After doing a few more odd jobs, it was past time for me to leave.  As I left the restaurant, I couldn't help but notice multiple identical black mercedes' driving around the restaurant.  Very important people indeed.

Till next time,

Ben

93 hours left