5 Hour Rush (Stupid, Stupid Scale)

Today in the restaurant, I started out making the tiramisu, a sweet dish I never made in school, but again, followed the recipe given. Made me think how the ingredients included Italian ladyfinger cookies and instant espresso -- if we were real high falutin', they'd be made properly on premises. Since it was Friday, we had to make two batches of pizza dough, each one 24 kg. The picture above is one batch mixing in the Hobart mixer -- that's my food on the lower left. Big dough, yo. Chef R criticized me a few times for sloppiness with the flour, and I was glad -- she's not a pushover, she's paying attention, and most importantly, she gives a shiz about the details.

I met C, who also does pizza at the restaurant, a graduate of my c-school. The three of us portioned and balled the dough, got the square pies for slices in the oven, stretched and baked the focaccia. At 5pm sharp, customers started coming in and it didn't really let up till 10:30.

Toward the end, I was in the back kitchen with the crew prepping some mise for tomorrow -- a couple of gallons of cherry tomatoes fell under my knife, then family dinner with the front-of-house peeps and the owner's wife -- a good, friendly vibe, everyone energized by the five hour rush, relieved it was over.

Down the street, this outdated billboard:


Hot Bird was the previous restaurant in the space of the pizzeria's sister restaurant. How fickle and churning the restaurant scene is.
ADDENDA:
Went to the doc this morning for a check up. On the positive side, my blood pressure was a shocking 119/84 -- I had him measure it twice. Part of my original motivation for c-school was health reasons. If I were to get control of the issues that were my father's main health problem, I had to 'watch what I eat'. Watch, sure, I watched all sorts of crap in large quantities fly down my throat. If I were going to stop eating out so much and cook more....

On the negative side I weighed in at 225. When I got home 30 minutes later, I was back to 219. Perhaps time for a new scale.

BRUNCH: 10am, large green salad, millet and sausage, homemade vanilla ice cream, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, 1 slice pizza, black cherry soda, .75 bowl

DINNER: 11pm, rigatoni with mushroom, small slice of lemon cake, water, 2 bowl

EVENING WATERING: 12:15pm, quart o' tap