Busy, Busy

Another "Taste of Sam's" is over for another year. This year I'm pretty glad too. It seems like I got more fun out of it the past 2 years, but maybe I'm just being forgetful. It's always a lot of work, but this year we had a regional manager putting us through our paces. That definetly adds to the stress. We also had some disatifaction from the members. as well. Management changed the format this year, giving us only one event table and our Chef's Meal Solutions, with everything else being done with individual carts, just like a regular day. That's one complaint we heard from members, that it was nothing special like it's been other years. We also served pretty much the same things we do every weekend, very few of the fancy things we have other years. It may be that management didn't feel that people would be willing to spend for the special stuff. I'm sure they would have been willing to taste it though. We did have some good stuff for the Chef event though.

My first day, on Friday, I did what's called a roaming demo, where you take the food to the people, generally near the check out area with the idea of getting last minute sales from people. I served almonds, candied with a creme brulee flavor. It's very tasty. Of course, I probably walked ten miles on cement floors. At least, when I stand at my cart, I'm on a matt!

On Saturday, I got to play chef. My feet got a break, as they put the chef on a wooden platform, and we get matts too. It was a nice break for my feet, but somewhat frustrating. The new form for the chef event requires that we teach or demonstrate a cooking/serving technique and we don't serve continuously. We haven't got the membership quite trained yet. I cooked Frenched Rack of Lamb with asparagus. I had to cut the rack into chops, season and cook in olive oil. Actually, very simple. The asparagus had to be cut and trimed before hand, I must have cut up 15 pounds or more. I cooked that in olive oil with minced garlic, cracked pepper and salt, then added slices green olives. A little different taste, but good.

On Sunday, I was a "runner". I helped out with the things we were cooking in the kitchen and got them distributed to the other Demo people, I made sure everyone had enough supplies and helped keep the kitchen clean. I got pretty tired, but it was a break not having to worry about selling anything.

When I left the store, it was in a blizzard of slushy snow. It was coming from the north and, of course, I had parked on the north side of the building. My hair was soaked by the time I got to the car. Fortunately, the roads were mostly just wet until Standsbury Park, where they started to get slushy. By the time I hit Erda, it was getting slick. In Tooele, on main street, it was beginning to ice up. By the next day, the sun was shining! We're supposed to have good weather until Saturday. Of course,I work Saturday.