Thursday, July 22, 2021

C & C Part 2

Gertrude worked the 6 AM-2 shift, Tuesday through Saturday. A woman of about 60, she was competent and gruff, and kept to herself unless you were doing something wrong. Then she would lumber over and let you know about it in a stern, German accent.   

Her specialty was salad, in particular the signature chicken and almond salad, but she also produced sesame chicken, seafood, Mediterranean, and pasta chinoise salads, thirty pounds at a time. Her station was next to the industrial can opener and in front of the convection oven, just down from the 10 burner range, and a very short walk to the pot sink. By the time I arrived at 9 or 10, she had it stocked with gallons of mayonnaise, mustard, soy sauce, and jarred garlic. 

In addition to chopping celery and poaching chicken breasts in 20 gallon stick pots, Gertrude spent her shift mixing huge vats of tri-colored linguine with tomato sauce, ricotta, and eggs, shaping the mixture into giant fritattas, baking them off and then topping them with more sauce, provolone, and peppers and mushrooms. 

Other days she would hoist 3 or 4 sheet pans of chicken breasts liberally sprinkled with jarred garlic and soy sauce into the convection, poach 10 pounds of small shrimp, cook off a bin of fresh angel hair pasta, julienne carrots and snow peas, crank open number 10 cans of water chestnuts, and pit 300 Calamata olives, in between smoking Kools out back on her breaks. She punched out and threw her apron in the laundry on the way out the door at 2, then drove home in her enormous 1970-something Cadillac de Ville.

She was there the day I started, and she was there the day I left. I wonder where she is today.

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