It hit me when I walked in the door of the kitchen: the smell of eggs boiling on the stove. My stomach flipped. If this was how I was to begin my Tuesday cooking stint at Paraclete Academy, I was in for quite a ride.
As readers of this blog are well aware, eggs are my Achilles heel. Some people are afraid of spiders, others of clowns. Me? I have a panic attack in the presence of egg salad. It’s stupid, it’s irrational, but it’s my issue. And I didn’t need “issues” to dog me on Day One.
The aforementioned eggs belonged to a teacher at Paraclete, an afterschool program in South Boston where I volunteered to cook chicken pot pie, prepare a salad and bake apples for 25 kids and teachers. I had my prep list, a couple of scaled-up recipes on my iPad, all the ingredients and my big ass Cuisinart to make 3 pounds of pie dough.
Fail to plan, plan to fail, right?
Besides the wretched reek of egg salad in the kitchen, the 5 pounds of chicken breasts I ordered were frozen solid and the digital clock in the kitchen was an hour behind schedule.
Immediately, the chicken came out of the freezer to thaw, and the young, friendly teachers who lived on site, made themselves scarce. I think I scared them.
While I scaled the flour, salt, butter and shortening for the crust, principal Jackie Parker came in to greet me with a young girl in tow. Apparently, the Southie high school freshman helped her out on Tuesdays when the principal was in charge of dinner. (Monday and Wednesday a chef comes in to cook, another volunteer prepares dinner on Thursday.)
“She usually tells me how to do things,” said Parker, who offered up the girl’s assistance – after her homework was finished.
“Great,” I lied said with a big smile. “There are lots of things for you to do! “
Look, I’m a kitchen control freak. Unless you offer to wash pots and pans (thanks, Mom), please go away. I don’t need any help.
Doris the Lunch Lady from ‘The Simpsons’
Truth be told, the kid was my saving grace.
After homework, G peeled and cut all the vegetables, washed and prepared the salad, made vinaigrette and sweetly seasoned the 25 apples I had cored. She tackled the dish sink and washed down the benches. And I didn’t have to ask.
Feeling confidant as I rolled out the dough to top the chicken pot pies and played artfully with the crust, G called over from checking her iPhone, “You know it’s really 6 o’clock, right?”
DAMMIT. I jacked up the temperature on the ovens, threw in four pans of pot pie and two pans of cinnamon-spiked apples and prayed. I was working, after all, in a former convent’s kitchen, so there had to be some Divine Intervention still hidden in the walls…
“Don’t worry,” G said as she plated salad before her father arrived to pick her up. “They don’t care what it looks like just as long as it tastes good. And everything already is cooked in the pie, so it shouldn’t take that long to bake.”
Garden Salad by G
The kid was right, of course. At 6:48, the students and teachers lined up outside the kitchen door and I began service with two volunteer runners.
“We’re getting dessert tonight,” asked one excited boy as he got a whiff of the apple pan.
“Yup, there’s a little dessert – baked apples with vanilla yogurt on top,” I said. “’Cuz I’m a dessert kinda gal.”
“Hey, you guys, we’re getting DESSERT,” he called out down the line.
I laughed as I heard the D-word echo back about a dozen times as I dished chicken and vegetables onto plates.
Who knew a bag of mini Macouns from Sunnycrest Farm in Londonderry, N.H. – a gift from my BFF Mary Helen — was going to be the star of the show? So what if my pot pies didn’t have leaves cut free hand on the crust. THERE WAS DESSERT, GUYS.
After I washed the rest of the dishes and pots, swept the floor and packed up the Cuisinart, timers, rolling pin and my knife kit, I pulled out of center’s parking lot on E Street at around 8:30 p.m. -– or 7:30 p.m. PKT (Paraclete Kitchen Time).
According to my kitchen spies, Ming Tsai‘s Salmon would be a good choice for my next gig in the kitchen on Dec. 3. Since I have settled on my main dish, I’m now open to dessert ideas…
Tags: #cooking, #cookingcomedy, #cookingforkids, #paracleteacademy, #volunteerism