Last Night at Work

Last night at work was unpleasant. There was only two preppers in the back and our list was rather long. Not only was our list long but my fellow prepper was not the fastest knife in the block. As soon as I walked in the door my boss asked me to wrap the chicken in parchment. He said it I could make it whatever I wanted but to run it by him when I had thought it up. I'm not too good at coming up with dishes out of the blue. If someone gives me an idea or a theme to go on I can usually come up with something ok. This however was different. He just asked me to come up with something without giving me anything to go by. After clocking in, I went to the walk-in to look for something that needed to be used up. I found a three cheese mix and potatoes left over from brunch. I was however, stumped as to what else I could put in the parchment. I was kinda stressed. I went out to look at the board, (the board is a dry erase board that we keep our prep list on and other notes of interest) written there was a note about using swish chard, that was ordered the day before, in the chicken in parchment. Now that I had my other vegetable I continued on to finishing the dish. I came up with this, three cheese stuffed chicken (cheddar, jack, and feta), with rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes, and swiss chard wrapped in parchment. Now I had to go run it by my boss, who just happened to be in a managers meeting. So I wrote it all out on a note card and walked out to the patio. I felt like a total turd standing out side the doors looking at all the managers in conversation. I really didn't want to interrupt them but I was just doing as I was instructed. So I knocked on the doors with mild hesitation. Aaron, my boss, saw me and told them he wold be right back. He took the card and read through it once and said it was perfect. I then set off to finish that project, which took me very near an hour to complete. I had to wrap fifteen. After I finished wrapping the chicken I tried to start the AM prep list. It was a medium list, but since all the items are new it is taking us much longer to prep then the old items. I decided to start on making a hotel pan of meatloaf. I first went to dice some onions, but before I had even halved and pealed them, Aaron was back from the meeting. He set off to figure out the solution to the pitfalls we were experiencing with peeling soft boiled eggs. He got as far as putting the eggs in a pan with water before he was called to the line. Guess who had to finish the eggs. The meatloaf was now on hold. I continued to dice until the eggs were ready to come off the heat. When they were ready I quickly poured off the water and added the hot eggs to an ice bath to get the white part of the egg to shrink from the shell. It took me about thirty minutes to peel fourteen eggs. They were not the prettiest, but they were all in one piece. Now I could get back to the meatloaf. Actually before I even did the eggs I had made twelve quarts of caesar dressing. I realize now that I am rambling about all the crap that I did at work last night and I'm neglecting the real reason I started writing this entry. I guess I didn't really see the real reason I started writing this entry till just a minute ago. But that reason should have been this, change is stressful. Last night someone mentioned something about change and I was like, "Change is always good." I'm starting to rethink that statement a bit. Now that I look back at my time at Trappeze, I realize the stress that I dealt with there was from the constant state of flux the restaurant was in. Nothing was ever the same. I know it will get better at LRG but right now it is kinda stressful. I really liked the fact that I had never really been stressed at the LRG till now. It is a cake job and I really couldn't complain. I feel like I've gotten better at managing stress, but if I had to choose between stress and no stress, I think I'd choose the latter. I realize that stress encourages growth, but I believe that only if it is dealt with in the right way.