W...is for War Wounds

Some days the kitchen seems more like a battlefield than a place to make food. That has certainly been the case this week. I "earned" my first battle scars, and I'm sure there will be many to come. We all knew it was only a matter of time!

Monday I gave myself a nasty little burn on the top of my right hand. I was opening the 475 degree oven to get out my french onion soup (which was perfection, btw) and bumped it on the outside of the oven. That's the trouble with a commercial kitchen. It's not like at home where I could put my face on the outside of my oven and barely have it warm the skin. Commercial ovens get crazy hot and they are entirely made of metal. Touch it anywhere and you'll get burned. Also, you don't get to use hotpads in a commercial kitchen....those are for housewives (gasp!). Instead, you just use a little tiny side towel. I'm well on my way to being able to elude the FBI by not having any fingerprints left. And then I completely seared my tongue on the soup. Just getting my taste buds back today. Maybe by tomorrow food will taste normal again.

Tuesday was even worse. I filleted my own finger!!! I had been dicing onions and was going to put my chef's knife down (8" blade and VERY sharp) and just sliced open my left pointer finger. And boy was it a bleeder. It actually spurted blood. One girl even almost threw up after seeing it. Chef was afraid I was going to have to get stitches, but we finally made it stop bleeding. We threw a few bandaids on, a latex glove and put me back to work. I didn't even cry. I then proceeded to make the world's best veal consomme...one handed. Not to mention a rocking Caribbean black bean soup and a perfectly balanced vegetable soup.

I guess the scar count is up to 2. Wonder how many I'll have by the time this is all over?