I end up doing a lot of repetitive work at the restaurant. On Saturday I had to peel a little over 40 apples for two different desserts. Usually this happens because we are running very low on a menu item and I am pulled away from my normal duties to make more in a pinch. I may not be the best person for that kind of job because repetitive tasks seem to lull me into complacency. I begin to forget that the matter is urgent, and my peeling rate drops. Then I remember why the apples are before me and I speed up. Without fail, though, I will be lulled again within a few minutes. I am really looking forward to doing service almost full-time. I will probably have completely different feelings on the matter once I am doing dinner service 5 nights a week. (To be fair, I have no idea if I will be doing dinner service all 5 shifts a week. I am just assuming.) No matter what, doing service will be a nice change of pace. I am sick of making coffee cake. I am especially sick of zesting 12 oranges for the coffee cake. I still like making marshmallows, though. I am damn good at marshmallows. My batches always look better than the other batches I come across. :-)

Done!

Last night I finished all my extern hours. Woo hoo! I will continue to work at the restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights until January. When January rolls around I am totally dumping my office monkey job so that I can completely dedicate myself to pastry monkeying. That will also make me a bit poor. That won't matter much since I won't have time to spend money while working almost 60 hours a week. Perhaps I will also start my hunt for a sugar daddy -- preferably one that will kick the bucket and leave me a ton of money sooner rather than later.

Working at the restaurant has made me realize I have a problem -- a listening problem. Chef will tell me to do something and not even a minute later I will be unable to recall incidental parts of the instructions. Usually the parts easily forgotten are 1) the amount to be made, and 2) where to put it when I am done. I usually repeat things out loud as I am being instructed, but I only do that with ingredients or procedures. For instance, Chef will ask me to wrap something up a certain way and put it away. I'll remember everything except where to put it. I will at least recall that she was rather vague with where to put it, so I can get away with a follow-up question later. When I am done wrapping things I'll ask, "Chef, did you have a specific spot in mind for this, so you can find it later?" The best is when the answer is "anywhere on the bench in the chocolate room", because I wasn't even thinking of the chocolate room as an option before asking. I feel stupid when I ask these follow-up questions but I don't really know what else to do. I can only tell myself that I will attempt to be more mindful and attentive when given instructions, but I know that won't happen.

Also....

The girl refuses to believe I am 5 foot 2 inches tall. Usually, if you discover someone is a height you didn't expect you would say, "No way! Really?" And when the other person says "yup", you would then let it go and move on. Not this girl. A handful of times throughout the night I ended up having to insist that I wasn't wrong about my height. I shouldn't have to defend myself. I am 5' 2", accept it. At the end of the night, while once again refusing to accept my height, she mentions that someone else in the kitchen claims to be 5' 2" and she doesn't believe them. You know what? Perhaps if two people say they are 5' 2" and you don't believe them, perhaps they are 5' fucking 2" and you have a perception problem.

Argh!

A girl I work with is really starting to drive me crazy. She is a very nice person, and I am sure she has the best of intentions, but she is driving me up the wall. She is always up my ass. Whatever I am doing, she has little thing to share with me. There is always some note of correction, tip or advice (even if it is a task I have been doing for months.) I am sure she thinks she is being helpful, but in reality she is begging for a bitch out. It has been very difficult restraining my tongue and my attitude.

Last night was the worst so far. It really seemed like she added her two cents on every task I did. When I made the apple chips she told me I put too much simple syrup in the bowl. You know what? Who cares. The slices soak in the syrup. As long as the crap inside doesn't slosh out as I carry the bowl, there isn't a problem. Then she tells me somewhat frantically as I head of to the meat slicer with the apples that I need all my sheet pans laid out ahead of time! Oh no! I cannot imagine the catastrophe that will occur if I don't have all the full sheet pan laid out every, taking up too much space! When I returned from slicing, I found she had indeed laid out all the sheet pans for me. I then stacked them on top each other. Cause, you know, I will only be using them one at a time.

Don't even get me started on the petit fours. I used to do the petit fours all the time. Then Chef shifted duties and this girl had to do them. Lately I have been making the petit fours again. When I first started making them again she kept telling me what to do. Last night she wanted to make sure there were enough petit fours for the night. I assured her there were and even told her I counted them. Most people would leave it at that. She proceeds to explain to me how many we need and why.

