Kitchen Stuff Please

Start a catering company, they said. It will be fun, they said. You like to cook, I said.

That last one is true, I guess. But as soon as something becomes your job instead of your hobby, you’d better prepare for the whole concept to come crashing down a few pegs in your mind. It’s like moving into an apartment with your best friend, and it’s all sunshine and roses for the first few days because you’re total besties and now you can be together all the time! But then towels are left on the floor, rent is late, dishes are unwashed, someone keeps missing their turn on the roster to clean the toilet and good grief, Samantha, if you block the dishwasher one more time I’m going to shove a dish rag in your face while you sleep! Then put the dishwasher on the pots and pans cycle.

I need a commercial wok burner. That’s the current worry, because I have 200 people to feed on Saturday, they want a Chinese feast and my pitiful little two-person burner just isn’t going to cut it. Commercial grade goods are something I’ve been in dire need of for a while, but the catering business has exploded so suddenly that I just can’t keep up with the massive demand. Can’t stand the thought of refusing jobs that I’m pretty sure I can do myself, but it’s really going to bite me at some stage, and this might be it. Maybe I could borrow a commercial wok burner? And this imaginary person could also let me use their commercial steamer, because 700 dumplings aren’t going to steam themselves; certainly not in the fun-size steamer I have in the van.

And the van…hoo boy. It was fine for small gatherings, but I don’t even think it could take a commercial oven before it loses the ability to go up hills. There’s a ‘bitten off more than I can chew’ pun to be made here, except there’s really nothing funny about the situation.

-Albertine