Usually in the mornings before work I wake up at about 7:45, take a shower, watch an hour of Saved by the Bell as i eat breakfast, 20 minutes of Sportscenter, leave by 9:20, and arrive at work between 9:40 and 9:50 depending on traffic, road construction, or in todays case, a grenade found at a school near Restaurant Eugene.
Today though, I was feeling so bad that I opted to rest instead of watch any sort of TV. I was still not feeling very well when I left for work this morning and was hoping that I would be well enough to get through at least part of the day.
I get to work (after another brief rest session in my car in the parking garage) and everyone asks how I'm felling. I tell them that I'm not 100%, but I'm going to try to make it through the day. As luck would have it, today wasn't very difficult at all.
I started out by peeling, coring, and slicing kabocha squash that was to be preserved.
After my "break" to talk with Jason about my HACCP project, I got right back to work on the kibacha. While finishing up the last of the squash, Woody asked David if he could use me to make the crudite (there's supposed to be an accent over that "e") for tonight's service. David said that would be fine. So, now I had my second task before even finishing my first.
For those of you that don't know (or didn't click on the link), crudite is pretty much an appetizer of raw vegetables with a dipping sauce. A crudite is traditionally prepared with celery sticks, carrot sticks, bell pepper strips, broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus spears, but our crudite was going to be composed of radishes, zucchini, cucumbers, and sugar snap peas, all prepped by yours truly.
By this time, David couldn't think of anything for me to do, so he put me on garlic peeling duty. I have come to find that the line cooks will always need garlic peeled, butter cubed, lemons cut, parsley picked, and lambs quarter picked.
Working in the kitchen today was exceptionally difficult because because of my having been sick, the smell of food had been making me nauseous. So, imagine my discomfort being in a place that is constantly producing the thing that makes me feel sick to my stomach. Alas, I pushed through it all because I knew that I had to get work done and because, frankly, I need the hours.
I would like to take this time to address the absence of pictures in this blog post. I did not realize how few pictures I had taken today until I uploaded them to my computer a little while ago....all three of them. I didn't even have a picture of family meal, which had been in most every post thus far. I know that a lot of people out there like to look at pictures of what I am doing in the kitchen, and personally, I think that they help me tell the stories.
However, there are reasons for the lack of photos in this post.
1) I usually work in the very back of the kitchen, facing the back wall, next to David. This situation affords me the opportunity to take lots of pictures of what I am working on. But recently, I have been working up front on the line, not making food for a service, but physically up front where the line is because the line cooks don't get to work until later in the day. This situation does not allow for many pictures to be taken because people are always walking through the kitchen and I don't want them to think, "Why is that intern always taking pictures of things? Weird."
B) There were a lot of things in the kitchen today that I'm sure some, if not most, people would not like to see. For example, today we received three pig halves. And I mean, these people just cut the pigs in half and brought them to us. Head still on, hooves still on, and even tail still on. Also, family meal today, while it did taste good, did not look appetizing at all. The had some sort of braised beef dish with cubes of meat floating in the liquid as the feature of the meal. All I wanted was some soup or something and that's the option they give me. So, I took a few pieces and reluctantly went back to my station next to the pigs.
When I got back, I asked Woody if there was anything for me to do and Gavin (one of the line cooks) perked up and said, "Oooh. I've got something for him to do." and he wasn't lying. Gavin wanted me to take these huge leaves of something and cut them from the core. Then I was to chiffonade (a knife cut for leafy vegetables and herbs that makes them look shredded) the leaves, put them into water, use the salad spinner to spin them dry, and finally give them back to Gavin. Then I was to use the salad spinner to dry three other buckets of various leafy vegetables and give them to Gavin. After that, Gavin wanted me to partially fill a bowl with water and transfer some mushrooms from their dirty water into a clean bowl of water. Finally, I was to pick a container of Lambs Quarter, put them into a bucket of water, spin them dry, and give them to Gavin. After all of this, it was nearly 6:00 (quittin' time) and I was ready to go home.
Earlier in the day, James (one of the chefs and apparently the butcher for Holmen and Finch) told me that we would be getting the pig halves and a suckling pig in today and that he wanted me to help him with them.
Let me take a minute to introduce y'all to James. James, for some reason, likes to talk to me and give me advice. This is not unwelcome advice as he has been in the industry much longer than I have and I'll take any advice that I can get. Every once in a while, James will come over to the Restaurant Eugene kitchen for something and will sometimes end up near my station where we will chit chat. He asked me what I planned to do after I graduated from Clemson, to which I answered that I was planning to go to culinary school. James then decided to give me a bit of advice, "Don't waste your money on culinary school." This kinda shocked me. James said that Places don't put much importance on where you went to school, but rather look at your experience in other restaurants. I don't know if I want to accept his advice or not, but we'll see how everything pans (no pun intended) out as far as my future goes.
Anyways, I asked James what he wanted me to help him with, hoping that it would be something quick and easy to pass the time between then and 6:00. James told me that he wanted me to make a brine for the suckling pig and started listing all the ingredients that he wanted me to round up. This was not going to be a quick task.
At about the time that I realized that we didn't have any of the ingredients required for the four pounds of mirepoix (onion, carrot, and celery) that I was supposed to make for the brine, Holeman and Finch got a delivery of produce. When I asked James what I should do about not having the mirepoix, he told me that they have everything I need on the Holeman and Finch shelf in the bakery and that I should put all the new produce into cambros (large storage boxes) and take them to the bakery, put them in the walk-in, and come back with the ingredients for the mirepoix. At this point it was well after 6:00. James asked me if that was okay, I said, "Yeah, sure."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, I am supposed to leave at 6:00..."
"Well, this will build character then!"
And off I went to organize and store new produce for a restaurant that I wasn't even working at.
When I got to the bakery, I found the head baker and told him what I was supposed to do. He showed me the walk-in and gave me one rule. "You can't have anything sticking out off the shelves cause we have to be able to fit this rack (for dough) in front of it. Thus began my game of tetris with the Holeman and Finch shelf in the bakery walk-in refrigerator.
Eventually I got everything to fit on the shelf overcrowded with Holeman and Finch products, such as the pimento cheese...
When I got back to to Restaurant Eugene, I told James (who was still breaking down pigs) that I got everything put away and he asked where my ingredients for the mirepoix were. I had forgotten them. I told James that I forgot the ingredients, but had everything else for the brine measured out. James told me that it was fine, thanked me for my help, and told me that I could go on home (Finally!). It was 7:00.
After a long day of work (9 hours), I am feeling a lot better.
Till next time,
Ben
334 hours left
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