Death by Chocolate, literally

It was just Chef R and me today, because despite expectations of a busy evening, Chefs A and C were out of town. I made the dough single-handedly for the first time today, and made the mistake of lifting and carrying 24kg of dough to my stations -- my back is not happy. No desserts to be made, helped Chef R process veg for a spinach-kale-polenta soup. And then there was the block of dark chocolate.

We use solid dark chocolate in a flourless chocolate cake and hot chocolate -- which becomes kick-ass chocolate pudding after a few days. The chocolate comes in an 11 pound block that needs to be broken up into small enough pieces to be scaled out with relative accuracy. The block goes on a cutting board, then you take a pointed wide metal thing (I think it's a repurposed cheese-board cutter) to wedge yourself in and jiggle back and forth until the chocolate snaps. After about half the block got broken up, I discovered that you can see the grain of the chocolate on its underside -- by going with the direction of the grain, the stuff breaks like slate. Before I discovered that, I was really forcing it to make it go quickly and slipped and jabbed myself pretty strongly in the gut. Despite getting myself with the point, only left a slight bruise, no breaking of the skin. 'Death by chocolate,' I snorted, and kept moving.

ADDENDA:
An intense day. Had an interview for a corporate job in my old career in graphics this morning, went well, but was exhausted from waking early. I brought up to Chef R that, come Saturday, I would have completed my hours for the externship. Her comment off the bat was, "I'll speak to the owner," not, "I love you Norbert, we'll pay you whatever you want per hour, just don't leave us!" Speak to the owner, the same owner who accused me of destroying his very expensive prosciutto yesterday. Oy. After the busy night, Chef R mentioned she'll be talking to Chef A soon, and at the least she'll try to get me a wage for weekend prep shifts....we'll see.

BREAKFAST: 7:30am, organic chex with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 2/5

AM SNACK: 11:45am, chocolate rugelah, water, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 6pm, 2 slices, root beer, 1.25 bowl, hunter 4.5

PM DRUGGING: 8pm, 2 Advil, water
Height of dinner service and I got a thumping headache, an aching back, a sore stretching arm. Still fun as hell, though.

PM SNACKS: 7-9pm, 2 slices of pizza, quart of water
Grabbing as the rush went along

DINNER: 9:30pm, spaghetti and meatballs, 2 sodas, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5
The pastas are too large, and too salty. I could hear my c-school teacher Chef Allen moaning in my ear.

EVENING SNORT: 11:30pm, 1 beer