I was a teenage short order cook
Yes I was. Not a line cook, but still a professional food preparer. I had this job toward the end of my first stint at UCSC, when I was still kind of floundering around realizing I was not actually going to make it as a dance major and suffering huge emotional trauma from breaking up with my first serious long-term relationship. Even though, looking back on it, that was just a lucky escape for me. (The relationship ending, I mean.)
As far as the cooking goes, I worked at the club house at Pasatiempo golf course. It was nice getting onto the golf course grounds, which were always green and cool in the morning. I don't know if the restaurant was open for dinner or not, but I always worked breakfast and lunch. Days of my youth -- sometimes I would walk to work from my room in Santa Cruz, sometimes I would hitchhike up Highway 17. I hitchhiked a lot back then, and had some pretty hairy episodes, but that' s another story.
Walking would take me up Graham Hill Road to the back entrance of the golf course, hitching would leave me at the front -- either way I had a good hike up the hill of the course itself. The clubhouse had a really nice view across Santa Cruz and over the Monterey Bay, but of course I spent almost all my time in the kitchen.
I remember learning how to flip eggs in a saucepan. I still have the scar where I cut the tip off my finger while slicing hard boiled eggs. I sliced across an artery(a small one) and the blood spurted out rhythmically with my pulse (not that much of it). No ER, just a bandage and back to work. Apart from that, it's pretty vague. I liked my job, and I don't really remember why I quit. I was not so crazy about the owners -- a married couple with a preteen son, not so compatible with my 70s hippie antiauthoritarian self. I got that job through the unemployment office, by the way, but what was I doing at the unemployment office when I was still a student?
Enough rambling down memory lane.
As far as the cooking goes, I worked at the club house at Pasatiempo golf course. It was nice getting onto the golf course grounds, which were always green and cool in the morning. I don't know if the restaurant was open for dinner or not, but I always worked breakfast and lunch. Days of my youth -- sometimes I would walk to work from my room in Santa Cruz, sometimes I would hitchhike up Highway 17. I hitchhiked a lot back then, and had some pretty hairy episodes, but that' s another story.
Walking would take me up Graham Hill Road to the back entrance of the golf course, hitching would leave me at the front -- either way I had a good hike up the hill of the course itself. The clubhouse had a really nice view across Santa Cruz and over the Monterey Bay, but of course I spent almost all my time in the kitchen.
I remember learning how to flip eggs in a saucepan. I still have the scar where I cut the tip off my finger while slicing hard boiled eggs. I sliced across an artery(a small one) and the blood spurted out rhythmically with my pulse (not that much of it). No ER, just a bandage and back to work. Apart from that, it's pretty vague. I liked my job, and I don't really remember why I quit. I was not so crazy about the owners -- a married couple with a preteen son, not so compatible with my 70s hippie antiauthoritarian self. I got that job through the unemployment office, by the way, but what was I doing at the unemployment office when I was still a student?
Enough rambling down memory lane.
posted by Sarah at 2:04 PM
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