It was one of those nights you can’t plan for; you just tighten your belt, grit your teeth and plow ahead.

It started when my prep cook called in sick earlier in the day, and so I adjusted my prep schedule to get a few more things done before my afternoon break. But when my sous chef called saying he was throwing up, that left me to get the whole list finished.

So I 86’d a few menu items and simplified the options a bit, enlisted one of my assistant managers to help out in the kitchen, and when the first ticket chattered off the printer at 6:01pm, it was do or die time.

Orders kept pouring in and it took a while for my crew to get our feet underneath us, and consequently our ticket times were a little longer than I would like.

The point of the last 13 posts was two-fold. One was to give my reader a glimpse into how a restaurant kitchen works and its many details that need to be accomplished in order to make service. The second, however, was for my observance.

My initial undergrad training was in exercise science, and part of that included fitness assessment and exercise prescription. To aid in losing weight, I would have clients do a food inventory of everything they put in their mouth for a 7 day period, be it a hamburger, stick of gum, candy bar, carrot stick, whatever. If you ate it, write it down, and we would look at it together.