99 Bottles of Peaches on the Wall, 99 Bottles of Peaches...

A funny thing happened on the way to Restaurant Eugene today. I take a back way to the restaurant that dead ends into Peachtree street to avoid getting caught in rush hour on 85 south. As I was turning left onto Peachtree street, I made eye contact with a driver that was stopped on Peachtree street waiting for a green light. He looked like a surfer dude with longish blonde hair, very tan, black Oakleys, was driving a Range Rover, and was drinking from a teacup! The teacup is what held my attention on this guy in the other lane. Then he proceeded to raise his cup and give me a head nod. I nearly cracked up. A guy in a Range Rover, on Peachtree, drinking from a teacup practically just said "Cheers!" to me. Oh Buckhead.

I had one job at work today and one job only. Remember those peaches from a few posts back? Well, I would be using them to make pickled peaches. That was all I had to do today....I still didn't finish.

We had 75 lbs of peaches and wanted to use all 75 pounds, so I had to figure out what factor I needed to multiply the recipe by. After a lot of math, I figured that we would have to multiply the recipe by 18. Now, I had to gather my mis en place: 33.5 lbs (yes pounds) of sugar, 8 quarts of apple cider vinegar, 33.5 cinnamon sticks, 18 tbsp whole cloves, 32 bayleaves, 18 tbsp mustard seeds, and 241 peppercorns (yeah, 241 individual peppercorns).
If you want to know, this is what 241 peppercorns looks like...

I came to the realization that we did not have enough cinnamon sticks for the recipe in the kitchen, so I was sent on a mission to go get the rest of the cinnamon sticks that I needed from the Holeman & Finch Bread Co. (not to be confused with Holeman & Finch Public House).

I walked the half a block from Restaurant Eugene to the bakery and told one of the bakers, "I'm from Retaurant Eugene and I need some cinnamon sticks." He gave me a confused look and asked, "Did y'all order any at the restaurant?" "I don't know, they just said that y'all might have some cinnamon sticks that I could use." This exchange of confusion went on for a good five minutes before I told them that I was making a pickling brine and ran out of cinnamon sticks and suddenly the baker laughed and said, "OH! Cinnamon sticks!" I thought, "Yeah. What do you think I've been talking about this whole time?"

He got a big jar of cinnamon sticks for me and explained the confusion. The bakery operates separately from the restaurants, so the restaurants have to place orders to the bakery if they want bread. That's why he was asking if we had ordered any from the restaurant. Then he explained that he thought I was talking about cinnamon sticks...

(This is just the end of the cinnamon stick. It was soo good that I didn't get a chance to take a picture before everyone had taken a piece)
...and not cinnamon sticks...

Now that I had the pickling brine together, I started on the 75 lbs of peaches. The recipe did not say if the peaches should be pitted or not, so we went ahead and pitted them because it would be easier to fit them in the jar later. I would later find out from Chef Hopkins that the peaches were supposed to be whole (which would have saved me loads of time) because the pit gives them a slight almond flavor. I peeled and cut peaches for the rest of the day and still have about 30 left to do tomorrow morning at work.

When preforming a repetitive task, you have plenty of time to think, talk to people, and get songs stuck, then unstuck, then a new song stuck in your head. At one point, I got to talking to Woody (one of the executive sous chefs) and he started talking about these oysters (Sewansecott)that they had just received and how they were the best oysters he had ever eaten. Woody then quickly darted into the walk-in, grabbed a couple oysters and shucked one for me to try.

In my experience, one of the best ways to tell if you are accepted in the kitchen is if someone offers you some food to try. I was offered food to try on multiple occasions today.

One of the other occasions (as I was still peeling and cutting peaches) was when one of the chefs from Holeman & Finch was using our mixer and asked if I new anything about hydrocolloids (I didn't). He explained that by using hydrocolloids with a viscus liquid sugar for flavor, you can make a vegan whipped cream. When water is added to the hydrocolloid, they act like egg whites. After this informative explanation, he was finished making a honey marshmallow cream with the hydrocolloid and offered me some to try. It was pretty amazing.

While lost in thought, I was thinking about how these peaches would eventually be jarred and set up on a shelf as a functional decoration for the restaurants...shelves are on a wall...jars are kinda like bottles...99 bottles of peaches on the wall, 99 bottles of peaches...
Right as I finished this thought, David popped up next to me, started singing 99 bottles of beer on the wall, and told me that whenever he has to do something like I was doing, that song always pops into his head. I laughed and told him that I was literally just thinking about that song!

Unfortunately, while performing a repetitive task, you can also get careless. I wasn't paying very much attention to what I was doing with the peaches until I peeled a piece of my finger off.

For those of you that don't know, fingers like to bleed a lot, so I quickly tried to bandage it up so that I could keep working. I was trying to hide the fact that I was tending to a wound from Chef Hopkins when he caught me in the act and said, "NICE! First cut in this kitchen?" I sheepishly said yes. Little did I know that it wouldn't be my last cut in that kitchen...
As I was reaching for the peeler to peel the skin off the peaches, one of my other fingers grazed the blade of my knife which was safely on the cutting board. Luckily, I didn't get cut too deep, but it still bled like there was no tomorrow. In a matter of hours, I had gone from having no injuries to having two cuts and I haven't even been working for a whole week yet.

Family meal today (pictured at the top of the post) was chicken with rice and beans, salad, and bread pudding. Not the best family meal that has been served, but it featured the best dish served so far, bread pudding. I have no idea what they did to make this bread pudding (in the top left of the plate), but it was absolutely incredible. Beyond describable. There are no words to explain what it tasted like, just amazing. I could eat only this bread pudding for the rest of my life and be a happy guy. I let Gavin (one of the line cooks who did not go get family meal) try a piece. His eyes bugged out and all he said was, "Wow." Nuff said.

I was getting close to finishing with the peaches, but only had a little less than an hour before I had to leave for the day when Gavin asked me to cut some lemons and butter for him for the service tonight. I figured that I could do that real quick and still maybe finish the peaches before I had to leave. Then we got a late delivery of some produce and since David was not there to store it, the job fell to me. I realized that I was not going to have time to finish the peaches, so I put a top on the cambro (large container) that the cut peaches were in, found a container for the uncut peaches, labeled them and found a place in the walk-in for them. I did the same for the late delivery of produce. By that time I only had five minutes left, so I cleaned anything and everything that I could find for the next five minutes, gathered my things, made sure that nobody needed anything before I left, and made my way home for the evening.

Till next time,

Ben

360 hours left