I was under the impression and education of books and colleagues that minced beef was just the English term for what North Americans call ground beef.  But lately my intrigue in figuring out why my minced beef seems to be so strange to cook, stay pink in the center, and not quite taste exactly like any ground or minced beef I have ever tasted has led me to ask you, the reader, what’s in your minced beef?

Here’s what’s in mine ~

*Beef, water, (ok so far) breadcrumbs, soy, salt, fermented rice (WHAT?!), pepper

Well we have finally done it!  We have the cheese, extra pans, time, and oven space all at the same time so now we can finally get a ‘Pizza! Day’ underway…

Last Friday night we had pizza on the menu and I made sure I had enough crusts not to run out!  We make our own crust and par bake them beforehand, freeze them till we need them, then pull them just hours before we use them.

Another excellent way to try and get that ‘pizza oven’ quality crust is to take & make the par baked crusts into a pizza by adding sauce and all the toppings you want then use a peel, tray, or rack to slide your pre made pizzas into the oven.  But don’t put them on pans!  Cook them directly on the racks of a preheated oven…makes for a great crispy and chewy crust.

If you have steam wells or heated chafing dish holders (or more commonly known as a buffet line) we cut the pizzas and slid them on the chafing dish lids.  Because then you can put the sliced pizzas directly over the heat source without making the pizza soggy by actually putting them in chafing dishes.  Another good tip is to slide the pizza off of the peel, tray, and/or rack (after taking it out of the oven) slide it straight onto your stainless steal table and quickly cut it with a cheap round wheel cutter, then slide it back on the lid.  You can use a cutting board if you want, because I know some would argue dulling the pizza cutter or damaging the table (its stainless steel commercial quality, you aren’t going to damage this table.  We clean/disinfect the table before getting started and at the rate we cut and slide pizzas back on the lids your going to have a hard time with that cutting board staying in place or slowing down the ‘flow’ of the work.  Plus we have found cutting fresh pizza on the table with a cheap round pizza cutter has the highest success of a ‘full’ cutting at ‘top’ speeds.

Pizzas done in 10 minutes at 350 Fahrenheit.

The way we come up with these creative ideas that work is by thinking beyond ‘this is how we used to do it’  and/or  ‘we can’t do it because we don’t have the proper equipment’ …you would be amazed how much we do with what we have.  And each one on our Galley team has contributed to ideas that have become possible.

Couple of delicious pictures for you to think about…

Our elevators that run food and dishes between the dining room (one deck below) and the galley was having some major issues.  The main issue being the sliding doors behind the opening door to the dumbwaiters were getting stuck and malfunctioning.

During service (putting the food out for a meal) one of our carts got jammed between the floors in the dumbwaiter.  Below are pictures of the damage…AND a very good reason for people not to play with equipment.  You know those people who always thinks its fun to squeeze into an elevator that’s not supposed to carry people, then jump out at the other end and say BOO?

This cart was fairly new, and the elevators seem to go fairly slow (they only travel between two floors) and it seemed to crumple it up pretty bad.  Look especially at the handle.

I was reminded today by a question/comment form that was filled out, that it has been a long time since we have had Spaghetti with meat sauce or bolognese.

In an earlier post this year I talked about weevils (here and here) and how they are damaging all our grain products. They were so far advanced in the actual spaghetti noodles that it was creating gray ‘dust’ where they once fed on the whole pasta.

2 Months ago we had select pasta left.

1 Month ago we had no pasta left except for Couscous and Rice Noodles.

I wish we would hurry up and get our pasta we ordered. Its coming on a future container. I am ready for some spaghetti as well as all those other pasta shapes and dishes we will be able to once again created weevil free!

Some people who don’t know any better will buy this taco sauce and think, ‘Man those Americans eat the nastiest stuff’ (because I have only seen this stuff in Europe). This IS NOT anything similar to our Taco Sauce except maybe that it has some tomato product in it.

On another ship I worked on they ruined ‘Mexican Night’ by putting this stuff out. Everyone would come along and heap it up on their delicious nachos, tacos, burritos, enchiladas…or whatever and then it would just ruin the taste of the dish.

