The fun was putting it all together. Vegetables had to be prepared, seasoned and cooked just so. Potatoes had to come out after baking in the cheese sauce as a casserole. The sauce for the meat, which the banquet chef had prepared and which was ready and simmering gently on one of the stoves, had to be put into bain maries, one for each dish-up station. The meat, last and certainly foremost, had to come out, be put into pans and brought to each dish-up station.
While all of that was happening, in precise sequence, the heater trucks were plugged in and warming up and the pantry ladies were beginning to dish up the salads. The banquet wait staff was in the kitchen. Men and women both, everyone in tuxedos and white gloves, they met in a distant corner where the headwaiter handed the captains the table assignments for the staff.
Jimmy Banquet Chef, now that everything was in full swing, stepped out of the role of cook and assumed the role of manager, factory foreman and traffic cop. He directed everything and everyone with an expertise that was astonishing. He knew the entire kitchen staff by name and he knew the headwaiter and banquet captains too.
As he ran everything, Jimmy Banquet Chef went around and watched everything. He supervised the salads as they were plated and directed the amount of dressing placed on each one by making sure the stewards who did the ladling kept to the amount they were supposed to.
Fun.
Jimmy Banquet Chef saw everything and managed everything. While the salads were being done, he made sure Jimmy G, Victor and Bill took care of the food. The vegetables ready, the three cooks went on to get their dish-up stations in order. Bill followed the lead of the others, but he had a steward who helped show him exactly what he needed where.
There was no fooling around now. Everything was business. Everything was sequence. Everything was order and routine.
As soon as the stations were set up, the three cooks went to the rotary oven. They could see that only one minute remained until the timer was due to go off. They waited until it did and then together they emptied the oven, meat first. The roasting pans were emptied by the stewards who put the roasted tenderloins into steam table pans and brought them to the dish-up stations.
Potatoes came out last. The pans were also distributed to the dish-up stations. Each station now had one cook and three stewards. The cook would carve the tenderloins. One steward would plate the meat. One would dish up potatoes. The third steward would dish up the broccoli. The banquet captains would cap the plates and stack them inside the warmer truck. Each plate had the meat in the middle, the vegetable on one side and the potatoes on the other.
Capping and stacking was precise. Two types of caps were used. One type had a large open center. The other had a simple finger hole in the center. Plates were stacked by five, the bottom four with the large open center cap, the top one with the finger hole center cap. Just before being sent out to the tables, the meat would be quickly sauced by the cook, one steward lifting the plates so the bottom four could be sauced right through the cap. The top plate’s cap came off, the meat got sauced and the cap went back on.
Carving and plating started a half hour before the meal was served. This was an easy one, only three hundred people, give or take because there could always be a few more people or a few less.
Fun.
As the clock ticked away, the stations were set and ready to go. There was a brief moment’s lull, a time to catch your breath. Then the salads started out and the dish-up stations went to work.
By Peter Weiss
Bill chose a slicer, two chef’s knives, one smaller than the other, two boning knives, also different sizes, and a primo sharpening steel.
Jimmy stood by carefully watching the new cook as he made his choices. He saw that Bill was decisive, sure of himself. He knew exactly what he wanted and of the ones there he found those that best suited him. It was about the feel. Nothing more.
From away from the cabinet he selected two different kitchen forks, both two-pronged, one with straight prongs and very pointed, the other with a longer handle and curved prongs that were a bit more broad though still pointed at the end. He tapped the first one against the table and held it to his ears, listened to its sound, that of a tuning fork. The sound rang for him, sang its hum.
He also chose a spatula. He picked an older wooden-handle one with slight curves at the edges. He actually held several of the same ones, felt each one carefully until he finally held on to the one he would keep.
“Well, all those will be yours now,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said when Bill was done selecting. “If you ask me, I think you made some great choices.”
“Thanks,” Bill said.
“You knew what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“I know what I like. And I know the feel I like in my hands.”
“Good man,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “Let’s go check on your partner and his uncle.”
Bill shrugged his shoulders indicating that it was up to the banquet chef, and off they went.
