My life in an Arab-Israeli Kitchen, Parts 4-20 (A week in the Kitchen)

Recently, our main Arab cook, Sliman, was in the hospital for nearly a week.  He's better now, but suddenly, for a week, there was no cook for lunch and dinner, and with three short-term groups around, more people to feed than ever.  Todd (the breakfast cook) and I (the Sunday cook) filled in, each averaging about 1.5 meals per day.

With all that extra time in the kitchen, of course I have more eclectic pictures and stories to tell.

For starters, our kitchen is on the third floor.  Which means, of course, that there needs to be some way of transporting massive amounts of food to the third floor.  Thus, we have our food elevator.  I think "elevator" may sound fancier than it is.  Maybe...electronic dumb waiter?  At any rate, the picture is looking down its cables to where Yahya is loading it with fresh fruits.

On Saturday, of the week in question, it so happened that we got a meat delivery.  And I was the only one on campus (well, more or less).  So I had the joy of having the delivery men (who knew about as much English as I know Arabic) bring the meat to the area, figure out which buttons to press to raise the meat, unload it at the top, and send it back down for a total of 3 loads.  Phew!  Fortunately, help arrived just as I was finishing, so I had help packaging the meat (which came fresh, in a large bag, in a large box) and putting away the various veggies and frozen fries that came too.

Some days we had between 100-150 people for one meal.  Compared to camp that's not a ton...but at camp we have a much more efficient kitchen and a lot more help.  At any rate, 150 people can consume MASSIVE amounts of salad.  I would say that over 50% of my time in the kitchen was spent cutting various vegetables and making salads.

At one point we more or less ran out of lettuce, which called for some creativity in making salads.  Fortunately, we did have a lot of purple cabbage which, when mixed with some chickpeas and tomatoes and a few other odds and ends, did make a pretty good salad.  It's also quite pretty.  Especially when some of the leaves begin to die - then a whole spectrum of color becomes visible in them.  It's really quite beautiful.

 Of course, not everyone was on campus ever day.  Quite a few bus lunches had to be made as well.  Here Bonnie joyously works on more egg salad.

And for some reason which I can't quite fathom, every bus lunch MUST include carrots.  Apparently, it's not a real lunch without carrots.  Fortunately, we already had other people scheduled to make the bus lunches, so I didn't need to cut millions of carrots in addition to making meals. :)

Lots of people means lots of dishes, so extra help was assigned (from our limited staff) to make sure things ran smoothly.   Here Emily buses dishes while more students drop of their plates.

 One night I was in there late, working on getting things ready for breakfast in the morning.  At some point I looked down and found this:

Yes, that is a relatively large spider and part of it's web.  It was quite docile and easily removed...but I have no idea how it got there.  Not the most pleasant surprise to discover.

For one meal I made lasagna...and discovered that we have the MOST AMAZING LASAGNA PASTA EVER!  For one layer in one pan all you need is two sheets.  And the corners are already rounded!  How amazing is that?!

While cooking every day was a bit exhausting, it was, in other ways, a nice change of pace from Sundays.  Sundays I cook every meal and am pretty much by myself in the kitchen all day.  This week, I only  had 1-2 meals a day, and generally had help, or other people around working on bus lunches, etc.  It was less lonely.

We also hired a new kitchen helper: Hamse.  He's very friendly and likes to play loud Arab music in the kitchen and dance and sing along.  He also likes to try to tell us all things...and apparently doesn't understand that we don't speak Arabic.  I mostly look at him and smile and shrug helplessly.  Even a few of the students helping this summer who have had some Arabic have trouble communicating clearly with him.  Oh well, the kitchen has never been so tidy since he started working, so that's nice.

All the kitchen time also gave me the chance to experiment with a couple things.  We had some nice eggplant which I thought I should use for the salads.  So I tried my hand at making babaganoush.  Here's the eggplants roasting over an open flame:

I think it turned out pretty well.  I don't have a whole lot of experience with it and how it should taste, but I had Tamer, another Arab helper, try it.  He said it was good, and he should know.  Success. :)

For another experiment I tried to use up some cream that was about to go bad and made truffles. :)

Finally, we all got a break from the kitchen.  We escaped campus and Cameron took us to a sushi place where we happily ate food that we had not prepared and celebrated Sliman's return to the kitchen. :)