Ep. 22: Escape

People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.
--

Recycling
About midmorning,
amid smells of coffee and egg bake
and fried ham and steaming orange muffins,

I gather up the recycling
and head for the door,
a momentary escape:

In summer
I swim through suffocating humidity,
carboard in one hand,
imaginary snorkel in the other,
cottonwood leaves in the grove glimmering.

In fall
the crisp breeze carries
the tang of burning leaves
and thoughts of hay bales and hot cider.

Now, today,
the first snow swirls around me
as I walk
and watch
the scenery coated in white.

Pine and cinnamon and red ribbon
eclipse thoughts of dreary frozen smudged January ahead.

For now it is November and holidays are near.
Winter is here.

(copyright EA Schueller)

Word Smithing

Axe the shapeless thoughts from the mind-corners,
hold them in your hand,
at first only shards of metal scattered and clouded with dirt.
Heat the thought-ore in the forge,
Fold the molten words over again and again,
Hammer them into shape on the anvil,
Sparks flying in the dark of night
Like stars above
Or fireflies below.

The molten phrases plunge into cold water
and a rush a steam hisses upward.
Then there is the scrape of metal on stone as the edge is sharpened,
and gleaming steel words, thick and sure and razor-teethed, rest in your hands.

Or maybe not a cutting sword-phrase today.
Perhaps instead make hinges and a cast iron handle,
for opening a door and stepping out.

(copyright E.A.Schueller)

Ep. 21: Gourmet

People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.
--

"Gourmet" is the name I've given one of our residents. She's a very particular person, commenting on the thickness of noodles we use in a dish or how there wasn't quite enough crisp on her apple crisp. This gourmet attitude doesn't stop with her. It's also a habit of mind for most of the people we serve.

Manager and I were discussing this one day. I recalled working at a bar and grill and all the labor and staff involved in one dish or one order leaving the kitchen steaming hot and made to order and just to the customer's specifications. That is the sort of experience our residents seem to expect. What they don't think about is the fact that a bar and grill gets about $20-$30 per person per meal they serve. So I asked Manager, "what is our budget per plate?"

Here's what she told me: It's $5 per person.

Per meal?

No.

Per day.

We feed each resident a breakfast buffet, a noon meal, an afternoon snack, and a supper meal on five dollars.

If this was my personal food budget, we'd be eating mostly ramen noodles at home.

In the meantime, our residents get turkey and mashed potatoes, prime rib, spaghetti and meatsauce, tator tot hotdish, salmon patty on a bun with remoulade sauce, lamb with mint jelly...and an uncountable horde of cookies, bars, and bowls of fruit.

Yes, we buy in bulk. Yes, we have a contract with a food supplier. Both of these things cut the cost of what we do. However, five dollars a day per person just plain blows my mind.

In light of how we manage to feed these people well on such a tight budget, I'm thinking we must be magicians of some kind.

But then I return to work:
...Someone whistles me over to her table. The way you would whistle a reckless puppy away from traffic...
...A coworker swings by to chortle with me about a complaint he overheard: that the kitchen's plating technique leaves much to be desired...
...And I see a resident, Gourmet herself, pulling her rice krispy bar apart with a face of disgust. "There's too much goo in this."

These moments seem even more ridiculous when seen in the light of our budget. There's hardly room for meat and potatoes in there, much less the expectation of something Gourmet.