Jimmy G and Victor were sitting in a corner of the room they used to defrost the vegetables. Jimmy G was reading a Greek newspaper. Victor was staring out into space, from time to time glancing over Jimmy G’s shoulder at the paper.
“My two hardest workers,” the banquet chef, obviously being sarcastic, said to Bill as they entered the room.
On his initial tour through the kitchens on his first day, Bill had seen this room. It was empty, unoccupied and mostly dark. Now it was brightly lit. The line of sinks, deep ones, that had all been empty then were now all full. In each one were pans of broccoli set one on top of the next, one pan lengthwise, the next one laid across it. Cold water ran from each faucet cascading waterfall-like from the overflowing top pan on down and overflowing on down from every other pan.
Beyond that line of sinks was some space, then a partial waist-high wall with a break in it. Where it picked up, it ran waist-high to the room’s full back wall.
Beyond that small-wall was the line of stock pots, steam rising from the first two of them which were being tended to by kitchen stewards. Bill’s position as cook was higher up and much better paid than the stewards.
“We all set?” the banquet chef asked.
“All set,” Victor said. “Waiting on you.”
“Well, let’s go,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said.
The main kitchen was busy now. What was happening, Bill thought, was rather interesting. The different elements of the banquet crew that had been working in different locations were now coming together. Pantry women were making the salads and stewards were standing by to ladle on the salad dressing when the salads were dished-up. Vegetable men, three of them, had cut and panned the potatoes that would now be sautéed in onions and browned by the banquet cooks, the two Jimmies, Victor and Bill. Once browned in humongous roasting pans, the cheese sauce would be mixed in and the pans would be set into the rotary oven to bake. Those same vegetable men would drain the water from the broccoli and transport all those pans into the kitchen.
And then the fun would begin.
By Peter Weiss
So…
Forget politics and let’s talk human nature. Man is by nature selfish and greedy.
My first father-in-law said this repeatedly circa 1974, when I was a young hippie-liberal. Yes, believe it or not, I was that. I was young and idealistic and I believed in simple, basic things like treating people how you wanted to be treated. I believed in a more black-and-white sense of right and wrong and tended to judge things that way. I believed in basic human decency, in the notion that some sense of fairness won out in the end. I believed in live-and-let-live, and most important, I believed that hard work and perseverance were the keys to succeeding.
Oh, to be young, naïve and idealistic once again!
But no. That won’t be happening anytime soon.
Since those days let’s see… I’ve been screwed a few times by lawyers, several times by cops and judges (only regarding traffic and parking tickets), a couple of times by real estate agents/people, bosses and big systems/bureaucracies.
Or, as it goes, I’ve had a normal life, one in which I’ve come to believe that by and far most people are pretty much like me, normal, regular people who just want to live their lives and be left alone to do so. Most people try to do the best they can, do the best job they can at work, and inside themselves they care about others and want for others the same as they want for themselves, being left alone to enjoy their lives.
That’s kind of the American promise/the American dream.
That’s most people’s, I think, big picture.
That’s the real duty of our government, as I see it. We elect our representatives to keep us safe, to protect our civil rights and to ensure our being able to enjoy the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It’s somewhere herein that our politicians, and at this point in time most particularly the Despicable Democrats, have lost sight of the big picture, have lost their way. It starts with that they are now not elected representatives, but are instead members of a political class. This class is the American Politburo, a class of people who sit above all others and rule others as they see fit. They have personal agendas and basically do not care anymore what their constituents think so long as their staying elected and in office is not in jeopardy. They lie, they cheat, they commit crimes for which they expect us to pay the settlements, and yes they enjoy different and better benefits than the rest of us.
This American Politburo is made up of more than 60% millionaires. Many of them started as normal people financially who have parlayed their political positions to become multi-millionaires on just a basic salary of about $175,000 per year.
Go figure!
Yes. Many of my young-day ideals have been shattered. Man is by nature selfish and greedy. Look at any of the Despicable Democrat American Politburo politicians! They’ve not only lost sight of the big picture for most Americans, but they’re actively working on destroying it.
By Peter Weiss
So we’re missing the point. We, as the American people should be getting the point, but seems as if we’re missing it.
