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Well, because of another storm and another tree, I won't have internet access at my house until Sunday at the latest (hopefully). You may be asking, "Ben, if you don't have internet access, then how are you writing this post that I am reading?" Well, I'll tell you.

In order to not fall behind with my blog again and have to catch everyone up with mega posts (which is not fun), I have been going to restaurants that offer free wifi with my laptop. So there's your answer.

Now that we have that all cleared up, on to what you're here to read about, my day at work.


Today flew by for some reason. We weren't very busy or backed up or anything like that, but the day was still over before I knew it. I swear I had just gotten back from getting family meal (which is at 4 everyday) and looked at the clock to see that it was 5:45.

I was looking forward to talking with David about his vacation to Asheville and telling him about the newest misfortunes that had befallen my family and be, but David was nowhere to be found. I didn't ask anyone where David was (though many people asked me) because I figured that he had a good reason for not returning to work and it is none of my business anyways.

So, in the absence of David, I got to work on what had become my usual first task of the morning, slicing and frying potatoes and shallots and crisping parsley. However, the moment i finished gathering everything that I would need, Keron grabbed the mandoline. Surly he wasn't going to use it for the entire morning, so I decided to make some breadcrumbs.

I have already talked about the breadcrumb-making process, so I won't go into that again, but I will remind you that it is a long and time consuming process, which would be perfect because by the time I was done I figured that Keron would be finished with the mandoline as well.

Chef Hopkins was in the kitchen this morning and called me over while I was working on my breadcrumbs. Chef showed me what he was working on, 5 different potatoes cooked in 5 different fats with 5 different herbs. He had the various potatoes, fats, and herbs already vacuum sealed and in the circulator for low temperature cooking. Chef told me that he had to leave in a little but, but wanted me to take out the potatoes when the time came. I told him that I could do that, and off he went.

Now that I had finished making a fresh batch of breadcrumbs, Keron still wasn't finished with the mandoline. Turns out that he would be using it to cut cucumbers to be pickled later for the rest of the day. I figured that this was the case, so I went over to Holeman and Finch to borrow their mandoline.

One of the chefs at Holeman and Finch (Stella) gladly lent me her mandoline, but said that she would need it back in an hour. This would be no problem since all I needed it for was to slice some small potatoes and shallots.

I quickly sliced up all the potatoes and got to the last batch of frying them when Ryan arrived to work and informed me that they were using a different potato cut. The potatoes were supposed to be sliced from side to side instead of from the bottom up (if that makes any sense to yall). So now I had to do all the potatoes over again.

I got about half way through slicing the potatoes when I had to return the mandoline. I didn't know what I was going to do now. Luckily I spotted a small black mandoline, but it had a plastic blade which would make it harder to get a clean cut, but it was better than nothing.

Once I finished with frying everything, I got to work on making the pimento cheese balls for this evenings service. We wouldn't need as many as we did Saturday because we weren't expecting as many guests which was a relief and made it seem like I was done with scooping and shaping the pimento cheese balls in no time.

Over the course of the day to this point, we had been steadily receiving ingredients and people had been steadily placing them on and around my workbench. Eventually I did not have much space to work, but I was finished with shaping the pimento cheese balls and wanted them to firm up in the walk-in before I began the breading process, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to put away all this produce.

I would have made David proud. I was consolidating things into new containers, moving things around to create the most space, and most importantly, got everything into the walk-in with room to spare! It took a long time and a lot of creativity, but it all fit.

Now, I had all the space I needed for the rest of the evening. I breaded the pimento cheese balls, put them back in the walk-in to firm up before the final reshaping, vacuum packed some ginger ale infused peaches for Ryan, swept up around my work station and the inside of the walk-in, and reshaped the pimento cheese balls. By the time I was finished with all of this, it was past time for me to leave, so I said my goodbyes and headed home for the day.

Till next time,

Ben

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