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