In the kitchens, especially for parties and banquets, you want to get what you pay for. So if you’re having a special day, maybe one of the most special in your life, you want it to be just that. If the cooks in the kitchen are fighting with the chef over a union issue as to who is supposed to do what, you don’t want that to interfere with your special day. You don’t want to hear that the first course of your meal is being delayed due to a problem in the kitchen. Your day is your priority. Their problem is not your problem.
In its myopic, partisan view, the Democrats have lost sight of the big picture. The American people are paying for them to accomplish certain things. They are not paying for them to have a food fight. Yet since the election of this president, that’s all the Democrats have accomplished, a major food fight. And in reality, when you look at it on TV, it is no better than a high school food fight in the cafeteria. The only difference is that what’s being thrown is words, not actual food.
The big picture has to do with world status and standing, with military might, with economics, with maintaining peace and taking care of the American citizens.
The Democrats seem to have forgotten this. If you actually listen to what they say, they spew the most racist statements rather blatantly these days. Change one word in what they say about who is one the stage for the next debate and what they say would be totally unacceptable.
They defy the law yet spew garbage about no one being above the law. Nancy herself supports sanctuary cities and sanctuary cities defy federal law. Most egregious of all this is that on our dime they are ripping the very cores of our government system right out from under us.
In order to effect their hyperbolic idiocy, they laud dictators and socialists who have killed hundreds of thousands of people. They decry discrimination and assert free speech, yet they can’t come to a resolution against Anti-Semitism or curb their violent left-wing supporters from stopping conservative speakers on college campuses.
Nope. The Democrats have lost sight of the big picture. They’ve lost sight of America, of what it is, what it represents. They’ve lost sight of who they represent, and all in the name of getting and keeping power, nothing more.
How crass!
The American people are the most generous people in the world. America is the only super power that has not used its might to attempt to take over the world. Instead it supports, by way of its capitalist system, most of the charitable endeavors in the world, leads the world in medical research and aid to other countries and champions human rights.
In their three-year quest to get rid of a duly-elected president by any means necessary for nothing more than a power-grab, the Democrats have lost sight of what America is, can be and should be and they have done more to assist Vladimir Putin in his efforts to interfere in America that he could have ever hoped for.
In their tunnel vision, the Democrats have lost sight of the big picture.
By Peter Weiss
These particular roasting pans were not too heavy. Jimmy loaded pans from one end, Bill from the other, shelf by shelf. These shelves took four pans lengthwise, two apiece. After each shelf was loaded the door was closed and the oven rotated so an empty shelf sat in place. Each time they did this, Jimmy Banquet Chef showed Bill how to operate the controls. For the third rotation, he gave it over to Bill and he let Bill finish it out so that by the time all the pans were in Bill had mastered it.
“Twenty minutes,” the banquet chef said. “Ten minutes and we turn them. Then ten more on the downside. Then we set the temperature to 350. While these cook, we’ll check on Victor and Jimmy. They should have the vegetables set up. Then we’ll all do the potatoes and set them in the oven for the last forty-five minutes. At 12:15 we set up for dish-up, and 12:30 we start plating the food. By then we’ll have a full complement of stewards, pantry people and other food handlers. One-thirty and we’ll all be chilling.
So they waited ten minutes by Jimmy’s watch and repeated the pattern. Bill stood on one end, Jimmy Banquet Chef on the other. Shelf by shelf, pan by pan, tenderloin by tenderloin, they turned the meat using a kitchen fork which they slid underneath the beef so as not to puncture it. When they were done, Jimmy Banquet Chef watched Bill set the temperature down to 350 and then he showed him how to set the alarm, which they set for ninety minutes.
Done.
They cleaned up, straightened up, slapped a high-five. “Before we go over to them,” the banquet chef said, “come with me.”
Jimmy Banquet Chef led Bill over to the room where they kept the kitchen utensils, knives, kitchen forks, spatulas and sharpening steels. “I put some away for you,” he said to Bill. “Every Wednesday night you give the knives to me. Every Thursday when you come in, you pick them up from me. I’m putting my mark on them so no one will touch them.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” Bill said.
