Where's the Shark

 Last Thursday I went into my daughter’s kitchen to do some work. The Pastry Chef had been in earlier and would be leaving by noon, dropping off her fresh baked pastries and ciabatta bread at the downtown Deli.  Laurie, who answers the phone, was in the front room. I actually worked alone and from my list. Everything should have run smoothly, but, hey, this is me…so, it didn’t.

It was kind of nice working alone because the Pastry Chef, who is young, loves to play her music at the loudest volume possible, After she left, I turned off the radio, took two aspirins, and made a mental note to buy a book on “How to Sign” for further use in the kitchen.

I pulled out my ‘To Do List’ and before I knew it, I was behind in my work. The first thing I did was to grill the vegetables on a skillet on the oven. In between dodging the grease spatters and flames shooting out from under the skillet, I yelled for Laurie to keep the phone on speed dial for the fire department!

While running back and forth…I pureed the jar of whole garlic cloves. At least I had one job down, while the vegetables were grilling. Then when I finished, I was able to check another job off of my list. I picked up the 7 different recipe dressings and sauces that Laurie printed out from my boss.

I studied the clock, and I knew that I had really fallen behind and this totally put me in a panic mode. I figured that my boss, my daughter would be back in the kitchen around 4:30, and I wanted everything done and I wanted to be out of there.

What else frustrated me was that I had to run to the grocery store twice for some of the things that were on the list and the kitchen was out of. A third time, I asked my granddaughter to pick something up from the grocery store and drop it off as fast as she could.

By the time I looked at the clock, I only had one dressing done…it was four gallons but that was it. Then my daughter called and told me that she really needed me to get the pasta salad finished and put into a take-out bowl because as soon as she got there, she was sending the salad out for an event.

Ok, I had mumbled, not wanting her to know that I didn’t have it down. Afterwards, I seemed to move faster…panic helps a person to move, and in my case, it didn’t let me down. I finished the pasta salad, and then finished the four gallons of Caesar Dressing. Unfortunately I still can’t figure out where the 5^th gallon came from but math is not in my head or in my vocabulary! I did have a cheat sheet but that didn’t seem to help either.

Nest, I moved on to the Sweet Lemon dressing…no problem here but I would find out later that I didn’t need to do that one. How was I supposed to know that since I was given the recipe to do? When my daughter arrived later, she asked me where the rest of the dressing was because it didn’t look like it was enough. All I could think of was, OMG…wait until she tastes my Caesar Dressing and wonders how I got five gallons out of it!

In between all of this, I looked around the kitchen…It looked like a cyclone had hit. It did, it was me. I had used both long prep tables, that had spills, bottles, and more and so did the floor, the small table by the mixing bowl. I moved quickly before Erin showed up or the Health Department paid us a surprise visit and shut us down. I was like a small tornado, cleaning up everything and continuously running the dishwasher.

By the time my daughter arrived, I had finished four dressings, and I had run out of steam and couldn’t finish the final dressing. I limped home, where I sat in a chair for the rest of the night, massaging my throbbing feet and just watching something stupid on the television. That something was Sharknado 2. Believe me; the kitchen actually reminded me of a scene from that campy movie. Where the heck was that shark when I needed it!