Thursday May 19th, 2011
Today I got to the kitchen at 8 and was pretty excited yet nervous about what was yet to come: serving dinner at Mike Henriques's house for his family, his advisory as well as the Annex girls. I started by looking at the recipes and then gathering the ingredients for them. I kept coordinating with Betsy to see what ingredients I needed from the kitchen and what she helped me buy. For the dinner, I did beef stroganoff for an entree and my grandmother's angel food "crunch" cake for dessert. That was what I originally planned at least. However, I found out that one of the members in Mike's advisory was a vegetarian and one member of the Annex girls had a gluten intolerance. Therefore, I had to make two extra dishes. A lemon pasta dish for the vegetarian (and Betsy who also told me she didn't eat beef as I was cooking the stroganoff) and a chocolate pudding (it should've been but due to time restraints it turned out to be more of a chocolate drink) for the gluten intolerant girl. After I gathered the ingredients, I baked the cake so I wouldn't have to do it later (I'm so glad I did that in the morning). That took a couple of hours. After I did that I looked at the other recipes and prepared most of the ingredients. For example, for the stroganoff I had to have a dozen diced shallots (I used onions instead). So I took some onions and diced them up and put them in a container. I did this for most of the other ingredients. The things that had to do with measuring creams and butters, I left for later. As I was doing this, I couldn't do anything for today's lunch. The kitchen managed to get lunch out in good time. It was really good as well!
By the time 3:30 rolled around, I was at the Henriques's place preparing the sauce for the stroganoff. That didn't take very long, but by the time 5:30 came about, I was panicing like there was no tomorrow as dinner was suppose to start at 6. I finished the sauce for the stroganoff, started cooking the rice about a half hour ago and was doing the "crunch" topping for the cake. I still haven't cut the beef or started either the lemon pasta or the chocolate pudding!! Luckily, Mike and Betsy were around the kitchen and they saw that I was struggling. They immediately came to my aid and were extremely helpful in making sure the other tasks that I had to do were done. I only said three things but making the lemon pasta and the chocolate pudding requires many smaller steps such as boiling water and then the pasta for the lemon pasta or heating the cream for the pudding. It was kind of crazy at the end as we rushed to get everything done. In the end, dinner started around 6:30 (probably later.... sorry guys!!) but everyone said the stroganoff (or the pasta for some people) was really delicious. While everyone was having their entree though, I was in the kitchen finishing up the cake by whipping up some whipping cream and lavishing it on the cake topped with the crunch "dressing". That took a while too. By the time I was done with that, it was around 7:15. Everyone also said the cake (and the pudding for the person that had it) was delicious. I was extremely happy with the repetitive positive comments that people said to me as I sat down with them at the dinner table and ate my dinner. By the time I cleaned up, packed up and got back to my dorm, it was around 8:00 and I was extremely exhausted by the amount of work done this morning prepping and this afternoon/evening cooking. Who knew that my work day would last for around 12 hours!!
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