Thursday, January 13, 2005
A few friends of mine have expressed some passing interest in what it's like to do my job... so here I am, a day in the life:
7:45am: Rush out the door to deliver children to their respective schools.
8:20am: Show up early for a credit counseling appointment, a requirement for the mortgage I'm applying for. I am told that while my credit is relatively good, and I qualify for most of the programs, I "shouldn't" buy a house right now, since I have a lot of debt. I'm irritated--why does it make more sense to pay $100/month MORE to rent someplace than to pay a mortgage?
9:30am: OK, I'm late for work. I warned Chef, so it's no big deal. Everyone else is just getting it, too, so nobody else noticed that I wasn't there early. I spend the first half hour cleaning up the dinner shift's mess and getting all my utensils and dishes back in order that the dish washer never seems to put away correctly. Once again I find that nobody closed the bread station last night, which means that the bread sat in the warming oven all night. 6 weeks of this, and they've done it right twice. Maybe.
10:00am: Remove another tray full of bread from the freezer, set it out on a rack to thaw. While I'm in the cooler, I do a quick check of all the desserts to see what they sold last night. If I'm running low on something, I'll have to make more today. This morning we're down to 8 creme brulees, still plenty of apple tarts, but I need to plate more chocolate cake and cheesecakes for dinner service. That can wait a bit though. My calendar mentions 2 things: Co-owner R wanted "30 pieces" of something small to take with her as a gift to a company who complained about slow service our first week. I made cookies yesterday, so I take the tray out and put it on the rack. Also, there's a luncheon for "under 20" scheduled today. They didn't have an exact count, and R suggested I do something cheap (yeah, the accountant was in the room). I told Chef I noticed he had cream cheese in the cooler dated in November, and it couldn't last too much longer, so I decided to make a cheesecake. We already buy plain cheesecake, so to justify the work, I might as well do something extra to it, so I made chocolate cheesecake. I had also recently experimented with some chocolate shortbread cookies, which turned out well, and got rave reviews, so I used that as the crust. I took the cheesecakes out of the cooler and stared blankly at them for about 5 minutes. Cold medicine does that to me. But the staring worked, aparently, because I decided what they really needed to be "finished" was a nice thick coat of ganache on top.
10:25am: Give up finding a pot to boil the cream in--what is it with that stupid dishwasher, anyway? I mean, I know he doesn't speak English, but you don't really need to speak English to know where to put the pots in a kitchen, especially when you've been working there for a month already. I digress... I find a chafing dish the appropriate size and heat the cream in that instead, and finish the ganache at my station. I get out another pan, fill it with ice and set the dish on top to cool it down quickly and thicken it up a bit. I have to keep stirring it or it'll get chunky. I suddenly realize that I'm spacing out again and have no idea how long I've been standing there. The ganache is still liquid, so it wasn't an obscene amount of time. I hate being sick. My head is pounding, and the Dayquil has been in my system for an hour now. Not good. Take the ganache out of the ice and set it aside for a bit.
10:40am: Toss the rest of the formerly frozen bread in the oven to wake it up a bit before putting it into the warming oven.
10:50am: Pour the cooled ganache over the cheesecakes. It's so smooooooth and shiny... it's mesmerizing. Don't space out. Don't space out. Damned medicine. There, just the right amount. Put the cheesecakes back in the cooler to set the ganache before slicing. Oh, and get that bread out of the oven before it starts baking again, toss it into the warmer.
11:00am: Get ingredients together for sourdough bread, mix the dough, put it in the proofer. 11:30am: Set the timer to remind me to punch it down in 50 minutes. Get the cheesecakes out of the cooler, slice and plate. Looks boring. Needs something fancy. Garnish. No time for making garnish. What to do... I pipe some more ganache on top of each slice in a little flourish, and a matching design on each plate, then fill one of the loops on the plate with a port wine caramel sauce that we normally use with the chocolate cake.
