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It was a sick twist of fate that my first day of kitchen duty came just a few hours after Pub Night. Pub Night, here at kibbutz Baram, is taken very seriously. The pub is open Tuesday and Friday nights and is one of few organized social activities offered to both members and volunteers. Unless you're banned from the pub for missing your pub cleaning duty, everyone shows up for Pub Night. And though I wanted to be fresh and ready for my 5:45am kitchen call, I knew that if I missed out on my first Pub Night, I risked being socially ex-communicated. I managed to stay for only one beer, but as the Pub doesn't open until 10pm, I was out later than I would have liked. I did have the good sense to leave early though, as I felt a bit of hazing would have followed me around the pub by the 19 year-olds out on a binge. But maybe I'm just being paranoid.
I showed up in the dining hall the next morning at precisely 5:45am, feeling not so fresh and ready and a bit more like what the fuck am I doing on a kibbutz in the first place? I mean, most people I know are furthering their education or advancing their careers or doing other relatively adult-like activities and here I was, bleary-eyed, possibly dehydrated and about to embark on a two month stint working in a kitchen. In Israel. In an entirely remote part of Israel next to its dear friend and neighbor, Lebanon. But no matter, after a cup of coffee, I was more or less eager to please.
I was the first person to show up. So I sat at in the dining hall and drank my cup of coffee, trying my best to look bright-eyed, but mostly just looking nervous and shifty. Tired of crossing and uncrossing my legs in an effort to keep busy and realizing that no one was going to come fetch me, I wandered to the back of the kitchen to see if I could find George, the head chef. George is an Australian Zionist who has been living in Israel for the last 18 years. He is quite a sight - six foot four with a perfectly shaved head, perpetual stubble, and has, as I was soon to learn, a penchant for driving like an eight year old playing his favorite car racing video game. I found him in his office loaded up with paper work and stood there for a full two minutes after introducing myself before he glanced up and said, "Right, I'm the chef and this is my kitchen. You listen to me, and when I'm not here you listen to Utta and when Utta's not here you listen to Hannah . I'll put you on the schedule for today but make no guarantees that you'll be on for next week. Let's see how you fare around here first."
I was not given a hair net but was handed one of those black chef do-rag things that make you look like a ninja. Unfortunately for me, not a cute ninja. Everyone else manages to pull this rag off, but I just end up looking like I have a cheap 1940's cap on that's forever askew. The rag traps in the sweat on my head so that when I take it off for meals (the vain part of me ensures that I always take it off) my hair is flatter than yesterday's pancakes and no amount of fluffing it up with my food-stained hands will make any difference. Never the less, George instructed me to "guard the hat with your life. It's your hat and wear it proudly. Lose it, and you'll have to wear one of the paper ones." I wonder if the paper hats will leave my hair looking more full.
So I was thus thrust into the fast-paced world of the kitchen. The kibbutz kitchen supplies three meals a day for over 300 people. In my head I thought that I would pick up a thing or two about cooking. Maybe add a couple of meals to my paltry menu. But as this is cooking for the masses, the kitchen, though not quite run assembly line style, is run pretty close. Rarely do I see a meal prepared from start to finish.
The day starts at 6am with "the girls" (there are four of us female volunteers) preparing what is called "the Diet." This means that for the first two and half hours we scrub, scrape, peel, and chop an assortment of phallic looking vegetables. This all needs to be done as quickly as possible so that it can be cooked in time to put out for lunch. We girls have it pretty much down to a science, completing each other’s moves without needing to say a word. And yet, there is always a slight look of panic as we're never quite sure it will all get done in time. Or maybe that's just the panic that comes from lack of sleep coupled with slicing at a voracious speed. At the beginning of our shift, George will slip a single band-aid into each of our breast pockets, a slightly offensive yet realistic reminder of accidents to come.
I have learned that there are things I like chopping and things I do not like chopping. These are the things I like chopping: zucchini and sweet potatoes. That's it. These are the things I do not like chopping: Cauliflower (which is hidden beneath a Venus fly trap-like bed of leaves), carrots (after peeling them for an hour the last thing I want to do is chop them), onions (duh), pumpkin (damn near impossible to peel and prep), tomatoes (the juice somehow manages to stain even my underwear), and potatoes (they're just unattractive).
At 8:30am the kitchen staff gets a half hour for breakfast. We emerge from the kitchen straight out onto the dining room, food stained, odd-smelling, haggard, and not remotely interested in the food we just prepared. We really must look a sight to all of the freshly showered members. We don't even bother taking off our hats (except for me) or our stained and damp chef's jackets. We plop down at a table and eat in near silence. And that's just breakfast. By the time lunch rolls around at 1pm, we look and smell even worse. By then, fish oil mingles with turkey fat; particles of unknown origin pepper our hair (now mostly fallen out of our do-rags), and the acid-water we use to do our big clean soaks our pants from the knees down. And if kitchen conduct is reliable, our clean up involves an extensive water fight. Somehow by 12:30 we've reached our third wind and, armed with hoses, soaking each other with scalding hot soapy water seems like a fabulous idea. At this point in the day we have reached the communal smell of "kitchen" and if you want to enjoy your lunch, you'd better sit far, far away.
The rest of the day passes in a harried, varied state. There are no set activities, just the need to get whatever done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Snap the heads of chickens, pull out their rib cages, and peel off the wings? Sure! Now do it 50 times. It's got to go out for dinner. Need those 75 quiches sliced into 16ths? Great, just let me wipe off the fish juice from my face and show me what knife to use.
And not to toot my own horn, but I am amazed at how well prepared I am for this job. My job as a stage manager has left me hard wired to follow the rules of the kitchen. In the kitchen, on time means early. Done. I am unable to be even fashionably late. My eyes are trained to comb a room, trying to anticipate what needs to be done next. I am so used to getting barked at by higher ups that I am not even offended when say, a sous-chef shouts "Bridget! Come." I instinctively know he's talking to me and drop whatever it is I'm doing and walk (never run) swiftly to him.
I am a multi-tasker at heart, but still retain a touch of the klutz. So no, I am not a perfect member of the kitchen staff. Today I managed to spill a full tray of turkey fat not into the drain where it belongs, but into my left boot. Where it remained as I sloshed around the kitchen for the rest of the day. I tried to take a private moment to pour my boot out, but stopped as I heard from across the room, "Stacy, you in the kitchen now. No time for balagan. Yallah, yallah."
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Mark
non-member comment
Balagan?
Does "balagan" mean "blogging" or is that Hebrew for "tom-foolery"? I'd imagine turkey fat is good for the foot.