rainy city

Today is my day off of work.

As soon as I am finished eating this entire box of Cinnascary Special Edition Apple Jacks, I am going to Starbucks.

what? whoa!

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

"Sunday, I plan on sitting on my ass playing EverQuest."

whatchout

Hey! My paycheck actually went through before the weekend arrived, so I was able to go and buy a pretty nice 4.1 mp digital camera on Saturday. A few photos I'm posting will be blurry, but that's just because I haven't been using it long. Also, I took most of the first pictures at a gigantic resolution, so from here on they'll actually be in a web-friendly size. At left is the kitchen where I work. I'm standing at the back of it, so you can see how small it is. Other photos for today include my classroom, Chef Hutchins cutting a tasty roast, plating grilled salmon at work, John making sauce, my chicken salad, and a fried squid adventure.

drums of spent shortening

It became autumn yesterday, so the calendar in O&T said. The weather here is taking a sudden dive from almost as warm and summery as the South to 55-degree evenings. I have dusted off my old coat and sewn a button back on.

Yesterday and tonight I worked alone in the kitchen for several hours and closed the place up by myself. Working one station during a rush is one thing, but remembering what's on the heat at every location in the entire kitchen by yourself is going to raise my blood pressure very quickly. You know when you cook dinner for your family and you have to be sure to remember what's in the oven, what's simmering on the stove, to toss a salad, etc.? Imagine having to make ten completely different meals for complete strangers--and if you take longer than 15 minutes to do so your source of income could be cut short. The word "multitasking" is inappropriate for what this entails; I would choose something more fitting, such as "apocolyptic kitchen strategy". I burnt the shit out of my thumb today strategizing whether or not to pick up a plate of chips that had been in a 450-degree oven for ten minutes, and remembered my error every time I squeezed the sprayer at the dishwashing station. What I mean is that yes, working in a kitchen is difficult, but there is certainly a hint of Pavlovian science in the learning process. I'm not going to pick up the Goddamn chips again.

This is not to say that I dislike being a cook. I merely mean that I understand why it's considered a high-tension occupation. If you're into that sort of thing, it kicks ass. I actually got the first compliment on food while working alone last night. The pork T-bone was delicious! Delicious, he said! I even made the damn sauce! And I get to swirl vinegar around in rasberry sauce and do neat stuff and use an acetylene torch. Yeah.

If my paycheck that I deposited Thursday shows up in my account when I wake up, I'm going to go out and buy a digital camera, and then I'll start posting pictures. If not, I won't get a chance to go to Best Buy again until probably Wednesday.

everybodyeverybodyeverybodyeverybody

Nothing terribly engrossing today in the kitchens; we whisked away at hollandaise like cocaine-infused lawn gnomes and made gallons of court bouillon for our poached salmon fillets tomorrow. I gotta work tonight, I don't think I have to close though. Things are good. Payday is tomorrow.

hey man, look at me rockin' out

Well, I don't have to work for the next three days, but Sunday I've got the Nemacolin volunteer event to go to, which is an eight-hour shift. It shouldn't be too bad--I kind of like to cook, actually.

Speaking of which, I did some fun things at work today.We've got a grilled salmon dish that's served aside a raspberry balsamic sauce, so I get to swirl little drops of vinegar around in this sort deep burgundy syrup and form patterns and stuff whenever we get an order for it. I also made creme brulee with a blowtorch. While this is a relatively basic procedure (melting sugar on top of probably the simplest dessert a culinarian can whip up), the pleasure one experiences upon using an acetylene torch on anything is enough to make me happy enough to clock out at 11:55.

So yeah. At work, I grilled some scallops, some filet mignon, salmon, swordfish, and plenty of other things. Made a lot of salads, a lot of calamari, washed a lot of dishes. Made a ditzy move by making a turkey club sandwich instead of a chicken club, but it's hardly an error (as well as fairly common in our kitchen) when compared to other disastrous applications of heat that occur at Ollie's. Do you have a Vulcan overhead salamander at home? You should see a quesadilla after it's been left in one for thirty seconds too long. Oh, and if you fuck up by making the wrong dish, you just eat it. I ate an order of Mark's today when he forgot to put the black bean spread on the side. Always look at the ticket. I also consumed a fair amount of chicken marsala, since Josh had to test out the recipe he came up with for the special today. side note: marsala wine = very flammable

In kitchens we've been making sauces, soups, pastas, etc. Unlike the first class, we're more specifically assigned what to do for the day, but as far as production goes, there's still room for creativity. Yesterday I made lemon dill rice pilaf to accompany the sole vin blanc we had. Today we were told to do whatever we wanted with a bunch of zucchini, and being in the mood for Italian, I breaded and fried batonnet of the vegetable with paprika, cayenne, and a little s&p. It was pretty damn nice, especially paired with the vegetable marinara cooked up by a kitchen buddy and myself, which contained tomato paste, celery, carrots, onions, red peppers, thyme, oregano, basil, and chicken stock. Norm made minestrone soup and with this collection of entrees, we were deemed totally badass by Chef. School is great. I feel like I've come a long way in Soups just this week--a long way away from nearly discovering cold fusion with a pint of chablis and an aluminum saute pan hot enough to blacken a cat (don't worry, the sauteed chicken breast I was working on wasn't ruined, I just nearly burnt my eyebrows off).

Sorry about no updates. I have not fallen into the Ohio, I have merely been busy. I've had some pretty hectic and some pretty slow days at work recently--that's how the industry is--like last Saturday, when I closed the place at 12:49, and yesterday, when we must've sold less than 40 dollars in food. Even on the busy days it's not so bad, and I'm makin' bucks--I've gotten one small paycheck already for my first week or so.

New classes are pretty sweet. Made chicken noodle soup, rice pilaf, sauteed chicken breast, and veloute sauce so far. Today I filleted a flatfish. Purchasing is taught by a man very possibly an ex-Nazi, but one who knows his stuff nonetheless. Wines and spirits is taught by a Brit who drinks a lot of wines and spirits.

Everything's going great. I've even got plenty of food in the fridge... eggs, chicken, parmesan/chedder/stilton cheese, various produce items, grapes, etc.

First day of work today was pretty sweet. Worked the fryer, made sweet potato fries and a bunch of chips, as well as some calamari and fried fish fillets. Also grilled some portabella mushrooms for sandwiches, cut a bunch of stuff up, fabricated twenty or so hamburger patties out of ground beef with the lid to a mayonnaise jug and a portion scale. Not rocket science. I like working at Olive or Twist; the place doesn't get incredibly busy and so my job's not too hard, the cooks I work with are cool people, the manager's a good guy, and to be honest, on our downtime we pretty much just get paid to sit around and maybe prep a few items or clean the kitchen. I worked a shift from 10:30 to 3:30 and I've got the same thing tomorrow morning, probably working on the weekend as well. Going to try and donate blood sometime in the next few days as I haven't done that in awhile.