11:45am: I take the experimental slice (the one I messed up on) to Chef to test out. I bring 3 forks and a knife, cut the end off and hand him the plate. "How is it?" he asks. "I'm about to find out." I tell him. I get a mouthfull of chocolate creamy sinful decadence, raise an eyebrown. Before I can speak, Chef has his fork in his mouth, and eyes bulging out of his head. He literally jumps back and spins around. "Ok, that's good." I manage to get out before he exclaims, "YES! WOW! That's AWESOME!" I just laugh, pick up the remaining section and the last fork and hand it to the Sous Chef, Tanner. "For me??" "Knock yourself out." Chef stops me before I head back to my station, "I hope you like making that, because you're going to be making a lot of it!" I asked about the party it was intended for, he says they still don't have an exact count. I go to find the server working the luncheon, and on my way out, Chef is still bouncing on the balls of his feet, "You NAILED that one, Sassy. Don't you just LOVE it when you NAIL it like that??" I smile politely and leave the kitchen, trying not to roll my eyes. "Go, team." I think to myself--I swear if I were a man he'd have slapped my ass and then punched me in the bicep.
12:00pm: Dave, the server, finally located, swears to inform me of the final head count as soon as he knows. The more experienced servers are finally starting to figure out that the sooner they inform me of their customer's intended orders, the faster their desserts are ready. I realize that even though the timer is set to go off in 20 minutes, if I stay on that schedule, I won't finish the bread before I have to leave to get DD from school. Fuck. There's a Hella Mess on my station at the moment though, breadmaking is quite messy. I take a few minutes to dispatch dirty dishes and utensiles to the dishwasher, and wipe down my tables.
12:10pm: Finally locate co-owner R for the low-down on those cookies she wanted. She had completely forgotten about it, naturally, and is grateful I reminded her. She decides I should just pack them in a to-go box and wrap them up for her, she'll take care of it later.
12:15pm: Punch down the bread early. sit and try not to space out while I figure out how to best get the bread done and still get my daughter at school.
12:30pm: Dave tells me he's almost ready for desserts, so I bring them out to the front where he can load them on his trays.
12:35pm: Crap, now I've got an hour and a half before I have to leave. Have to kill some time. Haven't gotten much done today. What a waste. I guess I'll dice some mango for the regular cheesecake--the dinner shift idiots left them out all night, so I had to toss them. I stretch it out a bit, clean up some more, get a couple of dessert orders from the regular lunch crowd. A few minutes later, Erin, a waitress bearing a striking resemblance to Lauren Graham, comes back to tell me her customers wanted me to know that creme brulee is their favorite, they have it all the time, and mine was the best they've had in yeeeeeeeeears. Well sweet, dude. I rock.
1:20pm: I've managed to kill enough time and it's time to scale and pan the sourdough. The problem is, I will be gone when it's ready for the oven. I decide to turn the temp down on the proofer and hope for the best.
2:00pm: Literally on my way out the door, I am stopped by a delivery guy, with half a truckload of goods that we'd been desperately waiting on. Tanner is in a snit because neither Chef nor R are around--they won't leave the stuff without a check, and nobody else can write one. I have R's cell number, so I go out into the rain, the nearest point I get reception on my cell phone, and call her. That straightened out, I head out to pick up DD.
3:10pm: I return with DD in tow. This is what it's come to--no after school care that I can afford, so she comes back to work with me for 2 hours every day. I still feel like hammered camel shit, so I inform Chef I'm finishing the bread and going home. They're going to need me for the dinner shift Friday night and there's no way I'll still be on my feet if I don't get some rest. I toss the first 3 trays into the oven, then get out the cheesecake and chocolate cakes that need to get plated. DD wants to help. I let her frost the cakes--ganache in a squeeze bottle. She's quite proud of herself, and does a good job, if I do say so myself. For the rest of the afternoon, we're just wrapping up stuff and cleaning up, getting the bread out of the oven before finally heading home at 4. A short day, all in all, but I'm really freakin' sick. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow. They're expecting a huge crowd on Saturday night--the high school is having their winter formal, and it's tradition for the couples to go out to dinner, apparently. He's offering another 3 course meal with desserts included. Which means I need an assload of everything...
