Two days in the weeds.
"In the weeds" is to have little or no idea of what is going on around you. In the weeds is the room moving too fast for you to keep up. In the weeds is five minutes behind past tense with no idea of what future perfect will bring. I spent the first two days of garde manger in the weeds, fucking with white beans, doing what I could to keep up with the whirlwind. Not until today did I feel I had mastered my surroundings.
Readers might recall me cutting my finger on the first day of skills. My vacation in the weeds was just a larger scale version. Tonight, all is well with the world. I made a KICK ASS hotel pan of potatoes dauphin to rebuild any lost confidence (that's a scalloped potato dish in a cheesy custard).
I had my hands in a half dozen other dishes, but leave it to the potato to pull me out of the weeds.
The pace of garde manger is insane. Chef piles on an extra two or three dishes a day, until he senses we are breaking under the workload, then adds one more and laughs. We scurry around, canapes flying, the hotline awash in fire, all hell spilling out of the ovens.
At 8 this evening I was around the hotline, the thermometer on my shoulder reading 125 degrees, sweaty, and totally in control if what was happening. By the time I got the potatoes dauphin in the oven there was 3 minutes for a cigarette. I felt like I had been through a war. It was great.
Tomorrow we do the Friday spread for the other classes, meaning we pull out all the stops, delicious dishes for 60 odd feet of the buffet line. Monday, we'll be plating dishes for 75 or so people, most of the dishes straight from the hotline, a la minute. We haven't received the menu yet, but it will be a tiring, blazing few hours of excitement for the class. I'm determined to be on the hotline for Monday.
The absolute crush of working half a dozen pans is one of the things I love about this profession.
The added pressure of garde manger, kid gloves out the window, has taken a toll on the class, however. We are still a unit, perhaps moreso, but sniping, swearing, bitching at other students for not working quickly enough, being in the way, is a part of communication. Today featured a number of stop-everything, student vs student ass chewings that are fast becoming commonplace, but don't seem to effect the fabric of our tiny little society beyond the time in which the ass chewing takes place. Simply, there is no time to carry a grudge.
Thankfully, I have just the temperment for it. I'm easy with a gentle 'fuck off'.
"In the weeds" is to have little or no idea of what is going on around you. In the weeds is the room moving too fast for you to keep up. In the weeds is five minutes behind past tense with no idea of what future perfect will bring. I spent the first two days of garde manger in the weeds, fucking with white beans, doing what I could to keep up with the whirlwind. Not until today did I feel I had mastered my surroundings.
Readers might recall me cutting my finger on the first day of skills. My vacation in the weeds was just a larger scale version. Tonight, all is well with the world. I made a KICK ASS hotel pan of potatoes dauphin to rebuild any lost confidence (that's a scalloped potato dish in a cheesy custard).
I had my hands in a half dozen other dishes, but leave it to the potato to pull me out of the weeds.
The pace of garde manger is insane. Chef piles on an extra two or three dishes a day, until he senses we are breaking under the workload, then adds one more and laughs. We scurry around, canapes flying, the hotline awash in fire, all hell spilling out of the ovens.
At 8 this evening I was around the hotline, the thermometer on my shoulder reading 125 degrees, sweaty, and totally in control if what was happening. By the time I got the potatoes dauphin in the oven there was 3 minutes for a cigarette. I felt like I had been through a war. It was great.
Tomorrow we do the Friday spread for the other classes, meaning we pull out all the stops, delicious dishes for 60 odd feet of the buffet line. Monday, we'll be plating dishes for 75 or so people, most of the dishes straight from the hotline, a la minute. We haven't received the menu yet, but it will be a tiring, blazing few hours of excitement for the class. I'm determined to be on the hotline for Monday.
The absolute crush of working half a dozen pans is one of the things I love about this profession.
The added pressure of garde manger, kid gloves out the window, has taken a toll on the class, however. We are still a unit, perhaps moreso, but sniping, swearing, bitching at other students for not working quickly enough, being in the way, is a part of communication. Today featured a number of stop-everything, student vs student ass chewings that are fast becoming commonplace, but don't seem to effect the fabric of our tiny little society beyond the time in which the ass chewing takes place. Simply, there is no time to carry a grudge.
Thankfully, I have just the temperment for it. I'm easy with a gentle 'fuck off'.
