A little catching up
So yesterday I wanted to catch up on my blog and correspondence, but the cold has me down a bit, so I watched Lonesome Dove, the wonderful miniseries very faithfully adapted from Larry McMurtry’s, Pulitzer-Prize-winning book. I’ve bought the 2-DVD set twice it’s so good. Well, maybe it’s 3 times, since I’ve been moving around so much and lost 2 copies. I need to think about getting a Netflix subscription again once I have some time and money since they have a HUGE selection of stuff hard to get anywhere else, especially when you’re not near a big city. I did see Food Inc. at the great little art-house theater that is literally across the street from me. Somewhat like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma in screen form, it was an interesting and sobering look at the food supply, and how it’s become more and more like a factory, less and less humane to both animals and humans.
Tulips will be open in less than 2 weeks! I’m very excited, but also nervous of course. I priced the entire menu, which you’d think wouldn’t take too long considering it’s a relatively small one, but it was a chore, taking about 20 hours total. I had to go through every recipe, price every quantity of every ingredient, add it up, divide by the number of servings, and dictate the information to the executive chef who passed all the information along to the owner, who we all met with Monday night (does it still count as a day off then? lol).
My next job is to get 60 recipes together for items we’re carrying on the market side so we can pass out the recipe cards to help people figure out what to do with those items. And I need to get a procedure manual together for take-out orders so everyone knows how to handle them since we’re going to do probably 20-30% of our business in take out. I’ve already written complete descriptions for each dish on the menu so the servers know exactly what goes into each dish (no quantities of course), and so my boss can take the description and create a menu, probably a bit different than what I’ve already created.
Then there’s the little matter of actually getting food into the restaurant! We don’t have storage racks yet for the dry goods or for the walk in cooler/freezer. Hopefully we’ll get the racks soon, and Tom will place food orders for what we’ll need to at least test everything next week. Oh wait, none of the cooking equipment, including the dishwasher, has been hooked up and tested yet! So there’s definitely some work to do in the next couple of weeks. Yike!
I’ve seriously offered to sleep at the restaurant or in the (as-yet-to-be-finished) office next door, especially since I know how much I’ll be there, and I’m not crazy about driving home 30 miles after working 18 hours a day and then getting up a few hours later to do it again. I’ll keep you updated as to my sleeping arrangements.
Oh yes, do! Sleeping in the soon-to-be office would save a bunch of time but have an exit plan to get into your own bed from time to time.