“You have no idea what comes in here pretending to be a cook,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “We get one like you, well, you’re like gold. Even if you don’t stay away from Millie, you’ll be okay.”
“Listen,” Bill said, “I don’t have anything with Millie. I haven’t done anything to encourage her. Nothing. And I’ve made it clear I’m married.”
“Lucky you,” the banquet chef said. “I’m married too and I’d take a turn if I could.”
Bill didn’t say anything to that. He followed Jimmy into the room where all the house knives were. In that room was just about any knife a cook could want, lots and lots of knives, all different kinds, all different sizes, all different makes. But pretty much they were like the house bowling balls in a bowling alley, different sizes, weights and colors all with different grips which might or might not be okay for your hand. In general, you could try them all and never find one which was just right for you.
Jimmy led Bill to a double-door metal cabinet that was locked with a padlock. Standing there with Bill, he went through the keys on his kitchen key ring, found the right one and opened the lock, then the cabinet.
“Those are the chef’s knives,” Jimmy said. He pointed to a complete set of knives on the top shelf inside the cabinet. “And these are mine,” he said. His knives were on the second shelf, directly under the chef’s knives. “Pick whatever you want from the rest.”
By Peter Weiss
It’s pretty clear we’ve been missing the big picture in America for a very long time. This impeachment thing is simply one of the end results of a pattern in the big picture that we’ve been missing.
It doesn’t pay to talk much about the impeachment. Right or wrong, it is already predetermined and a foregone conclusion. If they allow history to actually be studied and told without bias, in the end it will have been one of the worst things that any party ever could have done to America.
In today’s climate it’s doubtful that we will ever have a real, true, clear picture of what has been going on for a very long time. And that which has been going on for a very long time escalated and was unchecked throughout the Obama years. That in and of itself speaks to the real racism in America. The only reason Obama went unchecked was the color of his skin. Not treating him as any other president because he was a black man speaks to the real nature of the racism in America today.
The liberal movement has been going on since the beginnings of the 1900s, which would make it nearly 100 years give or take. Liberals have run the major cities in America for the last 60 to 75 years, and they have run them all into the ground. They have, in their liberal movement, which they like to call progressive because they pride themselves on being more forward and more savvy than all the rest of us, fought the war on poverty since about 1965, which makes it 54 years, or 55 if you want to count us into 2020. They have spent about twenty-three trillion dollars in today’s dollars and have just about not moved the poverty rate or changed the demographics of poverty in America.
Well, that’s quite a record.
That’s the background.
The big picture is that along the way and all this time we’ve developed a full-time, long-standing political class, a group of people whose only job is to get reelected, a group of people now more than 60% comprised of millionaires. Or we have developed along the way a Politburo, the American Politburo, people who claim to be our leaders but who are clearly in it to enrich themselves and their families and for the powers, protections and perks they are privy to as elected officials.
The big picture is that along the way and all this time we’ve developed a full-time, now 24/7, biased media, continually referred to here as Pravda USA. This media has always been left-leaning, but until the Obama years was mostly, and for the greater part, relatively fair and relatively unbiased.
For some reason, and it’s no secret that mostly it was the color of Obama’s skin that did it, this media became an arm, an appendage, an extension of the liberal Democrat party. Remember the thrill up whomever it was’ leg? Well, under Obama the media failed to do its job. It failed to act as a free press. It stopped reporting on anything negative the Democrat party did (and does). Since the election of President Trump it has even stopped attempting and/or pretending to be unbiased.
So there’s something going on in America, a bigger picture that somehow is hidden by the continual cover-up of anything negative done by the Democrats, their leftist wing and their supporters like, oh, say groups like black lives matter. It is a bigger picture of communist-like tactics perpetrated by those who present themselves as freedom-democracy fighters and who have that narrative continually broadcast by a biased Pravda-like media.
The big picture is that when left unchecked by an unbiased free press, a political party is free to present itself as they wish while they undermine and wantonly destroy the very core of our country.
The big picture is very far from what they would have you see. And we are on very dangerous ground.
