A Chef I Will Never Be

This past Friday my kickball team had a fundraiser to try and offset the costs of making the trip out to Las Vegas for the national championship of kickball.  I know, most people probably still find it hard to believe that kickball is as big as it is or that there is actually a national championship called the Founder's Cup.  Regardless, my team is trying to make it out to Vegas to compete.  So back to the fundraiser that was set up for Friday evening.  To be fair, I helped out very little in the actual planning or the setup for the event, however, I feel I did my part when I got there to help out.  What exactly was the fundraiser that we had?  It was a craft beer fest at Anna Liffey's in New Haven.  We managed to get almost everything donated except the food.  There was a selection of about 35 different beers to be tried, a great band playing, and hamburgers and hot dogs for all.  Total price of admission for three hours of all you can eat and drink?  $20.  The turnout was fantastic with well over a hundred people showing up for the beer and food.  The downside?  I was one of the two people cooking all the hamburgers and hot dogs.  Having not helped plan or setup for the event, I wanted to help out however I could.  When I asked how I could help out, I was told that I could cook burgers.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well, it would have been had a large grill been provided for me to cook on.  Instead, I got to use your average home size grill that just happened to only have three out of four burners working.  Couple that with the searing heat that we had on Friday and it was an evening not to be forgotten soon. 

So how did the grilling go?  Well, in all honesty, it went quite slowly.  Once people saw the grill get fired up and the food get brought outside, a line started forming.  What started with two people quickly grew to 20, then 30.  I looked at the line and cringed.  The burgers were completely frozen when I went to grill them so right off the bat we experienced a minor setback.  On top of that, we could only fit about 10 burgers over the heat at a time in order to leave enough room for the hot dogs.  The first burgers took about 10 minutes to get out and when they went out, only 5 out of ten were ready.  You should have seen the look of the people in line as we placed five hot burgers on a tray in front of 30 people.  I am just glad that we didn't have a riot on our hands.  I could feel the look of anxiousness that people had with the smell of hot burgers and dogs wafting by them and only a few burgers at a time going out to the line.  I tried not to look at anyone, just focus on the burgers and apologize for the wait.  Its not like I could have seen many people anyway with the smoke billowing constantly into my eyes from the grill.  At times it felt like I was constantly crying just because of the smoke.  The only saving grace was that people saw we were not professional cooks and had only a regular size grill at our disposal so their angst was diminished somewhat.  I focused on the burgers while my friend focused on the hot dogs.  We got all the food cooked, somehow, in about 2.5 hours.  That's 160 burgers and at least that many dogs.  I have never cooked that many burgers in my life before at one sitting and don't really feel a desire to do it again any time soon (especially on a smaller grill). 

That being said, however, I would volunteer again to cook, I just hope I don't need to for another year or so.  After Friday evening, I discovered that there is absolutely no part of me that ever wants to be a chef.  Not that I ever considered a career in the food industry to begin with, but the event Friday sealed the deal for me.  No hot kitchens for this guy.  It was bad enough standing in front of a hot grill on a hot day for 2.5 hours.  Luckily it was evening and it wasn't nearly as hot as it was earlier in the day.  The other benefit to being behind the grill was that people kept on bringing us beer.  After a while of dealing with the little shots of beer that you get at a beer fest, I decided it would be beneficial to both myself and my fellow cook if we bargained with the beer vendors for whole bottles.  We would bring them freshly cooked food if we could get a whole bottle of good beer.  It worked wonders and in addition to having the little tastings of beer being provided to us by random people, we also had full bottles from which to drink and help alleviate some of the heat (at least it made it feel less oppressive).  So all in all, the evening went well.  The lesson learned from the event, at least for me, is to make sure that there is a grill big enough to accommodate the cooking needs for over a hundred people.  A small, home size grill with only three out of four burners is not recommended.  Oh well, whats done is done and all I know is that you will never find me with a white apron laboring in a hot kitchen over someone else's food unless it is for my family (and maybe for another event like the one we had Friday). 

