Continuing Work in the Kitchen

I arrived in the catering kitchen a short time before my daughter. I looked over the list that she had dictated to me…make two garden salads in big bowls. Use greens from bottom shelf. Make cucumber salad. Dressing is labeled.

I start off by cleaning the food trap in the dishwasher. Rinse it, replace it, fill dishwasher with hot water. Washing my hands, I pull out the two salad bowls off the shelf. I walk into the big Walk in Cooler/Refrigerator and pull greens from bottom shelf. I notice that the Romaine lettuce that I had cut the day before and take that as well. Usually I am supposed to mix the two. The Romaine had turned brown and some of the mixed greens look slimy. I do my best to find good greens, and then mixed them together. Halfway, I pull out some tomatoes, and cucumbers to put in the salad, along with olives. Picking through more greens, I add this to the remainder of the bowls, and at the top I put on more tomatoes, olives and the whole, sliced cucumbers. I wrap the salads and labeled them for Saturday’s wedding.

My daughter walks in and goes ballistics. “What’s that? I told you to use the mixed greens, not the Romaine. What the hell happened to the Romaine?”
“That is how it looked…I picked through it. Besides the mixed greens looked awful as well,” I sputtered, and then clammed up. I listen to her yell some more and then both of us pick out the cucumbers, tomatoes and olives and threw away the mixed greens.

“Why did you use these cucumbers?”

“Well there were three containers and I took the ones labeled for Saturday’s wedding,” I explained. I thought that was logical but I guess not in her kitchen.

Finally, my daughter has vented enough. She apologizes and said something appears wrong with the Walk-In refrigerator. The refrigerator seemed to be 10 degrees warmer then it should have been. She will have a repair person come in and look at it.

Finally, I make the cucumber salad using the half sliced cucumbers and cut the remaining ones in half, mixed in the salad dressing. I add more salt and pepper, dill, and paprika, and then cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and set it on a shelf in the front refrigerator.

While working in my daughter’s kitchen, I have learned a few things - nothing goes smoothly, try not to react because the chef is always right, and everything can be pretty much remedied.