By Peter Weiss
Well, like it or not, the image was there. Yes. There it was. No going around it, no dismissing it. There it was in all its glory, Millie’s privates with a small triangle of trimmed, shaped black hairs right above it.
Millie was unshy, unabashed, clearly proud of what was there.
Flashback to Marie. Yes. Crackhead-like Marie, skinny, bony, hyper and wild. She’d chased Bill then like Millie was now. Except then he wasn’t actually married, so he wasn’t actually cheating. Then, Henry Lee pushed her on him, for want of a better word. Then, it was easier to just do it than it was to continue to resist.
Looking back, despite its hassles, and it had plenty of hassles, he couldn’t say it wasn’t fun. He couldn’t say it wasn’t interesting or pleasurable or even exciting.
Was it worth it? He couldn’t say if it was or it wasn’t. In the long run, and in the scope of things, it was neither here nor there, or in his own more crass terms, it didn’t mean shit to a train.
It was. It simply was.
And Millie? SSDD. Same shit, different day. Different girl, different place, different situation. Same shit.
So he stowed away his clean uniform in his locker. Now he had three clean uniforms all nicely starched and in his size. He closed and locked the locker and headed off upstairs to the main kitchen.
Jimmy Banquet Chef was waiting for him by the service elevator. Well, he wasn’t actually waiting for him per se. He was standing by the elevator when Bill walked out. He had one foot up against the wall he was leaning on and he was smoking a cigarette.
“Kalimera,” he said, seeing Bill.
“Kalimera,” Bill said.
“You ready?” the banquet chef asked.
“Sure,” Bill said.
Jimmy dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it beneath his work boot. “Let’s go,” he said. “We got thirty-five tenderloins to roast. I already have them set up.”
Sure enough, all over the counters/tables by the rotary oven were roasting pans inside of which were four whole beef tenderloins evenly spaced. Each one was trimmed and tied by the butchers downstairs in the butcher shop.
“Jimmy G and Victor are defrosting the broccoli. We’ll check them out after we get these inside. I already got the oven heating up to 500.”
Bill was not flabbergasted. He was not awed. It was a lot, for sure, and a routine that was new to him. But he’d done volume cooking before, just not this much all at once.
Jimmy Banquet Chef pointed to a bain marie filled with cooking oil in which sat a long handled brush, a kitchen/cooking brush very similar to an artist’s half-inch or inch wide paintbrush.
“That one’s yours,” he said. “And those are yours,” he said pointing to a whole section of the roasting pans with tenderloins in them. “Brush them with oil then salt-and-pepper them generously.” He picked up his own bain marie and held it in hand. “Start at the end, I’ll meet you in the middle.”
And so they both began oil painting. Tenderloin by tenderloin, pan by pan, they painted and then salted and peppered the meat. While they were working a loud alarm sounded. Bill knew that the big monster rotary oven had reached 500°.
By Peter Weiss
Day 3. Banquet Day 1 for Bill.
Bill got in a little early. The feel of everything was different, from the traffic pattern to the parking situation which was a little tricky since there were two trucks he had to get around in order to get where there was an out-of-the-way place to situate his car for the day. The position of the sun in the sky was different as was the feel of the morning air.
Inside, he found the security guard and time-clock men were different too. He hadn’t expected that but it didn’t matter much. He knew what to do, said good morning to security and walked right up to the time-card window and told the man his number. No one said anything to him and Bill didn’t think much of their silence either way. In time he would come to know them, they would come to know him, they would establish a simple, cordial working relationship.
First stop was his locker. He picked out his dirty uniform and headed over to the laundry. Millie was waiting for him, a little too eagerly, he thought. Only his third day at work here and already “everyone” knew about him and Millie, except there was no him and Millie, there was just Millie who was being outright annoying.
Pink. Millie was all pink. That’s what Bill saw. She wore a pink uniform with the top three buttons open so Bill could see her cleavage, what little there was of her skinny self. Her hair was down today and hung about her shoulders. She wore pink lipstick, had pink nails and made sure when she fetched his clean uniform that he saw her pink toenails.
“I knew you were in early today, baby,” she said. “The banquet chef told me. He told me to make sure you always get the best uniforms, you know, best pressed and starched in your size. For you, baby, anything. And I do hope you know that anything means anything, literally.”
