These have been a few very busy weeks for us. We have been in production so much and have been up to our elbows in spatzle. Tomorrow we have to make a bunch of big deliveries all around NY, so we needed to get all the orders filled and make enough product for Marty at the Troy Farmer’s Market on Saturday and for a bunch of curbside pick-up orders.
We had to make spatzle on Sunday this week, you know my Sunday kind of love day? I never get tired of making the product or even packaging it…it’s the dishes that I dreaded doing this morning.
When we got up today I knew it was going to be another big, long production day with a couple of deliveries afterward. While we were having our coffee I kept saying I don’t want to do the dishes today! Ugh!
When you think of dirty dishes in a normal production kitchen they are nothing compared to ours. Hell, I washed a million dishes when I worked in the kitchens at school, even the worst pans in the world weren’t this bad.
After I figured out how to mix our ingredients in a special way then I had to increase my batch sizes. The thing that I didn’t count on was that I had to figure out how the heck to get the dishes clean from the unconventional ingredients we use.
Without exaggerating, it took me six months of experimenting with different cleaning methods, water temperatures, soaps, rags, and scrubbies, etc until I figured it out.
It takes me as long to wash all the production dishes as it takes to make a couple of hundred pounds of spatzle. After the production dishes are done I have all the bins to wash that hold the spatzle after it has been drained and cooled. Ugh.
Today I just wasn’t feeling it. I needed something to drag me through this production day. Music is always my answer. We listen to music every day in our production kitchen, but today had to be something to kick my ass into motion.
Broadway Music Radio on Pandora was the ticket. A lot of the music was from newer Broadway Musicals with a few oldies thrown in for good measure. Song after song I was singing behind my dust protection mask making the day go quickly. Some songs like one of my favorites “Cellblock Tango” from Chicago came on and I went into a whole dance number.
I took tap, ballet, and toe or point throughout my whole childhood starting at the age of two. I love that I can still jump into a tap number at any given moment. I just need a 5,6,7,8 and I am dancing away.
Although it was a long day, we filled all the orders we need for tomorrow’s deliveries and the weekend. Mission accomplished.
I’ve been cooking real lunches and dinners all week, but I needed to lean on some leftovers for the next couple of dinners.
Tonight I took the leftover mashed potatoes from our Porchetta dinner from Marty’s birthday and turned it into loaded potato soup. It was easy, quick, and filling. I also took a container of leftover short ribs and gravy out of the freezer for tomorrow night. We are going to have short rib poutine which is one of our favorites and will be quick and easy after a day of deliveries and getting back late.
At the end of the day, or a long week I should say, music yanked me through not only dish washing, but also holding myself accountable in the gym. I worked out on some days that I just wanted to come inside and sit down, but I didn’t I got in there and gave it my all.
As far as leftovers? They are a lifesaver! They are the greatest thing since sliced bread! Look for a blog post down the road that will be called something like The Joy of Leftovers or Lovely Leftovers.I will talk about how to not only use leftovers, but how to plan them into your weekly menu.
***I am planning on taking all of you on our delivery route with us tomorrow. There is snow in the forecast, so that should make things even more interesting. We are planning on hitting the road early, we have a lot of stops to make.