On this ship we specifically asked for NONE of this, but somehow they managed to squeeze it on our container again. But thankfully its not that much and we just put it out at mealtimes as a ‘condiment’ not taco sauce.

Maybe you are thinking, ‘What’s so bad about it?’ well lets just look inside the ingredients list and see…

First it starts of like a simple syrup, sugar first then water. Then, uh-oh, it looks like we are starting to build a sweet BBQ sauce (vinegar, tomato paste, paprika, salt). And then…what the heck is all this stuff? I can make taco sauce from stewed tomatoes out of a can tastier and with way less ingredients than this, and certainly NOT using all those particular ingredients.

Whats even funnier is that further down the label it says,

‘Pictures do not reflect ingredients of this product’

(emphasis mine).

They seriously need to quite insulting people worldwide by calling it ‘taco sauce’.

Blah…

My storeman, Freddie (from Ghana), goes to town weekly (in Monrovia, Liberia) and also arranges food purchases from the Chandler (its like a ‘buy everything you want’ contact man for ships in port). And Freddie has turned up some interesting things about the ‘fresh’ produce and eggs we get and I thought you might be interested in them:

1. Eggs are from India

2. What looks like Roma Tomatoes are reported to be from the Ivory Coast

3. Potatoes are from Holland (and are supposedly the ones Holland won’t keep)

4. Still trying to figure out where my carrots come from but I don’t get enough of them at one time, and when I do its a month apart. The ones we get locally are almost black on the outside (so theres no question as to whether you are going to peel them). And when we get the ‘once a month’ carrots they come in plastic looking real nice like they were hijacked on the way to someones grocery store where they pay a lot of money for them.

5. Occasionally we can ‘acquire’ some sweet or bell peppers (like once since January) at a very expensive rate even compared to U.S. or European standards. But we buy them when available, the crew (our people) are worth it.

SO, how fresh do you think my ‘fresh’ produce really is? Hmmm, and the potatoes are old (believe me, I think I can tell by now) and you loose about a third or more of the content after peeling and cutting out green, black, and/or rotten spots. And that takes A LOT OF TIME FOR 400+ people, but we can save that for another post that way I can introduce you to my industrial strength potato peeler!

Where I get my fresh produce, and where we are…are sometimes worlds apart.

From time to time the kitchen thins out, and I mean thin like stretching.

We have some important guests coming from the states, a pastors conference, and a few other events that will be happening on board in the coming weeks.  And during this time the galley will need to do its daily job feeding the crew and keep up with visitors, special requests, functions, and a few other meals.

This is not so bad, except that right now we have two rotating cooking teams (and thats normal) with only 2 cooks on each one (thats not normal).

This is what the cooking teams ‘look’ like right now: 1 Team Leader (cook), 1 Cook (or assistant cook), 2 salad prep, 1 baker, and 1 dishwasher…and yes, we are still feeding 400+ (approximately).  And of course I cook and help out where needed.

As Chief Cook (my title right now, it changes to Galley Manager) its my job to run the kitchen and to work with both cooking teams as they are on a rotation (2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off - thats a 2 week schedule) working long days, 10 1/2 to 12 hours and maybe more if there are special events or functions.  These days are long physically and mentally draining  and most of our workers are new to food service(and some are new to working this hard).

The most amazing thing is that these people are volunteers, people who have given their time (crew fees & insurance) to come help the less fortunate.  You know what else?  They will probably never get direct credit for helping out the people we try to serve in these countries and medical situations.  Why not?  Because we are behind the scenes, and thats where some of us are happy to stay…and because we support and build the framework for keeping the body (organizationally and physically) fed!

I don’t really know why people would come to do this specifically in food service…dedication, passion, compassion, sympathy, because they can, etc…???  Or maybe their just willing to do it wherever they are placed and can be of help/service to keep the body strong and support in whatever way possible.

Its easier to realize why I do it, this is my background, my passion.  And who wouldn’t want to really feel and/or be able to make a difference?

But really its because I’m crazy.  There I said it.  I feel better.