When I was making the hot chocolate I made the mistake of saying verbally to myself, "Oh, I forgot to measure out the vanilla." The girl hears this and tells me that the vanilla does get added until the end. I have made the hot chocolate quite a few times now. I know when to put in the damn vanilla. I explained to her that if I don't have it measure out and waiting in a cup, I might forget to add it at all. Her "correction" about the vanilla is probably the perfect example of what she does all the time. You can see how it could get infuriating, right?

My Perfect Plan

Today was a bit of an eye opener. Chef was telling me that she dreams of opening a store - kind of like Williams-Sonoma, but exclusively pastry focused, with ingredients and food supplies as well as wares. She talked about it in terms of a real career to aspire to, as if her current situation is just like any other step on the way to what she really wants. My perception had always been that she was way closer to that final step than me. The truth is, she and I are in similar boats, she is just less poor and has greater responsibilities to manage.

I had never thought about Chef wanting much beyond what she already has. Sure, having more money and more control is a given, but the basics seemed to be there. It made me think about what I really want and what I am willing to sacrifice. Chef works 6 days a week (though she is trying to cut it down to 5), who knows how many hours a day. Taking 2 days off in a row is a rarity for her. I don't really know if that is what I want. Can't some Sugar Daddy (pun totally intended) give me a ton of money to occasionally make some sweets? It sounds like the perfect plan, right?

60 pounds of cheddar

A personal highlight of working at the restaurant is the cheese. We have such an array of interesting and delicious cheeses. I sometimes get more excited by the cheese than the desserts. Much of the cheese selections get cut in the pastry kitchen before and after evening service. Last night, after service, I got to see what a 60 pound round of English cheddar looked like. It was amazing. It literally looked like a tree stump. It was at least a foot high. It was really cool to watch it get cut. A handled cheese wire (here is an example of said tool: http://www.bakedeco.com/a/cheese-wire-comes-w-1555.htm) is needed to do most of the cutting. I got to sample some as well. Yum.

Family meal was soooo good today. Since the shifts in a restaurant are so long, the restaurant provides your meal. Usually it is made by the cooks (and can sometimes be very disappointing), but today we had a special meal to celebrate the conclusion of Ramadan. Yes, Ramadan ended weeks ago, but I have no idea why we are having the meal now instead of a few weeks ago. Pretty much all the runners in the restaurant are Bengali, so we had a ton of Bengalese food for family meal. I guess the food came from a restaurant owned by a brother of one of our runners. There was a ridiculous amount of food and it was all pretty good. There were also some sweets. The mithai are crazy syrupy sweet, but sooooo good.

I worked dinner service again. This time they tried to get me to scoop or quenelle some of the ice cream and sorbet. Quenelling is usually something that has to be practiced. A quenelle is an oval shape scoop of ice cream typically used in fine dining. The shape is obtained by using an actual spoon, rather than a normal ice cream scoop. Initially, I seemed rather quenelle capable. Of course that would be the case when I was just practicing. When it came time to quenelle some ice cream for an actual dessert, it was a different story. Overall, the night was good.

Cha-Ching

When I got to the restaurant today, Chef told me she wanted to put me on payroll right away. She thought that I had been doing a good job and that I was making a contribution to the kitchen. 2 days a week at $10/hr really isn't much of a "cha-ching", but it is nice to know that my efforts are noticed and appreciated.

I spent the whole evening working service. It was a lot of fun. It can get very hectic at times, but I still enjoyed it. I learned how we plate most of our desserts. I have been working at the restaurant since mid-September and never knew what most of the desserts looked like until last night. Some of the desserts are ordered so infrequently, though, that I never got a good look at their plating. It was interesting to see what desserts are the most popular. I was actually surprised because the items that are my favorites (chocolate coconut tart anyone?) are far from being the most popular. Right now the pumpkin cheesecake seems like one of the most popular, so I can plate that sucker in my sleep. I am not much of a cheesecake fan, so I cannot attest to how good it is. In fact, I have not tasted any of the cheesecake offerings that we've had since starting at the restaurant. If I worked somewhere that served only cheesecakes, I would be so thin. Okay, maybe not. I am sure I would find some other way to stay fat.