Challenges

I'm going to bed very late tonight. This is mainly because I found out a few hours ago that we're having brunch tomorrow. It's nobody's fault in particular that I never found out until tonight - just general breakdown of communication. Sadly enough I had already printed menus for tomorrow with the usual Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner hoopla. So, I had to reprint menus after figuring out what we'll serve at 10 am tomorrow morning. Since I was hoping to use the original menu for tomorrow on the next day, I had to refigure the whole day, but the frittata we already made is on both menus. Guess I'll reprint again.

Despite all my efforts to inform the passengers of what they'll be eating that day, it never fails that some seem to need to wait till the last minute to make special orders. Turns out we have three people with nut allergies instead of two (every week we have a manifest with nutrition requests and the like), a mushroom allergy we didn't know about, and at lunch today someone told us they couldn't eat chicken. No problem - that's why chefs always have back-up plans. Smoked salmon in the microwave became their entree. Our Gluten-Free passenger has special pastas we bought and breads and desserts that Angie has been making. We made her some Gluten-Free Apple Oat pancakes this morning. At dinner, the one lady who requested something other than King Crab or cranberry cornbread stuffed pork tenderloin got a special pasta primavera with tomato sauce, salami, chickpeas, and fresh basil. Turns out a couple other people wanted pasta at the last minute. That's why chefs tend to cook more than is needed. A couple of passengers can't have cream or butter, so before we add that stuff to anything, we pull some aside for them and do our best to make it tasty.

Feeding crew is sometimes as challenging. After the first two weeks I was informed that crew wasn't being sufficiently fed. So, with sixteen mouths to feed and twelve different schedules, tastes, appetites, etc. the solution has been to cook a seperate "crew chew" meal about an hour before meal times and have them hot and waiting in the hotbox. Then, in addition, we'll take all the leftovers after passengers are finished eating and make crew plates for anyone who wants to wait for something fancier than crew chew. So far crew chew has been stuff like spaghetti, tuna mac, leftover elk stew refurbished with veggies and potatoes, and beans and rice. Today we even made some frozen burritos. They loved them, though several asked for salsa. Sorry, no salsa today. Guess I'll buy some at the store next time I go.

Galley folks don't really tend to eat "meals"; we eat cookies, peanut butter cups, chips, cereal, and of course end up taking tastes of everything all day long. We drink a lot of water and caffeine, or anything that is in front of our face. We bought chocolate milk since our captain for the next two weeks is very fond of it, so I've indulged in about a half gallon in the last three days. Chocolate milk is definitely my biggest and best vice.

Crew wanders down when they're hungry or when they're told to, depending on their relative rank. Expedition Leaders are usually only free to eat when the guests are eating, so we try to take good care of them. No matter how hard we try though, seems like every couple of days we'll decide we can finally throw something out, only to find out a bit later that someone never came down for food. P B and J time for them. But, as they're all busy working their own jobs, we do try to accomodate as much as possible.

Between the special orders and the gastronomic whims of the crew, we stay on our toes all the time. It's hard for me to imagine anyone ever going hungry, but I'm literally surrounded by food all day long. With all this stress, I impagine we'll soon be breaking into that huge bag of candy I bought in Juneau. Smarties are gourmet, aren't they?