I just went in to work for a few hours. But first, I went to my local Costco.
This one is in Beltsville, MD. Like Han Ah Reum, it's insane on the weekends. You know, right? I bet you were there too. (Everybody else sure was!)
Here's what I bought:
Purchases included for work bananas, pineapples, green grapes, new potatoes, three loaf pound cakes, proscuitto. For home: IQF chicken wings, pasta sauce, peanut butter, ketchup, my spouse's Pantene hair stuff and shave gel, smoked salmon, cheddar cheese and laundry detergent. Sexy, eh?
I wanted to stop for a hot dog before hitting work (I grew up on the Hebrew Natl hot dogs, only smaller than the ones in the food court) but the line was legendary. Another day--oh well.
The Beltsville, MD Costco is actually pretty close to my work. It's about 2 miles up Route 1 from the campus, and the ZTA house is right off of Route 1. Sometimes I take a long lunch break and do my personal Costco shopping during the workday, or I go buy things for work there on a slow afternoon.
Because I didn't get lunch at Costco, I ended up at work around 12:30pm. I snapped a bunch of photos of my work kitchen so you could see what my world is like.
This is the door to my kitchen. If I'm there, it's always open. As you can see, it opens onto my classic three-part sink plus rinse station. Above the sink in the first shelf to your left are my china cap, chinois, strainer, various measuring cups and spoons, first aid supplies and kitchen towels. The second helf holds some crappy books that belong to the sorority, a couple of books I brought from home, assorted Ziploc bags, and extra paper type supplies. There are also notebooks holding sales information from my food supplier and old invoices, which I reference periodically. Above the rinse station (with the squeezie hose) I store all my bowls and plastic storage containers, plus lids and the various Cuisinart parts. The table-like area where my dish soap and bucket of scrubbing implements reside covers my grease trap, which I desest cleaning line nobody's business. Atop the grease trap lid are all the rest of my cleaning supplies, organized in a milk crate.
Just past the rinse station, there's an industrial mixer on the counter. A dishwasher sits underneath. And then there's my fridge and my freezer--both side-by-side models. I roll the garbage can wherever I need it, but my floor is gently sloped so it tends to rest right there (there's a floor drain nearby).
Left side of the fridge, interior. NO COMMENTS on the state of my fridge and freezer--they are clean and I know where to find things in them, but they don't exactly photograph well. Top to bottom: condiments and salad dressings, fresh cheeses and sauces, deli cheeses and meats, eggs and recent Han Ah Reum purchases in white bags.
Right side of the fridge, interior. Top to bottom: containers of salad bar stuff (heavy cream, butter and chocolate chips are behind these items), peppers and carrots in boxes, more Han Ah Reum supplies and some tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, thyme, mushrooms, celery, cucumbers.
Left side of the freezer. I need new hooks for holding up my shelves because some of them are missing, which is why some shelves sag. Here you can see lots of ice cream, lots of chicken parts, chicken stock, and random white sour cream containers holding things like pasta sauce, veg stock, and gumbo. On the top shelf there are all kinds of random ingredients--sweet pickled radish, tasso ham, demi-glace, chocolate buttercream. You never know.
Right side of the freezer. Lots of shredded and sliced cheeses, Boca burgers, pierogies, frozen spinach and green beans, shrimp, and a huge fucking box of Boboli shells. I really regret adding them to the lunch menu when I get my food order in and have to try to work around that behemoth in my freezer.
Right next to the freezer, in a fit of planning genius, is my range. 6 eyes plus a nice big griddle and two ovens. The oven on the left doesn't work so well so I don't use it that much--it's uncalibrated and unpredictable. The oven on the right holds an average sized pizza stone for the aforementioned Bobolis, and is cranked to 550 degrees during lunch service.
And then there's the steam table. There's a long deep shelf under the steam table where I store all my tools (in a couple of big hotel pans) and most of my pots and pans. There's a microwave at the far end of the counter where I melt butter and defrost Boca burgers before tossing them on the griddle. My plates are all on the shelf above the steam table. Where you see my camera bag is where I normally have my cutting board set up--I stand there more than anywhere else. I use the tape behind it with a Sharpie to label everything in my kitchen. The gloves atop those books I wear religiously--I have a skin condition that's aggravated by frequent handwashing, so I try to limit that by wearing gloves often. Underneath this table are two big stockpots and a couple of huge Cambros where I store stock and pizza dough when needed. There are also two more Cambros that hold flour and sugar around there. The shelf above holds all my spices and a few other random things like pastry tips, sprinkles, breadcrumbs, raisins. There's a tin of saffron in front of the Cuisinart which is too good to fraternize with the other spices.
You can't really tell, but there's a cheap phone on the wall behind the Cuisinart. If you call it, I will answer, "Kitchen, Rochelle." Nobody calls me but my husband and my food service sales rep, and maybe my boss.
If you were one of my girls looking for me or for my food, you'd come to this window which I open when I am around and close when I am not. It looks onto the steam table. Those clipboards are for signing up for meals--they're supposed to sign up if they will be present for a meal, and they sign up on a separate part of the sheet if they will miss mealtime and want a "late plate." To the left of the clipboards is a big fridge dispensing 2% milk. The weekly menus are posted on the side of this fridge--I put them up Friday for the next week. The lime-green sign you see reads "Mealtimes. Lunch: Monday-Friday 11:30am-1:30pm. Dinner: Monday 5-5:45pm. Tuesday-Thursday 5:15-6:00pm. Special events or other changes to this schedule require a 2-week advance notice." They don't always provide that notice, but since I posted that I get at least a week and a half--which is all I usually need.
I have a separate dry storage closet. Like the fridge and freezer, it looks disorganized, but I know how to find things in there. All the stuff to the right is snacks and breakfast food for the girls--my boss stocks these items for them, I just order them for her and put them away when they come in. Those huge boxes on the floor are all their chips. Onions, potatoes, and soybean oil are also on the floor. The closet is just too small to store everything on the shelf like I know I should. The red Noel boxes hold chocolate pistoles.
So, while I was at work. I did some salad bar prep, I baked off some cookies, and I got ready for tomorrow's lunch. I also did some advance work on tomorrow's dinner. There's snow in the forecast again, so I was hoping to set things up that if I need to just go in for a couple of hours in the morning I will be able to arrange lunch and dinner before coming home. My boss is out of town tomorrow, so she won't even be able to do things like pull stuff out of the oven for dinner--so I talked to a couple of the girls about contingency plans. We'll see what happens. I left around 4pm.
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