Several months ago, I joined a group of my fellow men’s group members from the Church to prepare breakfast for local high school students. It was my maiden voyage in the project; I cautioned this new effort since my only previous skills came from obtaining the Cooking Merit Badge when I was 11.
The kitchen in our Church would be perfect for a medium-sized restaurant; it has a huge gas stove with industrial-sized burners. I soon found myself assigned to frying about 100 sausage patties using two large cast-iron frying pans. Hardly the equipment for a timid, inexperienced chef.
I live in the South, so sausage is crucial for any breakfast project. I had to get these patties cooked perfectly; no overcooking allowed. At the mid-point of my effort, one of the more experienced team members leaned over and asked me if I’d used the meat thermometer to check the proper cooking temperature for each patty.
I looked from the pile of cooked patties to my colleague and confessed, No, I hadn’t. Just as I wondered what I’d do to correct this fatal mistake, he laughed and said he was kidding. Whew, crisis averted. Everything went well, and 35 high school seniors soon lined up for the meal. They didn’t seem to mind that we were serving sausage patties, pancakes (another team member is the pancake king), and eggs for lunch. I’d not seen the damage 35 teenagers can do to a food line in quite a while; it was a marvel to behold (one healthy young man ate 12 pancakes).
For me, this was fun, and I’m now a permanent volunteer; however, I did realize that I’d be a lousy line cook in any diner, especially Waffle House.
Are we there yet? 