be-musings

At the restaurant we make most of our stuff from scratch, especially the calzones. We mix the dough, make the marinara, layer the ingredients to make the pocket. Because we do this while also preparing customer meals, prep space is sometimes hard to find. We don't have a separate room for baking, so it is done in the corner of the kitchen, usually at a small table by the freezer. On this particular day I needed to do a mass of calzones so I rolled about 6 out in a row on top of the freezer. Usually we don't need to go in there for customer orders until evening (fried stuff)...or so I thought.

We got an order of wings or tenders or something that we had in the freezer. I looked at my 6 rolled calzones with sauce on them, and figured moving them in that state would be difficult. I remembered that our chef Josh had once been able to lift the lid just enough to get something out, but not too much to lose the dough. I figured it was worth a shot, so I opened it just enough to slide my upper torso under the lid while looking for the chicken. I couldn't find it. Just a little more...just a little more. I located the goods just as I heard a slide on the other side of the freezer.

You know where this is going. I closed the lid and checked out the 2 calzones that were still in tact, and gasped at the marinara streak on the wall. Yep, the rest of the dough was gone.

Scott ran in the kitchen in a hurry (typical), saw the sauce slide on the wall, and said "What the heck happened here????" I wanted to tell him that there was a WWII re-enactment and the red marks were the fake blood on the wall, or something that was less stupid than what actually happened, but I couldn't lie. I couldn't even really blame someone, except to say that I did it that way so Josh wouldn't make fun of me being too careful and moving the stuff first. Josh clarified that he would have made fun of me regardless, so there was no point in dodging it. He also told me I had to clean it up myself. The nerve.

I got 2 broom handles and tried to coax the dough up the wall close enough to grab. No. I tired to reach down low enough to get it. No. Hours later the guys pulled the freezer out a foot and Mat used some wood to get the dough out. Or at least I think he did...I didn't check to see that he got it all. Come to think of it he did say "I don't know what that other stuff is, but this is all I can get."

Calzone anyone?

How bad can it be?

Over a year ago, in the winter, our friend Amanda was seriously injured when hit by a jeep on a snowy day. She was on a school break and ran across the road to join friends before returning to class. She didn't see the jeep driving down the street until her head hit the front grill.

In the first week following her injury she flat-lined twice and had 40% of her skull removed so they could take out 10% (the size of a golf ball) of her brain . Her pelvis was badly injured. She got pneumonia, was in a coma and on life support. Things were dismal regarding her recovery, and in fact I had her pegged for dead.

A few weeks after the accident, Scott and I visited her in the hospital. She wasn't in her room, so we wandered around various places trying to find her. We walked through the lobby to check outside, Scott ahead of me, and I noticed the name "Amanda Thompson" on the back of a wheelchair, but I didn't recognize the person in it. I thought that person had nerve taking Amanda's wheelchair when she needed it. As I looked at the hockey helmet wearing person slumped down, I realized it was Amanda. I told Scott she was there, and staring right at her he asked "Where?" I pointed her out again, and he put the scene together. There she was, shaved head, bright red helmet, not the perky woman we knew before. But who would be when in that much discomfort and missing part of the brain?

Amanda removed her helmet and showed us her stubble hair, the large scar and indentation across the entire right side of her head, where the skull had been removed. She was happy to tell us that they were soon going to cut her open again to put back the missing skull, now that they knew her brain wasn't leaking. She and her mom were thankful that she survived the accident, and they told us the doctors said her recovery was exceeding their expectations.

Tonight was Amanda's Grade 12 graduation. She has walked around this past few weeks reminding us about it and saying "I'm going to graduate this year. I'm not getting pregnant or hit by a truck." She was right.