Chef always picks a themed cuisine for Family Meal: Italian, Indian, American (?)…but tonight it was my favorite - Mexican. We had plans to make chicken, steak and bean enchiladas, so we started early grilling the steak and softening the tortillas. I was given a box of 75 dozen small corn tortillas and told to dip them in the warm deep fryer so that they'd be easy to roll. I took my tongs, dipped one tortilla, waited a few seconds then lay it out on a sheet pan with parchment paper. I took a second tortilla, dipped it, waited a few seconds then shingled it on top of the first one. I had now eaten up 30 seconds and gotten through two tortillas. Great, only 75 dozen minus two left! Chef noticed the quizzical and frustrated look on my face, and suggested I do a stack all at once…genius! When all was said and done, it took about an hour to warm all of the tortillas, even since we decided to do only ¾ of the box.
We gathered the warmed tortillas and stuffed 40% of them with sliced hanger steak and cheese, 40% with cheese roasted chicken, onions and peppers and the remaining tortillas with refried beans and cheese. The rolled enchiladas were placed on their respective pans and doused with sauce: chicken enchiladas got a green tomatillo avocado sauce and the steak and bean enchiladas were paired with a red andouille chili pepper sauce. Everything got sprinkled with one last bit of cheese and baked until bubbling. Of course I ate an entire plate (soaking it up with homemade cornbread and the remaining corn tortillas) while the other students and staff were filing by to tell us how delicious our family meal had been. A few hours later, I was regretting my spontaneous decision to consume a heaping plate of cheese, greasy meat and oily tortillas…but I state here and now in writing on this lackluster internet forum: it was worth every minute of pain.
I'm back at my favorite government agency for a few days, filling in for someone who's on vacation. This time I'm in their medical services division, which keeps a small medical staff to handle the ailments of the agency's thousands of employees. First of all, entering the building always makes me incredibly nervous, regardless of the fact that I have a security cleared I.D. and I happen to know most of the guards fairly well. My limited security clearance mandates that I still be processed through the metal detectors every day, and every single morning I bite my tongue to narrowly miss making some detrimentally smart@$$ comment. I've held back gun jokes, fictitious felony charges and multiple distasteful things from coming out of my mouth. It's not that I'm a disrespectful, authority hating gun-slinger; I just don't think before I open my mouth, and I tend to think outrageous sarcasm is really hilarious. For example: I'm lifting my bag from the conveyor belt this morning, and the really nice (handsome) officer says, "You passed!" while giving me a little wink. I opened my mouth to say, "Too bad you didn't catch the AK47 tucked in my belt loop," but I didn't. Why on Earth would anyone think that's funny??? I ask myself that daily.
I realized today that I apparently don't have quite the grasp on the English language that I thought I did; filing things alphabetically is really, really hard! I recited the alphabet, or parts of it, at least five times per hour today…and for some reason I still couldn't remember if P comes before R, or if V is before W. I was also remarkably thrown off by last names starting with Met and Mest…..what does it mean??? It got to be pretty embarrassing, but thank goodness I kept my "ABC"s silent. Now that I think of it, I am constantly counting to the number 9 while working on a simple Sudoku. Is this part of a wider issue? Should I sue my kindergarten teacher? I won't go that far yet, but I do have a hard time keeping my crayons in the lines…
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