Not Walking Yet

I figured that as I am about to talk about my son, I would start everything off by saying that no, he is not walking yet.  My wife and I both feel however that it is time for him to take his first steps on his own.  Trust me, we are not in any way trying to push our son to develop faster than he is, however, we do want to save our backs a little from the perpetual hunched over position we have take in order to walk our son around.  OK, let me correct that last statement just a little, I want to save my back from being hunched over all the time walking our son around.  He has grown to the point where my wife is able to stand up straight while still holding our son's hands to walk him around.  With my height exceeding that of my wife's, I do not get the same luxury that she does.  In any case, we both feel that our son walking will be both a benefit and a detriment.  On the plus side, we won't have to carry him around quite as much when he starts walking (notice I said "quite as much").  On the down side, we both have the feeling that once he starts going he won't stop.  As it is, he is getting closer and closer to running while holding our hands.  On occasion we test him a little to see how close he is to walking on his own by taking one of our hands away while in the process of walking him.  Most of the time he will stop dead in his tracks and look up and reach for our absent hand in order to continue walking.  However, there will times later in the day when he is tired and not paying as much attention when he will simply keep on walking a few steps while holding on to only one hand.  I know, don't push our son to walk too soon, but we can't help but to test the walking waters every so often. 

Overall, there is not that much new to report in regards to our son.  He is still the happy go lucky baby that we have known and continues to sparkle and shine.  The only real advances that he is making is in regards to his talking.  It seems that every week or so now he adds some new consonants to his vocabulary.  Most of the time it seems that his words always end in a.  He has da, ba, ma, ha, fa, ta, la, so far.  I may be missing a few, but those seem to constitute the bulk of his vocabulary  at this point.  It is so much fun to walk him around, to see a big smile on his face while he is walking, and to hear a continuous stream of ba ba ba ba ba, or some other string of babbling.  He is getting quicker with his talking as well, stringing together his little monosyllabic utterances at a more brisk pace.  I personally can't wait to hear him start talking and expressing himself outside of the babbling.  While I know that it is all cute and what not, I am ready to hear what is going on inside that little head of his.  I want to be able to have him tell me what he is thinking and to start asking his perpetual questions so I can begin my perpetual answers.  That is one part that I can't wait for, the introduction to him of everything in the word via the English language.  As it is, he already responds better to explanations than he does to single words.  Let me explain that one a little more.  As I have mentioned before, our son loves to explore everything and normally that exploration involves him slapping whatever object is in front of him with the palm of his hand, over and over and over again.  Well, his actions necessitated our introduction of the word "no" to him as he sometimes tries to slap fragile objects.  What we have noticed is that if we tell him no followed by an explanation of why he shouldn't do something, he listens better than if we just repeat no till we our sick of hearing ourselves say "no".  I don't know why he responds better, but he will actually stop what he is doing if he gets an explanation most of the time.  Granted, there are times when he will totally disregard what we are saying (probably because he doesn't understand us yet) and continue his actions till we pull him away, but more often than not, he will stop. 

Perhaps one of the cutest things he does now is to take all the clothes out of a given drawer in his dresser.  When we are playing in his room, he will go up to his dresser, open one of the middle drawers, and begin pulling whatever clothes are in there out.  He almost never settles for the bottom drawer, but rather the middle one which he can hold and stand at.  Once he is in position; drawer open a little, him standing looking in, he begins his launching process.  The process starts with him grabbing the closest piece of clothing and launching it behind him, normally up and over his head.  On occasion he will look over at us with a wide eyed, "look at what I'm doing" look while at other times he is content simply staring into the drawer at the remaining contents that he has yet to remove.  Once he gets moving, the clothes start flying, left hand, right hand, till the drawer is completely empty.  After he is done removing all the clothes, he moves on, finding some other object to play with.  The funniest part comes when you try to put the clothes away.  If he hears you close the drawer after putting the clothes away, he will drop whatever he is doing and come back over to the dresser to begin the removal process once more.  All this leaves me wondering what is next when it comes to our son.  Whatever it is, I am sure it will be exciting (it might even be walking).  For now, I will simply enjoy his babbling, clothes removing, almost walking antics as he edges closer to the ten month mark and almost his first birthday. 

Inadvertent Sleep In

Ever have one of those days when you wake up to see that you somehow either turned off your alarm clock or it wasn't working because you don't remember hearing it go off?  Yep, I am having one of those days right now as I woke up an hour and half after my alarm clock.  Needless to say, this post will be mighty short and sweet today as I now need to run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get myself ready to go to work in about an hour.  I know that may seem like a lot of time for some people, but I am one who likes to take my time waking up and not rush things too much.  Guess I will be rushing today.  Till tomorrow when I will hopefully wake up to my alarm clock, have a great day.