I SURVIVED ONE MORE YEAR

Happy Mother's Day once again.  Our weather went bonkers for the Moms.  92 yesterday, high of 68 today.   I froze most of the night.  Luckily I survived the thrashing I always get at the Elks Lodge trying to cook this much food ... so here we go!!

I was up at 3:30 in the morning. It takes a bit to get the kids fed and me awake enough to get out the door.  By 5:00 the sun was already coming up, with some ominous looking clouds.  That did not keep me from my appointed task.  Get those ovens blazing, get the water boiling for eggs and get the ham in the ovens.

This is my work station ... a 20 foot counter on one side, four big ovens on the other, with the autosham in the middle.  I hate that thing.  We used to have one where you pushed one button and set the temperature.  Now they have this electronic thing that requires a genius to program ... and even then you have to go back and turn it ON after it heats up.  I'm sure it was designed by a man that doesn't cook.

We finished setting up the tables and our workstations, set out plates, silverware, napkins, orange juice, milk, made the coffee ... and then there was the OOPS.  The coffee perked in a HUGE coffee maker for an hour ... but whoever set it up, did not get the thing in the hole.  You know what I mean.  An hour later there was STILL no coffee.  It took three ladies to fix it.

In the meantime, here's what I'm up against.

30 quarts of liquid eggs, ham and peppers, to make into ten huge Denver omelette casseroles

12 gallons of hash browns, panned, seasoned and buttered

70 pounds of link sausage to pan

250 biscuits to pan, along with 300 waffles

Just a good morning's work!!  All that was done in two hours before the cooking began.

This is the OTHER side of my workspace ...  four big convection ovens (two on the other side of Matt, the best dishwasher in the country) ... where I cooked all of that food.  This walkway is the DANGER ZONE.  No one gets to be there but me.  Why?  Just ask the two guys that decided to break the rules and help me awhile back.  They each have a big burn scar on their arm.  Hey ... I tried to tell them, but they didn't listen.  This year NO ONE got burned.  Well almost no one!

Pans go in, pans come out.  Anything coming out is screaming hot and can hit you with a scar-inducing second degree burn in a flash.  That's why I make the guys and gals stand on the other side of the table and load the food into big aluminum pans that go out to the serving line.  

Everyone must wear kitchen gloves, and I have big oven mitts to boot, but I made one mistake.  I took the mitt off to move something, turned around and grabbed a big pan right out of the oven that I had just set down.  It melted that black plastic glove to my skin in a nanosecond.  I peeled it off, grabbed a bowl of ice and stood there for five minutes.  OUCH!!!  This morning I'm fine ... no burn, but I think my fingerprints disappeared.  It's a miracle.

You wouldn't think there would be much involved with the serving line, but if you don't lay out the food right, people will take a plateful of sausage and ham, making us run out.  Eggs, biscuits and gravy, casserole, hash browns ... they are all lined up first.  By the time they get to the expensive ham and sausage, they have no more room on their plate!!  Hee hee .......

In spite of being distracted a million times, I went strong for five hours straight as people came streaming in the door.  In the end, we fed 380 folks, counting the 20 that showed up to help.  At least six of those did a very good job of keeping the bar stools from escaping the building.  They didn't help at all.

Cleanup was another two hours.  Any leftover food was packaged up for the Mens Homeless Shelter across town.  At long last I headed home to a wild greeting from my sweet boy.  That didn't last long however ... in about an hour, we were both asleep on the couch.  My back wasn't the least bit happy about all that work, but this morning I'm just like new.  It's weird how exercise always makes me feel better.

And so ended a crazy day of restaurant work.  Dave knows all about that stuff!!  Honestly, if it weren't for the kitchen staff that does all the cleanup, I don't think I would do it.  This old gal does NOT like washing dishes!!!

It was a fabulous day with good friends.  They gave away three quilts I donated to Moms who won the free drawing.  I think they appreciated that since members are always having to BUY raffle tickets.  

I probably won't be doing much today ... other than a walk with Cooper, clean the house, do some laundry, figure out MY menu for the week and maybe more quilt binding.  Yeah, I just can't seem to sit still.

I hope everyone had a WONDERFUL MOTHER'S DAY!!