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a basket of chicken, especially during a dinner rush. Besides that, most customers wanted
to cut all the bull crap, order, and get out with their chicken, cole slaw, and biscuits.
Second I learned to make side orders. The big secret was the recipe for cole
slaw because if it weren't for the cole slaw then our customers would probably have
gone to our competition. The recipe for cole slaw was a short list of ingredients: one box
of cabbage, two large onions, three to four carrots, and two bags of sauce. The sauce was
the secret, and even the boxes carrying the bags to the restaurant listed no ingredients.
I'm not sure even Thelma knew what was in it, only that it should be prepared a certain
way.
Making cole slaw requires mounting a large shredder on the industrial sized
mixer (which normally combines the mashed potato powder with the hot water). The
vegetables are no less than quartered. The cabbage is the green kind, but most of the time
I was employed it was off season so the cabbage was white. The carrots are not skinned
of the brown stuff I'd normally peel off at home. There is supposed to be some order, a
few heads of cabbage, then one carrot, then half an onion, then repeat until all is gone,
but everyone made it their own way when Thelma wasn't there. When all the vegetables
were shredded the two large plastic bags of cole slaw sauce were poured onto the
vegetables. Then, because the only spoon in the whole place was used for the baked
beans, I put my hands in plastic gloves to play with the mixture until the white sauce
covered the vegetables.
Biscuits were simple and the only side order which didn't have a particular
way it was supposed to be done, even though the method only mattered when Thelma
was present. Place twelve frozen puck-like objects on a cookie sheet and place it in the
timed oven, another pre-packaged, pre-frozen item with unknown ingredients. I could
have all the biscuits I wanted, even when I wasn't on break. I would sit on the back
counter where I prepared side orders and eat biscuits with strawberry jelly. I loved the
biscuits, soft in the middle, hard and crispy on the outside but nothing my teeth couldn't
get through it. I could guess as to what the ingredients were, the main being butter.
Except for the chicken, everything else was heat, ntix, and serve, but I wasn't
responsible for chicken. It was cooked in vats full of grease. In it's former state the grease
was a block of white lard, that is until the heat was applied and the lard became like
syrup on hot sausages. The chicken was dipped and breaded, then greased until it was
no longer raw.
One night Javier pulled some green chicken out of the fridge.
"Hey, come here. Does this smell bad?"
"It's green, I'm not going to smell it."
"But it looks bad to you?" My answer was insignificant.
"Cocinas este polio, Marcelas."
He called me to the back later.
"Can I still sell this?"
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