Kitchen Crew
CAMPUS SERVICE
Always working in the dining hall, I often saw kitchen staff walking in and out of the kitchen even when it was not meal time. A lot of them I had talked to for a multiple times in a day though had never really got to know them. Becoming curious about their working process and wanting to know the staff more, I joined the kitchen crew ExEd in my second semester. On my first day, I was greeted by Ted, one of the kitchen staff, who guided and took care of everyone in the ExEd throughout the semester.
The kitchen was a new sight to me. I had before only been in the dining and serving area, not here. I was fascinated by all the stations and the variety of strange-looking appliances and equipments sitting on them. Ted walked us through the entire space, briefly introducing us to the items and how they function.
My work in the kitchen ranged from preparing food to analyzing data and cleaning. In preparing food, I mostly did fruit cutting, though there were other tasks such as egg cracking or marination as well. I started with strawberries and smaller fruits, learning cutting skills along the way. Not a cooking person before, all the techniques were new to me or were something I never thought I would be able to do, for example, lobbing off the strawberry tops while holding it without cutting myself. The sizes and variations of fruits kept increasing until I was faced with giant, round objects known as watermelons, and I was genuinely surprised at how easy it was to cut the fruit into smaller pieces.
Sanitation is the most important aspect of the kitchen which I definitely knew about it but never before pondered about how those are achieved. In this ExEd, I was given my personal apron and told to keep my gloves and cap on all the time that I was in the kitchen. I had to wash my hands frequently, clean all the surfaces I was going to use or was done using, and change gloves every time I wanted to move onto a new work to prevent contamination which may affect people with food allergy. The process which was long and tedious but done to keep everyone safe made me realize the responsibility carried by the kitchen staff and how their work was more complicated that just making food everyday. In fact, they had to also keep the food clean, diverse, and satisfying for the students who all come from different backgrounds.
In a similar manner, I realized how the kitchen was also connected to different areas of the school and did not work alone as an independent body. I once got to work with Aida, the food services director, in sorting out the receipts of food supplies in each month. In going through lists of tomatoes, I noticed that the number of tomatoes purchased increased in months that the farm could not grow as many tomatoes. This connection between the kitchen and the farm fascinated me – the long process did not just start in the kitchen but also traced all the way back to where the ingredients came from.
This ExEd had given me more than just new cooking skills. I came to a better understanding of the kitchen and its staff – the one and only group that supplied food and kept everyone alive and healthy – and how it worked. I realized the amount of work and effort that must be put in to satisfy every person coming in Above everything, I got to connect with the kitchen staff on a more personal level and learn about their own very different stories. All these reasons prompted me to become more respectful whenever I use the dining hall and the serving area, strictly following the rules and providing help with anything I could whether it is big or small – such as cleaning up after myself after I was done using the tables – to prevent myself from creating any extra work for the staff.