WEDNESDAY 7 JUNE – MONDAY 12 JUNE     LITCHFIELD

These were mostly routine days, occasionally enlivened by the shenanigans of boss 1.

One morning, I turned up in the kitchen at the usual 8am. He was there and called M in from her usual tasks, because he had decided to dismantle and clean the stove and oven. So we both had to scrub away at the rather revoltingly dirty parts, while our normal morning work waited. It put us both behind for the rest of the day, and I didn’t finish until 6.45pm. On well, at least on an hourly rate, he was paying for it!

That boss, when he cooked the fish poached in cream and garlic, for evening meals, had a bad habit of letting the cream boil up out of the pan, all over the stove. He never cleaned it up, but left it for whoever happened upon it, next morning. As M had gotten into the habit of cleaning up the kitchen, first thing, ready for the coming day, this was usually her.

Another morning, he told M to clean something that involved the use of heavy duty bleach, which he informed her was on the top shelf of the store room. She went to get it down – and the top had not been screwed on, just rested on the top. Bleach spilled all down her front. Fortunately, most of it went on her apron – my green one – which was thus rather ruined. She was convinced that he had done it deliberately. Had it gone on her face, would have been extremely nasty.

There was a bit of a cat and mouse game going on between them. M would stand up to his tactics and tackle him back, so she was a challenge for him! A couple of days after she had started work, he came storming over to where she was working, telling her the fern baskets along the front of the cafe were wilting, and why hadn’t she watered them? She replied that no-one had told her that was part of her work, and now that he had bothered to do so, she would, in future, water them. Challenge on.

I had noticed for a while that the bulk pasta salad  was not very popular with diners – there was often a lot left, even after all the others had been used. So I decided to try making up a rice salad and see if that was better. Cleared it with boss 2, who said to go for it.

So I used boiled rice, put some orange juice on it while it was still hot, so this soaked in. Then put in peas, corn, chopped red capsicum and red onion, and dressed it with a little sesame oil. This was very well received, with M reporting that people were going back for seconds of it. Boss 1 was not happy about it when he got back for his duty turn, but by then it was a proven addition. From then on, I did not make the pasta salad, though he sometimes would.

It was a long weekend, so we were exceptionally busy. We sold a lot of cheesecake!