Kitchen Master

I arrive at 7:30. I leave at 2:45. 2000 people live on my Kibbutz. About 1000 eat in our cafeteria every day. 6 days a week. 1 meal per day. 50 tables. In the kitchen: 15 workers. 4 Ulpanists.The morning usually begins with vegetables. Tons of vegetables. We wash,, dice, slice, and prepare eggplants, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, beets and onions every day. Those are our staples. We use huge machines, clanking and whining while vegetables whirl through the blades. Arabic and Hebrew phrases are screamed from one end of the kitchen to the other. Samea, our boss screams “Lo!!!(No!)” at us, because one of us is always messing something up. I washed the mint leaves and they weren’t supposed to be washed. Pavlo works at the speed of a slug. Jonty doesn’t understand what they are yelling at him and Gisella just chops things at her own pace in her own world. We are quite a team. Sounds of Hebrew music drift through the kitchen, able to be heard when the growl of the machines isn’t deafening. We dance in our own little corners, knife in hand, well on our way to finishing the 25 pounds of tomatoes that need to be washed. The day is separated into three sections. Work till break. Work till lunch. Work after lunch till 3. I usually jam out to my ipod while slicing and dicing- though sometimes they put me in the meat section. Last time, I cried. I am not joking. For those of you who don’t know me, I usually don’t cry in public- not my style, but I was upset. The hunks of meat are thrown down on the table. They are huge. Last time, they tried to get me to cut up a huge cow back and that definitely didn’t work. 5 minutes later I threw the knife down and walked out. Then they put me with chicken. I deplumed chicken wings (is that a word?!?) for hours. Literally plucked the wings out of the chicken. I left with blisters all over my fingers from knife usage, mascara running, and hands that smelled like chicken for days. I will never eat another chicken wing again. I have yet to master my kitchen, or a chicken.