Yeah, I know, I haven't added to the ol' blog in while, but I've been cranky. Always happens this time of year. The busier it gets in the kitchen the crankier I get. I also don't deal well with warm weather. My main goal during my workdays in the summer is to get stuff in the oven early so I can turn the damn thing off. It's about 20 degrees warmer in the kitchen than it is outside, and if it's 70 outside, then I'm 90 degrees irritable inside. That's also one of the reasons I'm a pastry chef.....I can't take the "hot side" of the kitchen (where all the badasses reside), and chopping onions is pure torture. When I die, I KNOW I will be chopping onions in Hell's Kitchen forever.
Anyway, today's topic is DISHWASHERS. Not the kind you have in your home that you fill with dishes, add the Cascade, and run til the dishes are sparkly, and then hope someone in the house that isn't you, just might notice the dishes are clean and take it upon themselves to put them away. No, I'm talking about the guy or gal that works in the restaurant/bakery/cafe/etc. washing everything that has been gooked up by you, the food service professional.
Let it be known:
I LOVE DISHWASHERS!
Especially now, because for the past year and few months, I haven't had one. Not that I never appreciated them.....God knows every job I had, the dishwasher(s) were my best friends. Shirley Kay, and Jesus, this one's for you.
Yeah, you read that right. Jesus did my dishes. Before he worked the dish pit, he amazed a crowd by feeding them all with 5 loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus used to be a chef, man, but that gig burned him out. That's when he came to me in the form of a dishwasher.
Ok, I kid......Jesus of course, was pronounced "Hay-soos" and like a lot of my dishwashers whom I've had the great pleasure of working with, he was from Mexico. When he was first hired at my place of employment (Seattle's well known Alki Bakery), he knew almost NO English. We did find out what his name was and loved to say that the one and only Son of God was doing OUR dishes. He'd just smile at us and keep scrubbing. As time went on, he caught on to more English and he told us to help him because he really needed to learn the language. He told us not to speak any Spanish to him. Later we found out he was taking English as a Second Language at the University of Washington.
We loved Jesus.....he was always smiling....no matter how much crap we threw at him in the form of baked on dirty dishes or otherwise. He worked amazingly fast, and he actually came to our stations to pick up our dishes instead of us having to make the trip to the pit to drop them off. After a while we didn't think it was possible for us to dirty up the dishes faster than he could wash them. He was a freakin' dishwasher superhero. In fact, on the slower days when he wasn't getting enough dishes to wash, he'd take it upon himself to do whatever. Whatever needed to be done, he'd come to one of us and do it. Chop something? Done. Scoop something? Done. Kill a rat? Done. If we had nothing for him to do, he'd figure something out. One time, he made a bunch of hooks out of the pile of clotheshangers from our linen service to hang our pastry bags on to dry. He also made heavy duty hooks to hang pans on from the drying racks. Jesus......was......a miracle. A smiling, dishwashing miracle.
His English kept getting better and better. We'd help him out.....especially with the slang. You can't get on in a busy kitchen without knowing the right curse words and slang! One day, Jesus wanted to compliment me on my large bosom. Back in the day, I was known to have quite the hourglass figure. I'm not one to be offended by such remarks, because I work in a kitchen. If you are offended by that stuff, well, you don't really belong in food service. Yeah yeah, sexual harrassment, blah blah blah.......but being in a kitchen is all ABOUT sexual harrassment.....in a fun way of course.
Anyway.
Jesus wanted to compliment me, but didn't know the correct English to use. He held his hands out in front of his chest and said, "Annie.......nice........Cha Cha's!" I knew exactly what he meant, and the guys all piped in with the numerous English words for said "cha cha's". Actually, out of all the euphemisms.....I think I like "cha cha's" best.
