Today, as I walked out of my house to go to work, at 7 35, I unchained my bike, and took a solid five petals. Suddenly I heard a familiar voice yell ,"Yo! Mikey! Better not be fuckin late or you're fired!" followed by that familiar cackle that I've grown to know all too well... I looked over my shoulder to see my boss, Tory, walking to his car. Turns out the house I now live in is on the same street as my boss' house. Did he offer me a ride? Of course not. Cuz I'm the intern.
For those of you who haven't seen me in three months or so, or haven't seen me at all, I've been growing somewhat of a beard for the past few weeks. Except its really only a neck beard... as seen above. I don't necessarily like it, I'm just way too lazy to shave it, and part of me really wants to have a beard like my idol, Zach Galifianakis. And yes, it does make me look somewhat Amish.
Today, I had a busy prep list waiting for me when I got to work. Graze needed me to shuck two bus tubs of oysters because they're running an oyster po boy, and they needed 40 trout filleted and pin boned. L'Etoile needed me to set my usual stocks, roast beef bones, along with roasting beets, curing bacon, cleaning shrimp, peeling potatoes, portioning cheese for cheese plates, and last but not least, making a 5x batch of fresh pasta, a la well method, and making at LEAST 100 orders of the sheeps milk agnolotti for a wedding party were doing on Saturday. I was in the weeds before I started... THEN Chef Tory, the guy who can tell me to do anything no matter how ridiculous it may seem, and I have to do it, came into the kitchen and told me he needed me to come to the farmers market with him today. I of course, dropped everything I was doing, asked the bakers to keep an eye on my roasting bones and beets, and followed him out to the market.
We stopped by a few stalls and bought various produce items, watermelons, cantelope, salad greens, zucchini, peaches, plums, tomatoes, radishes, green beans, and some new potatoes. We had so much food that we couldn't fit it all in our wagons, we had two, so I was sent back to make two more trips to collect everything that we had purchased.
As we were walking from stall to stall Chef and I were talking. He said, "Mikey, how in the hell do you pronounce your name." I told him the correct pronunciation, "Kolazay". And he responded, "And thats gotta be some kind of Polish." I told him it was Czech, and he said ,"OK I can dig it, you ever had any Czech pork products. They kill more fuckin pigs than the Italians." I responded with, "No, but that fact makes me very proud of my heritage." Chef stopped and looked at me and said, "Is there a large Czech Amish population in Indiana?" He winked and followed it up with that cackle... Chef's got jokes.
My days are getting longer. Im in around 7 45 every morning and dont leave before 8 pm. I don't get that extra day off like the other cooks yet, so my next pay check is gonna be fat. Pete, the sous chef, thinks I'm working to much. I tell him I really don't care, I tell him that I'd rather be at work than at my apartment with no AC, a strange unemployed roommate and no cable.
Sad thing is thats the truth.
Mike
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