Things I learned in the kitchen

Yesterday was my first day of my new job. I learned a lot and I thought any aspiring chefs among you might appreciate my highly informative musings.

1. My fingers are definitely no match for a razor sharp knife.

2. When slicing the edges of your fingers with a razor sharp knife, there is no time to actually feel what has happened. You just notice the blood starting to rise and strap it down tightly under a plaster and keep going.

3. You will find these cuts when making dinner later and squeezing some lemon over your rainbow trout. You will also find a whole network of other cuts that you hadn’t realised were there. Plus the egg shell cuts from a few days before.

4. Crouching over a chopping board all day gives you a bad back so you’ll enter feeling a 28 year old and leave feeling like a 70 year old.

5. An hour of yoga will help but it won’t quite get on top of it.

6. It is hot in the kitchen. It is even hotter leaving your shift and walking into the mid afternoon sun while still in black jeans.

7. You can never quite chop/slice/dice fast enough. Not quite.

8. There is always something to do in a kitchen. Something to roast, something to put in a bowl, something to put back in the fridge, something to wash.

9. Not doing any washing up is a revelation. Kitchen porters rock my world! I must remember to be very nice to him. My hands are grateful for not having to wash up but they are yet to enjoy being sliced.

10. Working out when to use initiative and do it yourself and when to ask for guidance is a balancing act. I’m not sure I’ve worked out when to do which yet.

(Don’t worry, I don’t go to work with no shoes on!)

“PAPRIKA LAMB!”

Yesterday I was at work. My colleague and I were just hanging around looking for things to do as it was a bit quiet. We had a little look in the fridge of homemade food and saw a stew of some sort. We didn’t know for definite what it was, as the paprika lamb and the pork goulash often look quite similar. There was only one thing for it – the taste test (I sometimes have to do this on the cake, purely in the interests of the customer, you understand..). It tasted like pork. So we put a label on it and got on with other stuff.

Then the world arrived and wanted a sandwich. And they wanted things heated up and they wanted coffees and they wanted to buy this and that. So we woke ourselves up a little and got into ‘military mode.’ I was heating, wrapping, toasting and washing dishes in the kitchen. My colleague was making coffee, taking payments, taking orders and bagging things up in front of the shop. Due to this intensity of action, there was less time for niceties.

I would tear out of kitchen at 100 miles an hour, yelling “CALIFORNIAN CLUB SANDWICH!”  and thrust it at the first person who looked up. “THANKS! HAVE A GOOD DAY!” I would yell, with equal ferocity, before disappearing back into the kitchen to deal with the next order. I’m not sure whether they felt I really meant that last statement…

Anyway, there were pans on hobs all over the place, heating soups and stews and whatever else found its way to me. At one point, I noticed something on a hob which had finished heating. I whipped out the rice, which was also finished and got it ready for take-out. I picked it up and raced out into the shop. I had forgotten how hot it was. My fingers started noticing the heat. Ignore it, I thought. Get the food out now, nurse the cuts and burns later.

I rushed into the shop at some speed, given the finger-burning situation and shouted, “PAPRIKA LAMB!”

…. There was no reaction. What was wrong with these people? My fingers are burning here, OW OW! Pay attention. It must be someone’s.

“PAPRIKA LAMB!” shouted the crazy kitchen lady, again.

Again, no reaction. Some people were talking in the corner and I presumed it must be one of them. Why aren’t they listening out for their food? I thought, impatiently.

“DID ANYONE ORDER A PAPRIKA LAMB WITH RICE TO TAKE AWAY?!” I yelled, raising my voice to get their attention. They all looked briefly at me, shook their heads, then went back to their conversation.

My patience was running low by this point. I needed to get back into the kitchen, I was busy and important, couldn’t these people tell?! Someone needs to take this paprika lamb from me. I tried again.

“PAPRIKA LAMB!”

Nothing. I turned to my colleague, who was making a coffee, and asked her, “Do you know who’s paprika lamb this is?”

(Has anyone else spotted the mistake yet?)

She said (wait for it…..), she said, “O, is that the pork goulash?”

Yes. Yes, it is. Because we don’t have paprika lamb, do we….

A pause. I figure out how to deal with the situation.

“Is anyone waiting for pork goulash?” I said, voice lowered significantly.

The man in front of me stepped forward, thanked me and took his pork goulash…..

Crazy kitchen lady returned to her kitchen cave at the back of the shop and quietly got on with the next order…..

Asparagus fingers

Blu, Buster and Beckham. These are all names of children in stories in the Chat magazine. Ridiculous. I’m now getting a good idea of who reads these magazines. They name their children Blu and Buster, call the fire brigade when baby gets a toilet seat stuck on his head and they send their stories in to Chat. Maybe you get paid well for your story? That’s why you get nonsense that’s not stories at all. The ’13 day pregnancy’ in this issue wasn’t that at all. It’s just that she found out she was pregnant quite late in the day, and gave birth 13 days later. It’s not really a 13 day pregnancy, is it?

So anyway, I was thinking to myself, maybe I’ll send in a story. I could book myself a nice holiday if it pays well.

Ok, now what could I write about? I need a dramatic title. Erm.

“Death by ravioli!” for example. Or “I found an ear in my cake!” Or maybe a disease? Something obscure and probably not real. Like “Rare disease turns my fingers into asparagus spears.”

Ok, let’s run with that one. I could do a photo of me looking sad…

“It all started when I was 14,” I could write. “I’ve always loved asparagus. If I’d have known what it was going to do to me, I wouldn’t have eaten a single one.”

“Then, when I was 20, I started to notice the skin on my hands was changing. I thought it might be because I had recently started to work in a kitchen so my hands were exposed to different temperatures a lot. I thought they might just need moisturising. But it made no difference. In fact, my skin was feeling slightly rubbery so didn’t absorb the moisturiser at all.

“One day, whilst biting my nail, I noticed it had a funny taste. And the texture was different. And that’s when I realised it… My fingers had turned into asparagus!

“I called in sick that day, terrified that I might accidentally cut off one of my own fingers whilst preparing food. I went to A&E with a long sleeved coat on, too embarrassed to show my hands…

“When the nurses asked me to fill out the form, I tried but couldn’t pick the pen up. I heard a few nurses gasp and there were whispers of “asparagus fingers” and giggles. I felt so ashamed.

“When the doctor saw me, he said I have a rare disease called vegetablefingeritis. It can happen when someone eats a lot of one vegetable. He said I should be grateful I hadn’t chosen to eat carrots, like this poor person…

“I’ve learned to live with my disease now, and give motivational talks to youngsters about living through adversity and about varying their vegetable intake. Although I struggle to do almost anything which requires the use of hands (most things) I refuse to be defeated by my asparagus fingers and have learned how to do other things which do not require hands. I am extremely adept at turning on the TV using my nose, and watching daytime TV. Rikki Lake is my favourite.”

And at the end there could another photo of me, with a different vegetable, a mushroom perhaps. And the caption could be “Laura stays away from asparagus now!”

What do you think? Should I send it in? I think it’s got potential.