A Weekly Serving – 1/15/2011

What a week. It was a full and busy week with nearly 60+ hours working at the restaurant to gear up for our soft opening… but it didn’t quite end up as planned. Instead, I’m thankful to even be here typing up another blog post to share. More on that later but here’s what I did post the past week…

Here’s what I cooked up in the kitchen this past week…

Grilled Chicken Flatbread

Normally I’d link to blogs and recipes that caught my eye, but with my work schedule, it’s made it nearly impossible to read fellow food blogs. I’ll probably include links again when my schedule allows more leisure time to read!

My weekly musings on Family, Food and Fun…

Family – With the many hours I put in at the restaurant this week, I’ve missed my family so much. At times, I wondered how long I can maintain this type of schedule. But thankfully, this is just the crunch time before our opening. I’m grateful my family understands and has given me so much support to pursue my dream job. It’s also allowed me to cherish the time I have with both my husband and son even more than I used to. This week, Joel reached his 36th week… crazy how fast time flies. In fact, here’s a picture of me when I was pregnant at 34 weeks. A little over a week later, I gave birth to Joel at 35 weeks and 4 days. We were able to take him home after spending a week in the NICU and below is a pic of him at 2 weeks old. I’m so truly blessed he continues to grow and develop into such a smart and handsome little man!

 

 

Food/Restaurant News – This past week we were slinging our dishes in the kitchen like nobody’s business! After nailing our recipes and ingredient ratios the previous weeks, we spent the entire week preparing our menu and focusing on presentation. We took pictures of nearly all our menu items, which you can view here on our Facebook Page. We have roughly 40+ menu items including our desserts. So then, we get to Friday night. Friday, we prepared a great deal of dishes, which we served to close friends and business associates. We had just finished cooking in the kitchen and brought out our last dessert to the group. It was a fabulous time…. a time where we all felt confident, ready and anxious for our upcoming soft opening scheduled on Tuesday, January 18th. But all that was short lived. Without getting into too many details, we noticed smoke coming from the kitchen. It was a grease fire and a very bad one at that. We have considerable damage to the kitchen as well as parts of the grocery and dining room. Right now, we’re currently looking at the restaurant being closed for a couple of week, perhaps a month.

There’s so much that has to be done to be back up to code so it’s been a great learning experience. I’m so thankful that no one was hurt and it could have been much much worse with far more horrible circumstances. This fire has served as a perfect eye opener for our staff and we’re clearly going to do some extensive training on fire safety, kitchen safety, cleaning and sanitation standards, equipment auditing and inventory auditing, etc. The whole nine yards and then some.

So our soft opening scheduled on Tuesday won’t be happening but we greatly appreciate your support despite the fact. Instead, we’ll be focusing on a big Grand Opening in the next few weeks once we’re back in business. It’s a slight relief and blessing we’ll have more time to focus on our opening to ensure everything is where it needs to be, both in the front and back of the house. This is the fresh start many of our long time employees needed. If you have any vibes for a speedy recover to get things up and running sooner than planned, they’ll be greatly appreciated!

Fun – All the fun I had this week was really while I was working in the kitchen. The person responsible for a lot of my smiles and laughs in the kitchen is Ray, my culinary partner in crime…