"Yawn" or "I'm Only Sleeping"

It was another grueling week in the food biz. Standing on your feet all day and getting dirty from the flour for the biscuits and the dumplins'. Flour all over your shoes and pants. And then there were the usual problems. Billy Bob, the backup cook, was feeling lousy-he had been throwing up all day-and had to make a hasty retreat when yours truly came on borde.

I stepped up to the plate and ran his shift through the Easter breakfast and Easter afternoon. The recipes are easy-much easier than the ones at a semi-well known cafeteria chain. My new company claims it makes its food from scratch, but it ain't really. Let's just say semi-scratch.

When you add a dry mix and buttermilk to the biscuits, it ain't exactly scratch. Not like at the aforementioned cafeteria chain, where you had to add margarine the size of a pea until all the ingredients were mixed. As time wore on, however, we had gone the route of semi-scratch by purchasing Pilsbury throw-'em-in-the-pan biscuits. They were actually quite good, and I recall a customer, er, guest remarking it was the best biscuit he had ever eaten.

And yours truly can remember a time long gone, when me mum brandished her wooden rolling pin and made biscuits from well, er, scratch. Nothing semi there.

The dumplins' are kinda easy, too. But you have to be careful when you throw 'em into the seasoned water. They have a tendency of sticking together. The recipe says and I quote: "after dumping said dumplins' in boiling water, encourage them to separate by use of a spoon or spatula.' Hoots, Shirley, can appreciate the choice of words ( "encourage" ) and from now on will be referred to as a hootsism. ( coined today by yours truly )

The green beans are canned but are cooked for two hours. A big bag of ham seasoning is added, and we must cook them slowly to remove the hint of hootsism, er, cansism. Which validates once again the semi-scratch ideology.

At you-know-who's we had to follow a strict science with da green beans. They had to be a 3 sieve, Blue Lake, and from Oregon. No other bean would do. I forget the drain weight, but when a new batch came in from Oregon, the d.m. and the purveyor performed a ritualistic ceremony by opening a can and dumpling it into a sieve and weighing it on a scale. It was a thumbs-up or thumbs-down procedure, and if it wasn't right a call to Oregon was made with a quickness.

My company back in those days was anal and very strict about it's food. I once got busted by my d.m. for buying Colorado baked potatoes instead of Idahoan.

"Throw them gol darn potatoes in the dumpster outside and get me some Idaho potatoes in here with a quickness. What are you trying to do, v.c. Diminish the reputation of our company? Our founder is turning over in his grave, son."

He also busted me for using Piggly Wiggly brand white vinegar instead of Heinz.

"Throw that gol darn vinegar in the dumpster and get me some Heinz in here with a quickness.. What are you tryin' to do, v.c. Diminish the reputation of our company? Our founder...."

We even used the best spices at the cafeteria. White peppa from McCormick was something like $8.00 a lb. The most expensive item we had in the building except perhaps for the rum sauce, which cost like a thousand dollars a bottle. ( slight embellishment ) Then along came a new COO, Azam Malik, in the early days of the new millineum, and we switched to Sauers or Piggly Wiggly brand spices which were considerably cheaper.

My anal d.m. who was finnicky with the specs ( and rightfully so ) was turning over in his grave when Piggly Wiggly spices were substituted by the company. I doubt, though. that any customer could really have told the difference, because we didn't exactly know the meaning of words like simmer, fold gently, etc.

I remember telling my cooks a million times: "show me on the recipe where it says 'boil the hell out of the black-eye peas.' In fact, they were supposed to cook at a simmer of 200 degrees. Because: by boiling the hell out of 'em, it caused them to turn into mush. On the flip side, if you didn't cook 'em long enough they tasted like raw peanuts.

Well, my laundry is probably ready now, so I better go. I'm enjoying my new job. And my boss is becoming enamored with me. He should be. I have always been about quality and am good in ye old kitchen, as evidenced by me taking Billy Bob's place in the kitchen on Easter Sunday. Not to mention my work ethic.

Ah, the food biz, v.c.

P.S. Please don't wake me; no don't shake me; leave me where I am; I'm only sleeping. Yawn.