Pumpkin and Panini

Wednesday 21st May 2008
It was going so well for Ian this morning, he woke up feeling a bit sleepy but had got over that and was enjoying a glorious early morning. Everything was going to plan and everything that he normally forgets to do first thing he has remembered, wrong, we start getting customers in for breakfast at 8am and he hasn’t taken the Butter out of the Fridge for buttering the toast. Every morning without fail Ian forgets to take the butter out of the fridge, but we don’t normally get our first breakfast until about 8.30am, by which time one of the staff have noticed and done it for him.
It’s 9am and there is a smell of burning, Ian opens the oven door and there, looking a bit on the brown side are four pies and two sausage rolls, they were put in the oven at 7.45am for twenty minutes just to warm them through. After careful examination it was decided that we should probably not inflict them on our customers, being so soon after Michelle’s Scones and all that. Fliss did manage to nick one of the sausage rolls before it all got thrown in the bin and after covering with BBQ sauce, scoffed the lot in seconds. She doesn’t appear to have had any side affects, although she’s a bit weird so it’s hard to tell.
The time is 10am and one of the staff asked Ian if the non slip mats for the kitchen were hanging over the fence in the kids play area for a reason, another thing he forgot to do, this thinking you’re having a good start to the day business, is obviously just the body’s way of having a laugh at your expense. Ian is thinking of having bad mornings from now on, they seem to be so much more constructive.
Ian sliced up Michelle’s Quiche this morning and it has turned out as probably the best presented Quiche that we have made so far, Ian gave it 8 out of 10 for artistic impression but reckons that it was the way he supervised the making of the Quiche that made the difference.
Today’s Panini delivery produced a batch that we could get away with, they were still not perfect but the Baker thinks he knows now what we want so watch this space tomorrow.
We have a girl called Elena working for us, and being Italian and used to all things Italian she has been designated Chief Sandwich Artist, we have been trying to get ideas from her on the best fillings to put in Panini etc, but as an artist she still seems to be painting by numbers and the fillings are a bit predictable. She is taking the job seriously though and has called on the experience of her parents for ideas, her parents are a lovely couple who make and sell Gelato (ice cream) in the town, they have given her some ideas but we think she might have become a bit too aussieised in her ways and lost the Italian flair for such things. Ian has managed to teach her how to say Ciabatta in a good English accent though.
Whether they looked like Paninis or not or whether the punters knew what Paninis were or what they should look and taste like is pretty immaterial really, they sold pretty well today, so we will have to wait and see if the same punters come back for seconds.
The Pumpkin soup is flying out, although being a Pumpkin it is probably not very politically correct to say that it is flying out, it is far more likely to be rolling out. So for fear of being described as a flyingist or anti rollingist, let us just say that lots of it was being eaten, or would that be drunk, but then if it was drunk would it be fair to eat it when it obviously cannot defend itself, I see a major Pumpkin rights debate in the offing here so I will quite while I am ahead and body and limbs etc.
Anyway, Carolyn has been at home all morning making loads of Pumpkin soup whilst on the internet answering questions on little nut tree, and by the time she arrived at the Café we were really busy. Fortunately the soup arrived just before the last lot ran out, so that was lucky.
Because we have so much Pumpkin lying round the place at the moment, Fliss has decided that we should make Pumpkin Scones, a view shared by the rest of the staff although with doubt by the management, who are still trying to work out how you keep a candle alight for two weeks in a bowl of Pumpkin soup.
Apparently Fliss’ mum has got a great recipe for Pumpkin Scones and this next bit sums up Fliss to a T, “Yeah it’s a great Recipe she found it on the side of a tin of Pineapple, I don’t know what it was doing on the side of a tin of Pineapple though”. The same question has crossed our minds many times Fliss, it’s a shame Newton isn’t still around or he might have been able to help us with that one.
The only recipe that Carolyn could find for Pumpkin anything other than soup was Pumpkin and Raisin Scones, so no doubt one of the staff will want to make them.
We will Thank you now Jennifer for the pile of Pumpkin recipes that you are no doubt loading up as we speak, and we look forward to trying some of them out, if only to get rid of all the Pumpkin. Who would have thought a Pumpkin could feed so many and so many delightful dishes too.
We stayed busy until 3pm, at which point Fliss and Michelle decided to start picking all the letters from one of our Blackboards. Did you know? You are allowed to call them Blackboards over here, and do you know why? It’s quite clever really, they’re Black. How simple was that. They did toy with having Chalk Boards but found that they washed away and made a mess every time they got wet, and also you couldn’t see the chalk when writing on a chalk board because chalk on chalk doesn’t really stand out very well.
Anyway, I digress; they terrible twins as Ian calls them were supposed to be removing the letters so that we could repaint it and write our specials on it. In their eagerness to get the job done, Michelle grabbed a piece of what she thought was PVC lettering and proceeded to take about three layers of menus from the centre of the board. The next couple of hours were spent trying to get it all down to the same level, and when it became clear that this was not going to happen in a hurry, Ian gave up all hope and phoned a local sign maker to replace it.
It’s a bit stormy tonight, it’s not cold but there is plenty of lightning and the wind is blowing a gale, apparently we will get this on a regular basis for the next couple of months. It’s just like a good August back in the UK.