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Monday, February 7, 2011

A week at a glance

Last week was snoozy. That's its official designation. I was lacking a sense of urgency, compounded by a general lack of communication with Les Dames. Fortunately this picked up throughout the week and Chef and I started a very tentative timeline of events. Fast forward to yesterday, a 3 hour meeting at the Botanical Gardens where we laid out the general schematics for the concessions booths and my fellow St Philips students got even more courses to prepare.

(Currently we're in charge of making:
*a Texas “Greens” Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash and Agave Caramelized Pepitas
*Peach Wood Smoked Chicken
*Tuscan Dried Cherry Farro Salad
*Hummus Three Ways (roasted red bell pepper, green olive, and toasted pine nut)
*Grilled Vegetable Pita Sandwich
*Triple Chocolate Chipotle Brownies
*Mashed sweet potatoes and a pomegranate & red wine reduction to accompany Persian Spiced Lamb Chops

and now the food that will be featured in the hourly demos:
*Italian-Mexican Pesto
*Cannellini Bean Salad
*Mediterranean Salad
and more of the farro and mixed greens salads)

It was a hugely productive meeting. Though Chef couldn't attend this meeting, I think I did a good job--I took notes and pictures and got all my current batch of questions answered. But boy was it a lot to take in! I sincerely hope it's easier for everyone next year.

(I also asked them to save all receipts pertaining to purchases made for OO this year because we have no list of the dry goods used last year, just various amalgamations of "oh, I'll need 2 flat top ranges for my dish" that need to be compiled. It's all over the place and that's not very helpful right now--we'll be ordering too much of some stuff, not enough other stuff, and again next year should be MUCH better. I'm already picturing a table with "Supplies" at the top, "Item," "Amount" "Used by" "Used for" which will be so easy to fill in and change to meet variations in the portions prepared/recipe used for future years!)

This week my task is to add the new recipes to the list of ingredients and send that to Rosemary, of the RK Group, who will be getting the food donated probably from Sysco. Then we'll start on the dry goods list. So that was work on Olives Ole.

I visited the Original for another 6 hour stretch, which again was very productive. I have plenty of fodder for the testing part of the handbook, that's for sure! I got more of a chance to talk with Jose, one of the two lodebearing cooks in the back, and it helped assuage my concerns from last week about "really, what good would a handbook do these guys?" (Answer: not much. But some.)

Today I am running errands for/with Chef, including going with him to where he gets restaurant equipment. I was going to meet with Larkin, the son of the Original's owner whom I met on Saturday's shift, and go over some recipes but we can do that via email.

On top of all that, I am a week away from teaching another demo to the San Antonio Rampage. I finalized my menu at least and am very excited about it, but I need to finish the handout to accompany the class, requisition the ingredients by Wednesday, and do a dry run with my friend Marnie and some victims (aka family and friends) on Friday so that it goes off without a hitch next Wednesday. The only problem right now is the time got changed to 2pm-5pm, which may conflict with our school schedule--I'm pretty sure all 3 of the labs that we have at school will be in use at that time, so there won't be anywhere to actually have the class. I'm waiting to hear back on this. So yes, a very busy week right on the heels of Snoozeville. That's just what I get.

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