institutional food notes

Today in a coffee-break conversation I found out – I can’t quite remember how it came up – that the people I work with think I’m a high school drop-out. Probably they misunderstood when I mentioned that I am upgrading my high-school level chemistry and math. I don’t know why I didn’t bother to correct the error. On one hand, I plain didn’t feel like it. On the other hand, even though I’m not a drop-out I’m doing a job where one of the prerequisites is a Grade 9 education – so why be bogged down by details? In any case, I end my days smelling like stovetop stuffing.

Regularity

At the beginning of every shift I mix up a few jugs of a drink called “Fruit-Lax”. The syllable of note is “lax.”

Dishes of stewed prunes are put out to supplement breakfast. The box they come in says “CONTENTS: DEHYDRATED PRUNES PRESERVED IN PALM OIL.” You just add water and they get soft and chewy and look like the organs of small animals.

Milk, coffee, tea, pepper, and blue packets of fake sugar are put on a table for residents to help themselves. They have to ask for real sugar, salt, condiments and butter packets so we can regulate their intake. They hoard junk foody things like sugar, jam, and Kraft peanut butter packets if you don’t watch out.

For breakfast they can have cold cereal or something hot, usually oatmeal, some variety of egg, and toast.

On waffle day a “diabetic syrup” is made available. It tastes acrid yet weak, like tears on a dirty face.

Eggs

Poached eggs are real eggs and they come out of the steamer-oven in trays of 20, jiggling like glaucomous monster eyeballs. On omelet day or scrambled eggs day, the eggs we cook are poured from a carton with all the ingredients you need already added, like partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil.

Hard boiled eggs are never served because the residents have trouble peeling them and shells get everywhere. But we hard boil eggs and cool them so that later they can be grated and mixed with mayo and parsley to form egg salad. Personally I don’t “get” egg salad: the pablum texture, the odour, that strange curdy look.  But it’s a popular sandwich filling here, where many people have bad teeth (or none).

One day a tenant gets indignant because (through a menu oversight) he is served eggs twice in one day. “That’s DANGEROUS,” he complains. “My cholesterol.” The very next day he is hospitalized for drinking a bottle of Listerine and some rubbing alcohol. This has nothing to do with the menu, I guess. It’s just a comment on health priorities.

Potatoes

Scalloped potatoes come out of a carton but mashed potatoes are from the real thing.

I’m getting faster at peeling potatoes. The secret is to pare away from not towards you. Whick, whick, whick.

This practice of getting rid of the skin makes my Irish heart cry out in mourning. But the cooks say they don’t want to see one speck of brown in there.

Yeah, toast

The toaster is a large, metal Rube Goldberg-esque machine where you squeeze the bread slice into a wire bracket at one end and it is funneled away into the rickety depths and in a minute it pops out the other end, golden. Except sometimes a piece gets jammed and you have to reach in carefully to dislodge it before it goes on fire, being careful not to burn your fingers.

To butter around 250 pieces of toast and keep the flow going out to the steam tray fast before they get cold the secret is to have your knife piled high with butter and to smooth it on with a quick, assured slap. Like you’re plastering a wall. It’s not like at home, having a breakfast of leisure, where you take up a dainty little splot of butter and scrape it carefully over your bread. You have to have a fat pad of butter so there’s plenty of grease to help the knife slide over fast and leave an even layer of lubrication.

People love toast and ask for 2 or 3 slices, or more. I cook mostly white toast first to meet popular demand, then brown, then the raisin bread gets cooked last at a lower temperature so the sugar and cinnamon don’t scorch in the toaster and the raisins don’t melt and gum up the works.

So much toasting bread smells heavenly and while on toaster duty I’ll close my eyes and meditate. As the steam and aroma wafts around me I always hope it clings to my clothes so I smell delicious. Of course, this is futile because by the end of the day I’m sweaty and have been splashed with chicken noodle soup, gravy, or industrial degreaser at least a few times. But I like to think about how I could go about bottling the fragrance for toast perfume.

Dessert

Fruit salad, applesauce, or peaches, all from big cans.

Pudding. Making pudding in volume is fun. Flump! The sack of powder falls into a giant metal mixing bowl. Splash! Two jugs of milk get poured on top. It’s like making a serving for a giant. Mix! You turn on a big dough-hook and leave it for 10 minutes to thicken and get glossy while you meditate on life.

Another popular dessert is cubes of lime green jello that look like Slimer flew into an airplane propeller and his chunks were put in small little bowls. Then you spray a Reddi-Whip afro on top of each one and add some sprinkles.

Sprinkles

I don’t know what it is but the residents love sprinkles and always ask for them. They put sprinkles on oatmeal and on buttered bread, and cereal.

to be continued. maybe not.