Mandlen

My weight this morning was 215.2. When I set out to start losing weight more than a year ago, I was 235. My original goal was to lose 20 pounds, and for the last 6 months or so, I was stable at around 223, which was fine, but the last few weeks at the restaurant have driven me to eat less, and eat crappier. I need to work on that, but physically, I feel good and have my health, mostly -- not enough sleep and a linger cough, but that's pretty much restaurant life. I'm experiencing the grind....and I look forward to jumping tracks to the grind of a new lil' bebe.

I got in at 4am, after working 14.5 hours in the restaurant then riding about 30 miles round trip to Coney Island for hot dogs and some listening to the waves. The day at the restaurant started on a high note, then slowly slipped away inch by inch until coming to a complete crashing by the end. Friday was long, and nobody got enough sleep to start on Saturday. We open at 12 instead of 11:30 on Saturday, but its still not enough time to prep. L and his family were late by an hour, and by the time they arrived, I had everyone in and prepping, moving along well, got L in a good-ish mood. Then service started, we weren't finished with prep by a long shot, and we got slammed with too many customers, a system where only 1 pizza is made at a time, kept on running out of stuff, prepping to order, L started getting yelly at everyone, and on top of it, for some odd reason the air conditioning decided to not function and the temp in both the dining room and kitchen rose close to 90. We broke for lunch and closed the restaurant for an hour and a half. I had the guys do some prepping, but the dishes were backed up and as it turned out, even with a dishwasher, there wasn't enough dishes -- we had to serve on paper plates at one point in the night! We cancelled delivery, but L took an order for 17 pizzas anyway -- at 8:30pm, at the height of the rush! Things spiralled downwards, with the refrigeration in the back failing because of the excessive heat. Between moving food between units, suffering a lazy dishwasher and a delivery person who was sent back there to help but didn't do shit, L withdrawing and losing his energy and focus, the heat rising, my guys prepping and never catching up, and just wanting to hide in the cold walk-in refrigerated room and drink lemonade until it all just stopped.

The highlight of the evening was the HVS and a small gaggle of folks from my prior career stopped in to show support, that was really cool. I just things were more in control so I could spent more time with them.

BREAKFAST: 1pm, 2 small donuts, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 2pm, mixed gluten, mashed taro treasure boxes, spinach dumpling, sticky rice, water, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, 5 pieces homemade french toast, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Didn't eat pizza today, but busted out some focaccia out of the freezer from the last pizza place I worked and made an awesome batch of french toast, dead simple: batter of milk, egg, sugar, vanilla bean, cinnamon, pinch of salt, soaked the slices for 5 minutes, fried in butter, sprinkled with powdered sugar, hit the spot. Needed more salt.

DINNER: 8:45pm, shrimp soup with mandlen, bagel with hummus and a little tabouli, grape gatorade, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Took out some homemade chicken stock, added a dose of salt and curry, and lightly poached a handful of shrimp in it -- it's so easy to overcook shrimp, so difficult to undercook them. Added a handful of soup mandlen, which I picked up at the Streitz store around passover. They are small egg-based light and fluffy soup nuggets. I had them often at summer camp as a kid, everyone dug them, never saw them again until now.