One day, it got to the point where Jesus was fluent enough to tell us his story. We were shocked to find out that in his native Mexico he was a chemical engineer! He was going to the U Dub to learn English and to get his education to be a chemical engineer here in the U.S.! You should have seen our faces fall.....we knew right then, his time as our miracle dishwasher would soon end. One of the guys didn't want to believe it. He told Jesus to write a formula on our dry-erase board. Jesus promptly went to the board and wrote something very Albert Einstein-ish. Of course, he could have been BS'ing us, since we didn't know chemical formulas, but we knew it wasn't.......he was too fast....too sure of himself. It also explained why he was such a dish superhero......all of it was too easy for him.
We treasured every day we worked with Jesus. When the day finally came for him to move on to pursuing the American Dream, we gave him a helluva party. I also got one of my most treasured gifts ever.....he got me a card and wrote in perfect English how much he loved working with me, and that he would NEVER forget my "cha cha's". I went home and cried.
Jesus, wherever you are now.....I hope you're doing great!
Shirley Kay was my dishwasher at the European Pastry Cafe. She was my age, but learning disabled, and oh so sweet. She had a heart of gold and the innocence of a 4 year old. She never called out sick, was on time every day, worked hard and did whatever she was told.
I was the assistant pastry chef. The head pastry chef, Jim, and his co-hort Chris, whom we nicknamed Crispy, were a team of comedians. If there was a chance for them to tease Shirley Kay or even me, they'd do it. Jim and Crispy took nothing seriously. Being learning disabled, Shirley Kay didn't take to teasing very well. Everything Jim and Crispy said to her, she took very seriously. She'd get upset, and that made them tease her more. It got to the point where they were downright cruel, and I started stepping in in her defense. I'd tell them to lay off when she'd start to cry and she saw me as her "white knight". She stuck to me like glue and would always do special things for me. She'd come take my dishes and we'd both stick our tongues out at Jim and Cris. She loved that.
Sometimes I'd get really mad at those guys.......dishwashers like Shirley Kay were hard to come by.....if anything, their constant teasing would be the one thing to drive her away. I always made sure I was extra nice to Shirley Kay to make up for the constant haranguing of Jim and Cris.
Shirley had always done the dishes by hand in the required 3 compartment sink. Finally the owner of the Cafe decided to have an Auto-Chlor (an automatic commercial dishwasher) installed to make Shirley's job easier and more efficient. This was great news. But not as far as Shirley was concerned. Jim decided to tell Shirley that a new guy named "Otto" was coming to take her job away. He'd say, "You better work faster Shirley! Otto's coming!" and Shirley would say, "I don't want to talk about Otto! You're lying about Otto!"
I'd explain to Shirley that "Otto" was "Auto Chlor", an automatic dishwasher that would make her job easier, not take it away, but she didn't understand this, since she'd never seen a commercial automatic dishwasher before. The two weeks before we got "Otto" installed was pure hell, and Jim enjoyed every minute of Shirley's fear. Finally when "Otto" came and Shirley realized what it all meant, the relief flooded her face.
One day, at Jim's suggestion, I made rumballs, but instead of rolling them into balls, I rolled the mixture into logs, and then wrapped each log in white chocolate. Then I cut the log into small sections on a bias. Then each end was dipped into dark chocolate. They were cool looking. I said to Jim, "What should we call them? Rum Logs doesn't sound that good."
Jim thought a moment, and said, "How about we call them "Shirley Kays?" "
Shirley of course, overheard, and said, "You're naming something after ME???"
"Yeah...." Jim said, getting very red in the face.
She ran over to him exclaiming, "Shirley Kays! Shirley Kays!" and gave him a big ol' hug.
I think if his face got any redder he'd explode. God forbid it be known he was being nice to Shirley Kay!
I put the Shirley Kays on a display tray and made a sign for them to put in the case. Shirley was beaming.
Whenever she would run a load of dishes to the front counter she'd say to anyone there, "Have you tried a Shirley Kay? They're delicious!"
It was a very sweet thing. Under all that incessant teasing, Jim had a heart there.....deep down.
Shortly before I left the Cafe, Shirley Kay's family moved her to Aberdeen. She called me a couple of times, but I've lost touch with her now. Where oh where are you Shirley Kay? Are you still doing dishes somewhere? Can you come to Port Hadlock? I need you.
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