7:45am: Rush out the door to deliver children to their respective schools.
8:20am: Show up early for a credit counseling appointment, a requirement for the mortgage I'm applying for. I am told that while my credit is relatively good, and I qualify for most of the programs, I "shouldn't" buy a house right now, since I have a lot of debt. I'm irritated--why does it make more sense to pay $100/month MORE to rent someplace than to pay a mortgage?
9:30am: OK, I'm late for work. I warned Chef, so it's no big deal. Everyone else is just getting it, too, so nobody else noticed that I wasn't there early. I spend the first half hour cleaning up the dinner shift's mess and getting all my utensils and dishes back in order that the dish washer never seems to put away correctly. Once again I find that nobody closed the bread station last night, which means that the bread sat in the warming oven all night. 6 weeks of this, and they've done it right twice. Maybe.
10:00am: Remove another tray full of bread from the freezer, set it out on a rack to thaw. While I'm in the cooler, I do a quick check of all the desserts to see what they sold last night. If I'm running low on something, I'll have to make more today. This morning we're down to 8 creme brulees, still plenty of apple tarts, but I need to plate more chocolate cake and cheesecakes for dinner service. That can wait a bit though. My calendar mentions 2 things: Co-owner R wanted "30 pieces" of something small to take with her as a gift to a company who complained about slow service our first week. I made cookies yesterday, so I take the tray out and put it on the rack. Also, there's a luncheon for "under 20" scheduled today. They didn't have an exact count, and R suggested I do something cheap (yeah, the accountant was in the room). I told Chef I noticed he had cream cheese in the cooler dated in November, and it couldn't last too much longer, so I decided to make a cheesecake. We already buy plain cheesecake, so to justify the work, I might as well do something extra to it, so I made chocolate cheesecake. I had also recently experimented with some chocolate shortbread cookies, which turned out well, and got rave reviews, so I used that as the crust. I took the cheesecakes out of the cooler and stared blankly at them for about 5 minutes. Cold medicine does that to me. But the staring worked, aparently, because I decided what they really needed to be "finished" was a nice thick coat of ganache on top.
10:25am: Give up finding a pot to boil the cream in--what is it with that stupid dishwasher, anyway? I mean, I know he doesn't speak English, but you don't really need to speak English to know where to put the pots in a kitchen, especially when you've been working there for a month already. I digress... I find a chafing dish the appropriate size and heat the cream in that instead, and finish the ganache at my station. I get out another pan, fill it with ice and set the dish on top to cool it down quickly and thicken it up a bit. I have to keep stirring it or it'll get chunky. I suddenly realize that I'm spacing out again and have no idea how long I've been standing there. The ganache is still liquid, so it wasn't an obscene amount of time. I hate being sick. My head is pounding, and the Dayquil has been in my system for an hour now. Not good. Take the ganache out of the ice and set it aside for a bit.
10:40am: Toss the rest of the formerly frozen bread in the oven to wake it up a bit before putting it into the warming oven.
10:50am: Pour the cooled ganache over the cheesecakes. It's so smooooooth and shiny... it's mesmerizing. Don't space out. Don't space out. Damned medicine. There, just the right amount. Put the cheesecakes back in the cooler to set the ganache before slicing. Oh, and get that bread out of the oven before it starts baking again, toss it into the warmer.
11:00am: Get ingredients together for sourdough bread, mix the dough, put it in the proofer. 11:30am: Set the timer to remind me to punch it down in 50 minutes. Get the cheesecakes out of the cooler, slice and plate. Looks boring. Needs something fancy. Garnish. No time for making garnish. What to do... I pipe some more ganache on top of each slice in a little flourish, and a matching design on each plate, then fill one of the loops on the plate with a port wine caramel sauce that we normally use with the chocolate cake.
