Busy day...

Today was a busy day. My morning started out with an eight o'clock exam. From there I went to a three hour lab where I was the kitchen manager of the tearoom (that I mentioned in an earlier post.) If you were in my class and heard that, a look of pity would surely enter your eyes because you know how much time, work, and stress come with the job of kitchen manager. To explain, each week every person in lab rotates to a new position. For example, I was sous chef my first lab, so I assisted the chef and made all the sauce for our BBQ meatballs. The next lab, I rotated into the chef position, where I was completely in charge of getting all the calzones made that we served to a room full of paying customers. Well, as a kitchen manager, it's my job to take assigned recipes and make the meal happen. The planning for this meal began over 2 weeks before it was actually served. It involved making a menu, figuring out how to streamline everything that goes into making the meal, deciding who does what, who measure out the ingredients, who cooks each meal, how it's cooked, when it's cooked... you get the idea. One of the biggest things that must be done is to write up special instructions for everyone working in the kitchen (about 16 people). These special instructions have consumed my life for the past week. Each set of special instructions includes a time line for each person telling them exactly what they will be doing during the entire lab and then detailed explanations about all of their tasks. There are lots of other pieces to the kitchen manager position such as charting out when each piece of equipment will be used, costing the meal... the list goes on but I will spare you the details. The biggest weight, however, is knowing that the responsibility of the entire meal is on your shoulders... yikes! Well, today was the big day... and fortunately it wasn't a big flop. We served the most customers that our lab has served yet at 66, plus we serve a meal to everyone in our lab which brings the total up to about 96. That's a lot of people! There were definitely some stressful moments throughout the morning, but the food all turned out great so I guess that's all that matters. I'm glad I don't have to do it again though! Oh, but lest you think that was the end of my day, it gets better! From lab, I got to go to my final class of the day and take yet another exam! So tonight, I am "relaxing" with my husband, watching more episodes of season 1 of the show 24 (by far the most addicting and exhilarating show I have ever watched.) In case some of you take "relaxing" the wrong way (as my husband did), I say that because it is not really possible to relax when watching 24, it's too intense... Andrew laughs at me for how on edge I get. So, that is the story of my busy day.