Pizzas

For last Saturday’s dinner we made Pizza – 50 of them and sheet-cake sized. The dough was hand-rolled (mostly by Michelle and Ernie) and fabulous. I made one or two of them but manipulating dough is definitely not one of my fortes. We had cheese pizza, veggie pizza, pepperoni pizza, ham & pineapple pizza, and alfredo chicken pizza for those allergic to tomatoes. 7, 8, 14, 15, 18, 17

The pizzas took ALL day, a lot of people in the kitchen, a lot of craziness going on, and was a HUGE hit downstairs in the dining room. Even though we have a dinner or lunch working at any given time, we are also responsible for salad ingredients, cold cuts  of some time, a hot veggie, and a large amount of fruit, which must be vetted, washed and displayed in the dining room at least twice a day. Just before dinner was served, we were seriously running out of places to put pizzas until we could get them down to the dining room! Then, we get to clean it all up! 19, 21, 20

We have: 1) main cooking and chopping area with oven (which works) and steamer/convection oven (which does not), fryers, huge cauldron-style pot, 6 stove tops and a giant fry top; 2) another chopping area with sinks (where I spend a lot of my time), and a bakery in the back with steamer/convection oven that does work; and 3) the sinks where 99% of the washing is done and where I spend most of my time. Everything must we cleaned and put away and the floors must be scrubbed and squeegeed before we leave for the evening.

Each team works every other weekend and every weekend the galley laundry must be done: wash clothes, towels, aprons, shirts (worn by day workers while they are here) mop heads, and anything else dirtied during the previous week. I did laundry this last Sunday, which meant going back and forth to the laundry room and doing 10 loads while still chopping and washing in the kitchen, and helping Josh with the brownies (which definitely has its perks, as you can imagine). Now that we have patients on board, it’s getting even more packed in the galley as tasks are always being added, certainly not subtracted. We’re now up to about a 12 hour day, with short lunch and dinner breaks. I tend to skip dinner and start immediately on washing what we’ve dirtied while cooking, and then start on the dinner pots & pans as they begin being sent back up to the galley shortly after dinner begins. The longer I wait to start the dishes, the longer I’m in the kitchen that night. Sometimes, the day workers will come in after their dinner and either help me or take over the dish washing. Nobody leaves until everything is cleaned and the check list is completed! Since dinners are now a half hour longer (because there are so many more people to feed) that means we are still getting pots & pans after 7pm or so from the dining room staff. They do all the regular dishes, flat where & cups, plus scrub the serving area and the dining room itself.