Week 1: May 9th-13th, 2011

Monday May 9th
Worked from 9am to 3:45pm
Start writing at 7pm
Finished writing at 11:08pm

Today was the start of my senior project.  I got to the kitchen at 8:55 and prepared to work.  Since Nate (my mentor/go-to person) wasn't here today, I was assigned to Barbara.  She assigned me an important job: cookie making!  As a student at Proctor, I know that one of the highlights of lunch is eating a cookie.  Since they are yummy, students usually take a lot of them.  Therefore if I didn't do this job fast enough, the cookies will be gone by the time 1pm rolls around!  (Lunch starts at 12:30)  So with much enthusiasm and energy, I started (with help from Barbara and Alicia) to scoop the dough with a miniature ice-cream scoop from a huge pan (6 inches I think?) and placed it on a cookie sheet.  I scooped 24 "cookie balls" in total for each pan: six columns and four rows.  By the time I finished my third pan (that's 72 "cookie balls"!), my hands were already sore from squeezing the ice-cream scoop.  I haven't even put the three trays in the oven yet!!  Finally after I finished my fifth tray, Barbara told me to put the five trays into the oven.  The oven was set at 325 degrees and the cookies would bake between 11- 13 minutes.  (I eventually chose 12 min 30 sec)  After I inserted the five trays into the oven, it was back to work on another five trays of "cookie balls".  This job continued for the next three hours until I finally finished all the dough from the pan (yay!!!).  My hands were so sore throughout this time that I had to stop in between scooping dough and inserting or taking out trays from the oven and massage my hand.  I never realized that it takes this much time and effort to make 552 cookies!!!  I can't begin to imagine what it is like doing this everyday.  Soon it was time for my cookies to be sent out for lunch.  Nooooo!!  I spent three hours shaping and baking the cookies and they will be gone in an hour or so.  Later, when I went to get a drink, a couple of students came up to me and told me the cookies were the best they ever had!  I don't know if they were being truthful about that but eh... at least I know that my efforts weren't for nothing.

While the students were having lunch, Barbara asked me to help her make the Sloppy Joe's for lunch.  She taught me how to do it and pretty soon, I was making Sloppy Joe's as if I've been doing them for years.  After the crowd in the dinning hall died down a bit, I took my lunch break.  Nothing really exciting happened here so I won't talk about it.

After lunch, I was handed over to Steve, the cook for dinner time.  It was about 1:30 and I had (supposedly) another one and a half hours until I was done for the day.  I went in the kitchen and asked what he wanted me to do.  He said, "I want you to peel the potatoes."  I was like, "Where are they?"  He said, "Over there" while pointing in a direction.  I went over to where he was pointing and was looking for a box of potatoes.  I told him I couldn't find it.  I then saw a huge bag of potatoes.  I asked him if that was what he wanted and he said yes.  I didn't know if he was being serious or joking so I picked up the bag of potatoes and asked him again.  "Are you sure these are the ones?"  He said, "Yes!"  So I trudge back to my prep (preparation) table and opened the bag of potatoes.  I later found out that I peeled a 50lbs bag of potatoes!!  That's a lot of potatoes!!  These weren't your average small potatoes as well.  These were like HUGE potatoes, the average size being bigger than a softball!  I asked him if I had to peel all of these before I left and he said yes.  So with great reluctance, I started to peel the potatoes.  At first, I was peeling with precision.  I was trying to peel the potatoes as close to the skin as possible.  That took forever.  I asked Art (my sponsor) how he would do it.  He told me you just have to peel the potatoes and not worry about the precision of the peeling.  So I followed his advice and boy!  It sped things up quite a bit!

Anyway, I finally finished my last potato at around 3:40!  I was so relieved.  From making cookies for the entire school to peeling a 50lbs bag of potatoes, I definitely did a lot on my first day.  My body can attest to that as well: Aching back, sore legs, sore thumb (constantly pressing on the ice-cream scoop) and calloused divots in between my thumb and index finger (from peeling the potatoes).  Even though the first day was labor intensive (well for me and probably many other people at least), I can't wait to see what lies in store for me for the rest of the week.