Featured Intern: Early Morning Craziness

By Amanda Sauceda

Glad to get another week behind me!  This week consisted of early morning shifts with the craziness that is food service.  I was on the production side of things this week so naturally these people need to be in the kitchen early to make sure that the cafeteria and patients are fed on time.  If I thought last week was bad for not trying to get in people’s way than this week was just a little bit worse.  Time is even more important on the production side of the kitchen because if the food isn’t ready on time then no one gets fed and people get angry.  At first it was a bit overwhelming because I was there to help but I can only move so fast.  The next day though was better because I was able to pick up their rhythm and knew when to just stay out of the way.  Working on the production side was also a bit intimidating because I had to utilize my rusty knife skills.  Now I never been one who was able to pick up those big chef knives and just go away at a vegetable making perfect julienne slices while holding a conversation with the person next to me.  It takes a lot of concentration and perseverance for me to slice and chop anything.  At one point I was helping cut some celery and it was a particularly hectic time in the kitchen so someone ended up helping me out and just took it over for me.  I was very grateful!  I didn’t want the whole operation to slow down just because the celery wasn’t ready for the meatloaf they were making!

Towards the end of the week I was able to see the administrative side of running a kitchen because I spent time with the chef.  I also helped out with inventory, which was almost a whole day event.  That day I could never get warm because we would stand in the walk-in fridges or freezers counting up all the produce and whatever else they happened to be storing.  In addition I was also able to see all the finer details of developing a menu, managing the budget, managing work staff, and how critical each piece is making sure everything runs smoothly.  By the end of this next week I’ll be halfway done, woohoo!