Seanie Civale ’14
So I think my first day cooking alone (because they train you one day first, cooking with someone else) was an 88-person meal, and I also knew I had some friends coming, so I was nervous and knew I wanted to do a good job. I planned this very elaborate meal, but I didn’t plan it out that well, which in retrospect was my biggest fault because you really should be planning it out, like perfectly, timing and everything, so you know you can get everything done. It got to be 5 or maybe 4:30 or something when dinner was served at 6:30 and I still had three portions of the meal that had yet to be done, mainly the soup, which I later learned is always the thing you should be making first in the day, you make your soup in the morning and let it cook all day. But I hadn’t made it yet, and I had planned on making this roasted bell pepper soup, with roasted bell peppers and other vegetables, which required a lot of oven space that I didn’t have, and a lot of time, because roasting vegetables takes a long time, and then I also needed to blend them all, or whatever, and let it simmer for long enough, and I hadn’t done anything, and I still needed to chop all of the vegetables. I just flew into a total panic and I wasn’t at the point where I felt comfortable asking people for help, so it was a very near disaster. But then the ’17 on the crew, named Kasia, who later became one of my best friends, came in and was like, “what are you doing?” There were vegetables all over the counter that were not cut up yet, there was no soup, and I hadn’t made the dessert, so she had to jump in and she was so good, she was just one of those people who was so good at everything. She knew how to garden, she knew how to fix things, she knew how to cook. So she helped me out, and the bell pepper soup turned out really good actually. Other parts of the meal turned out not so well… my dessert, I think the chocolate, I was supposed to melt it, but didn’t do it correctly, so it was like half burnt. But the bell pepper soup turned out well! I think in retrospect, that was my favorite dish I made the entire summer though it was definitely the one that lost me the most years off my life.