“Millie…” he started, but from over the counter she reached her hand to his lips to stop him from saying whatever it was he was going to say.
“Listen, love,” she said. “He told me you were a great cook and he doesn’t want to lose you. And he told me that like everyone who starts out you’re on probation for ninety days. So he told me if I really like you, and you know I do baby, to be cool till your probation’s over. I remember I was on probation once. But then there was no one here like you.”
“It’s nice you feel the way you do,” Bill said.
“But…” Millie said. “Go ahead, what’s the but?”
“But is that I’m married.”
“I can see that,” Millie said. “I see your ring.”
“So…”
“So what?” Millie said. “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t even want to go out with you, or date you. Get the idea?”
“I got the idea,” Bill said. “I’m not dense.”
“Well I know you’re not dense. Word is that you’re a college graduate.”
“Yeah. Well let me tell you something. Just because you’re a college grad doesn’t mean you’re smart. Still though, I’m not dense.”
“Well then,” Millie said, just eighty-seven more days.” She smiled at Bill. “Meanwhile,” she said and ever-so-quickly with absolutely no warning, she lifted her uniform dress and flashed Bill a look not at her panties because she wasn’t wearing any. She flashed him a look at her privates, her privates in all their glory.
“Just a little something for you to think about, a little picture for your mind.” She smiled again and just as quickly let the dress down and smoothed it over her. “Just eighty-seven days,” she said.
By Peter Weiss
It’s all pretty interesting. In the end, when all is said and done, history will show, if by that time they will still be allowing history to be told, that Obama and those within his administration launched the Russia probe which branded Trump as a Russian agent. It will also show that the Obama administration and those within it, in accordance with Hillary Clinton, the DMC and the full blessings of the Democratic Party, created the divided America that is now so pervasive, that is now used to brand Trump as they do.
History will also show, if they don’t erase it, that a biased media which turns out to be no better (and perhaps even much worse since it portends to be free and unbiased) than Pravda, a media currently referred to here as Pravda USA, aided and abetted the Obama administration, the Clinton campaign and the Clintons overall as well as the DMC and the Democratic Party in orchestrating and perpetuating a false narrative portraying Donald Trump as the divider-in-chief, as a racist, a bigot and a Hitler-like dictator.
The narrative, of course, and anything even approaching it, is absolutely false.
So what does this mean? That is the real question.
On one level, it means that America has come to a crossroad and the direction it travels in from here is a true test of our democracy.
Since our inception we’ve prided ourselves on the nature of our democracy. We’ve insisted and lauded the true mark of our democracy as the peaceful transition of power every four years, from one president to the next.
Hillary Clinton, in her brazen and hypocritical persona, asked then-candidate Trump if he would accept the results of the election.
Well, ain’t that a kick in the head?
Have the Democrats accepted it or have they done everything in their power, again aided and abetted by a Pravda-like biased media, to accomplish that which Vladimir Putin wanted, which is to influence and effect the American elections?
So what does it mean? What does all this mean?
It means at this crossroad we are being tested as Americans.
That is, to be clear, what do we really want? Do we want truth? Do we want a full, fair investigation and understanding of who we are and what we are as Americans and as a country? Or do we want a narrative rammed down our throats by professional politicians, the American Politburo, who sit above us regular people, not amongst us, and who do nothing more but that which solidifies their positions as the wealthiest of the wealthy?
Interestingly, the choices are clear. Red pill, blue pill? Truth or delusion? Reality or fiction?
If we choose the blue pill scenario, we live out The Hunger Games vision, or for those of you who like the zombies stuff, we live out the Resident Evil vision. Or maybe The Walking Dead.
If we choose the red pill, we take a real, unprejudiced look at what’s been going on and why. This includes a true examination and real portrayal of the Obama years, not one censored through the lens of his skin-color, which in and of itself is the real mark and true nature of the current racism in America.
So we are at the crossroad.
As always, the warning here is ever the same: be careful which way you turn.
As we move toward impeachment with only 11 months until an election whereby people can speak their minds, what is it that you want for America?
