I like saying yes. Often it gets me into trouble and it's usually with my staff. Oh, the rabbit holes we have been down. Adventure as a caterer? You betcha. When you say yes to most everything you are bound for escapades. Does that word "escapade" spring from "escape?" Hah! More like fire jumping from the old skillet. The Iron Girl Run. 3000 women, girls, grandmothers, great-grandmothers...all out very early and running around Greenlake, one of the inner city water features in Seattle. Lots of fun.
So we are making 2800 muffins, 2800 breakfast burritos, yogurts and juices all stuffed into fetching logo bedecked insulated bags. All set up ready to go by 8:00 AM Sunday morning.
Does it really sound that difficult? It didn't to me. I mean, what? some muffins, some tortillas...what is the problem? Yes, we'll do it! (It is so easy to say yes.)
We had other events on the 3 days before so we we really can't do too much prep because there just isn't room or refrigeration. So we started getting supplies in on Friday and really started the project in earnest about 11:00 AM Saturday. We brought in some reserve troops to help and we get to crackin'. Literally. How many eggs do we need? We wanted things to be as fresh as possible, so bagged raw eggs were out. They are handy in some situations but there is a lot of citric acid added to preserve and we just did not want that in this food. The Chef calculated. I calculated. Different answers. How many eggs go in to a breakfast burrito that also has cheese, onions, mushrooms, ham and spinach? How much egg is in each muffin? The kitchen calculator is old and the keys are sticking. On one of the egg and milk runs to the store, I jet in and pick up a new calculator. Found a pink one. Chef's favorite color is pink. Any small bit of favor I can curry from Chef during these large scale military operations is good.
Finally we gave the math end of things to Chef's little sister, Jaq (Jaqulyn.) Seventeen years old and starting her second year of college. She can practically do it in her head.
Here is Jaq stuffing the muffins into the insulated bags. Her egg calculations were spot on.
We will need 2 eggs per person for the muffins and the burritos. That's 5600 eggs. 466 dozen. Over 30 cases of eggs. Shite!
That is a lot of eggs. I calculate I can crack about 10 eggs a minute. That is 560 minutes or 9 hours. It took 3 of us a little over 2 hours. Guess we got faster as we went along.
Now I can really practice walking on eggshells....
It took us about 12 hours to finish the muffins. Sometime around 10:00 I called a mobile massage therapist who came to the shop and she set up her chair and gave all 6 of us 20 minutes of knot untying. I sent Chef Pidor twice. First and last. Her back was screaming at her. It was the best thing to happen all day. I crawled home for a couple of hours sleep. the rest of the crew soldiered on ALL NIGHT. Chef called her husband in, her friend Myra and any other family member that she could shanghai.
I came back at 4:30 AM to a pretty punchy group, but spirits were high. We mobilized the Muffin/Burrito Army, filled the truck with cases of yogurt and juices, mobile ovens brimming with burritos and rolling racks of muffins.
As we got to Greenlake, the site of the Run, we set up our army kitchen and started assembling 2800 breakfast bags. I like assembly work where I don't have to think too much, where I can get my basic movements down and then perform them by rote. There were 9 of us pushing the bags along the assembly line, ready to receive the next item.
This was a time when I did not have my food plan organized. So here I was, in the field with nothing to eat except burritos and muffins. Any muffin with bran is a "dirt muffin" in my book. But these were more succulent than normal "dirt muffins" with the pineapple and grated carrots. Before Dukan, I would sneer at the idea of eating a muffin period, let alone a "dirt muffin." Give me the honey buns, donuts, pecan coffeecake or anything with a glaze on it. But I gotta tell you, those muffins were talking to me. I wanted to gobble about three and wash them down with apple juice. I should have planned better. But I did not eat the muffins or anything else. I just waited.
But that is something I have learned. I can't just run off into daily life unarmed. I need a plan for every day with the correct food groups in hand or at least in car. Now I am a lot better about making sure I have the protein I need at the ready.
We will do this breakfast again next year. Can we call you to help?
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