Wednesday, December 8, 2010

I worked at Iggie's today. 1-8pm. Janee walked down to Iggie's with me so she could introduce me around. I met Mary and Chris and the dishwasher, Michael. Mary was making Johnnycakes so I got to help her make those. Our tour guide from my St John tour talked about johnnycakes and how the originally name had been "journey cakes" because they were made for long journeys. They are a cross between a sweet bread and a sweet cake, that are rolled into a ball then deep fried. Shaping the little balls were a lot like making dinner rolls in school. That skill, came back quickly, lol. Other than that, there was not much to do until Gabriel came. I chopped some cucumbers, poked around the kitchen and read the local paper. Gabriel is in charge of the West Indies buffet on Wednesday nights. Together we set up 7 rectangular chaffing dishes and one round chafing dish. The food was made before I even got there so the only thing Gabriel and I had to do was set things up. However, once we got the chaffing dishes out, we found they needed to be cleaned. Someone had put them away dirty! (say it isn't so!). So after cleaning the chaffing dishes and gathering all the serving pieces and setting up the warmer (a large cart that plugs in and keeps your food warm for however long you need it to), we were ready to bring the food out. The hotel is not very full so for the first half hour the buffet was open, no one came. It did pick up after that, but not much. I left a little before 8 because it was so slow.

One thing I have noticed about working in the kitchen, is that during the day, ALL the kitchen staff listen to one (I thought) radio station that only plays Christian music. Today at Iggie's I learned there was another Christian radio station, sponsored by the Methodist church on St Thomas. Interesting. When the evening crew at the Lobster Grille comes in, the radio gets changed to rap music. However, the radio station that plays rap and some rock only has two advertisers so we hear the same commercials over and over and over.... The other night I turned to Ryan and asked, "aren't there any other radio stations?!". That's when I found out there were only two to choose from. Yikes!! A girl could go crazy!!

I prefer the Lobster Grille to Iggie's when working, but we'll see what I'll be doing in the future. Tomorrow I'll be helping Janee with a wedding party dinner. We currently have three wedding parties at Bolongo. Apparently this is a destination for weddings. Who'd a thought?!