Down The Rabbit Hole

As I was sweeping cabins earlier today,  I got to thinking, "Good-night, M, if you don't post something on that silly blog of yours soon, they'll all suspect you've gone off the deep end".  They'll wonder if you've finally become a forest dwelling, ax-swinging nut with a propensity for off-roading in inappropriate vehicles and having long [audible] conversations with herself.

Phew.  Glad I've avoided that.

My brainchild occurred only a an hour or so after Helen, a new (and awesome) year-long staffer, pulled a mouse out of the washing machine.

And the thought came just a little while before my husband and two of our neighbors/co-workers/fellow woodsman went outside to try and shoot a skunk that is living in our woodpile.

A woodpile located directly below our front deck,

which also happens to sit right outside my office window.

Fine, the woodpile basically is my office window.

While the chase ensued, I tackled my own challenge: eating half of a watermelon.  This comes to no one's surprise.

Why is no one surprised?  Because eating entire melons and chasing woodland creatures is beginning to feel normal.  The strange-but-true reality of life here has slowly pulled a foggy haze over my perceptions of what to should expect out of a day.

For example, I've recently managed to:

• overflow the pot in the Bunn coffee maker, multiple - ok, dozens - of times.  
• shake someone's hand while holding a pirate's hook in my sleeve (we'd never met before)
• spray water all over the dish pit, ceiling included.  

         [Since we're on the subject, here's a brief life lesson:

    In the battle of human dishwasher vs. ladle, 

there are no winners - only losers.

It looks so harmless.

 

    I'd compare it to running an ultra-marathon naked, 

in Manitoba, 

in February

 or 

to drinking questionable milk]

I've also managed to...

• stay upright in a kayak through most of the Kennebec Gorge (read: most)
• drive a four-wheeler 
• pet a black bear.  It actually felt quite like my cat, only larger and less alive.
• plunge the single-most-foul toilet I've ever encountered.  If I close my eyes, I can still see it.
• shoot archery with a gaggle of sweet Dominican grandmothers.
• start wearing hats.  Thank you to my friend Cathy, state food service laws, and that one retreat guest who left me a fedora.  Her fedora.  On purpose.  I look too much like a little boy to pull it off [without looking like a little boy].
• stop sleeping in.  This seems simultaneously gluttonous and tragic, and yet I will probably attempt to return it to my skill set pronto.
• take one day off in a month.  Though it may sound like I'm flaunting some big accomplishment here, what I'm really saying is that this kind of behavior is particularly unadvisable and likely a result of your own bad planning.  Plan better next time. 
• live in a state of heightened anxiety and panic (see above).
• remain in wedded bliss weddedness.  Considering the previous truth, this is a miracle.  I'd have banished me.  

I keep thinking that I should maintain a list of the unique happenings that that take place here in the woods, and perhaps I really ought to, but as time goes on, the instances themselves become less and less unique and, consequently, more and more everyday.

In conclusion, I suppose I will start on that list...

providing something really weird happens.

Order Up!

Oh you saints of the food service world… you are the gladiators of innumerable, daunting culinary battles.  Meatloaf for seventy?  That’s all?  18 enormous pizzas?  With one oven?   No problem!  Home-made bread for 150 screaming kids? Honey, you look terrified - did someone start a fire? 

This weekend, I cooked for 50 people, spanning 6 meals, Friday night to Sunday afternoon.  To any camp chef or kitchen staffer, this probably wouldn’t be so alarming (or to one exceptional young woman who usually helps out on weekends like this).  I’m not sure why my name was anywhere near the hat they chose from to fill the void this time around, other than, well... the fact that I’m not doing much else these days.  But seriously, someone should have “accidentally” slipped and dropped my name out of the running.

 

The source of my culinary inspiration.

Here are a few lessons I learned this weekend while I was messing around with sharp knives and hotel pans:

1. Always cook more bacon than seems appropriate.  What you don't realize is that people have a special, very-expandable pit in their bodies, solely for stashing fried pork.  As C said on Sunday morning, “If you serve bacon at breakfast, there won’t be leftovers, and if you serve more bacon, there still won’t be leftovers”.  He was right.

2. When making pizza dough in the huge Hobart mixer, be sure to pause the machine when you are pouring flour into the bowl.  I know what you’re thinking and no, the dusty powder didn’t fly everywhere.  Instead, the curlicue dough attachment crushed the aluminum pitcher I was using to dump the flour, which is no longer a cylinder – it’s now just a long oval made out of metal.  It squashed like a tube of toothpaste under a car tire. 

3. Keep your hands out of the Hobart mixer.

source

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

4. How to make bear crack.  It’s candy, and I guess bears really do like sweets.  This is just one more trick I’ve learned in our neck of the woods.  If you live in a suburban area, don't use this recipe.  I will not be responsible for bears snacking on your children because you like to take their pictures when they eat out of your bird feeder.  Common sense could save the world.

5. Wear good shoes and sleeveless shirts.  I could’ve done hot yoga in that kitchen had I brought a mat, and it’s almost winter here. so I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to work in a Miami restaurant.  If you don’t have any sleeveless shirts, I suppose a bathing suit would work, but I’m not sure how that floral tankini or those Hawaiian board shorts would fly with the state inspector.  Bottom line: it’s hot, and after 12 hours on your feet, you’ll feel like you are waddling around in shoes three sizes too small with a pair of newly acquired cankles.

6. When the crowd has left and the day has ended, you’ll get enough of a happy, tired endorphin rush to help overcome the swelling as well as the bacon aroma that has imbedded itself in your scalp and fingernails.  Above all, you’ll be thankful for those crucial other hands that helped put you food on the table.  At least I was.

So to every line cook, sous chef, dishwasher and baker out there – you are underappreciated champions of the greater public.  You perform miracles daily, converting old bread, eggs, milk and sugar into a bread pudding that I could never rival, and yours feeds 85, while I generally eat my 9"x12" alone on the couch, unless C gets to it first.  You order vast amounts of food with precision and can compose menus quicker than I can write a status update.  You are astonishing individuals, and on behalf of all of us who eat with vigor and abandon, thank you.  Don’t ever stop.