11:45am: I take the experimental slice (the one I messed up on) to Chef to test out. I bring 3 forks and a knife, cut the end off and hand him the plate. "How is it?" he asks. "I'm about to find out." I tell him. I get a mouthfull of chocolate creamy sinful decadence, raise an eyebrown. Before I can speak, Chef has his fork in his mouth, and eyes bulging out of his head. He literally jumps back and spins around. "Ok, that's good." I manage to get out before he exclaims, "YES! WOW! That's AWESOME!" I just laugh, pick up the remaining section and the last fork and hand it to the Sous Chef, Tanner. "For me??" "Knock yourself out." Chef stops me before I head back to my station, "I hope you like making that, because you're going to be making a lot of it!" I asked about the party it was intended for, he says they still don't have an exact count. I go to find the server working the luncheon, and on my way out, Chef is still bouncing on the balls of his feet, "You NAILED that one, Sassy. Don't you just LOVE it when you NAIL it like that??" I smile politely and leave the kitchen, trying not to roll my eyes. "Go, team." I think to myself--I swear if I were a man he'd have slapped my ass and then punched me in the bicep.
12:00pm: Dave, the server, finally located, swears to inform me of the final head count as soon as he knows. The more experienced servers are finally starting to figure out that the sooner they inform me of their customer's intended orders, the faster their desserts are ready. I realize that even though the timer is set to go off in 20 minutes, if I stay on that schedule, I won't finish the bread before I have to leave to get DD from school. Fuck. There's a Hella Mess on my station at the moment though, breadmaking is quite messy. I take a few minutes to dispatch dirty dishes and utensiles to the dishwasher, and wipe down my tables.
12:10pm: Finally locate co-owner R for the low-down on those cookies she wanted. She had completely forgotten about it, naturally, and is grateful I reminded her. She decides I should just pack them in a to-go box and wrap them up for her, she'll take care of it later.
12:15pm: Punch down the bread early. sit and try not to space out while I figure out how to best get the bread done and still get my daughter at school.
12:30pm: Dave tells me he's almost ready for desserts, so I bring them out to the front where he can load them on his trays.
12:35pm: Crap, now I've got an hour and a half before I have to leave. Have to kill some time. Haven't gotten much done today. What a waste. I guess I'll dice some mango for the regular cheesecake--the dinner shift idiots left them out all night, so I had to toss them. I stretch it out a bit, clean up some more, get a couple of dessert orders from the regular lunch crowd. A few minutes later, Erin, a waitress bearing a striking resemblance to Lauren Graham, comes back to tell me her customers wanted me to know that creme brulee is their favorite, they have it all the time, and mine was the best they've had in yeeeeeeeeears. Well sweet, dude. I rock.
1:20pm: I've managed to kill enough time and it's time to scale and pan the sourdough. The problem is, I will be gone when it's ready for the oven. I decide to turn the temp down on the proofer and hope for the best.
2:00pm: Literally on my way out the door, I am stopped by a delivery guy, with half a truckload of goods that we'd been desperately waiting on. Tanner is in a snit because neither Chef nor R are around--they won't leave the stuff without a check, and nobody else can write one. I have R's cell number, so I go out into the rain, the nearest point I get reception on my cell phone, and call her. That straightened out, I head out to pick up DD.
3:10pm: I return with DD in tow. This is what it's come to--no after school care that I can afford, so she comes back to work with me for 2 hours every day. I still feel like hammered camel shit, so I inform Chef I'm finishing the bread and going home. They're going to need me for the dinner shift Friday night and there's no way I'll still be on my feet if I don't get some rest. I toss the first 3 trays into the oven, then get out the cheesecake and chocolate cakes that need to get plated. DD wants to help. I let her frost the cakes--ganache in a squeeze bottle. She's quite proud of herself, and does a good job, if I do say so myself. For the rest of the afternoon, we're just wrapping up stuff and cleaning up, getting the bread out of the oven before finally heading home at 4. A short day, all in all, but I'm really freakin' sick. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow. They're expecting a huge crowd on Saturday night--the high school is having their winter formal, and it's tradition for the couples to go out to dinner, apparently. He's offering another 3 course meal with desserts included. Which means I need an assload of everything...
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