D-Day at TBC!

Big day in the TBC kitchen today as Nora is in France on some sort of birthday shindig and I was left in charge!  Bangers, mash, and onion gravy was the request of the day so yesterday picked up onions, 7.5 kilos of spuds, 3kilos of carrots and a couple of kilos of frozen peas from Sainsbury's and 80 bangers from Hayward's first thing this morning.  Well actually it was 70 bangers as I think Michelle had an early morning maths trauma.

9am saw me safely ensconced at my post peeling and chunking said potatoes and peeling and slicing said onions.  Do you know exactly how long it takes to prepare that much veg?  Bloody ages!  That's how long!

Anyway, whilst the spuds and carrots were cooking and the onions were frying for the gravy the help turned up.  Volunteers all!  So now the ship was ably crewed by the lovely Margaret, Betty and Wendy...not The Woo.  They set about clearing up the mess I had nonchalantly left lying around to prove that I had actually been grafting while I finished off the gravy and bunged the sausages in the oven.

A vat of stewed apples and a couple of jugs of custard later we were ready to start plating the grub...oh, not forgetting the addition of frozen peas to the carrots just to make it difficult for the one lady who separates peas out from whatever she is served to leave them defiantly on the side of her plate!  Got to keep the old people on their toes after all!

Conveyor belt style plating then in the warmer to await the starting pistol.  Catered for 40 but served 31 so not bad as it goes.  Got rid of the extra sausages and veg and (later) froze the mash to add to a cottage pie or something another time.  It's a tight budget so why throw stuff away, eh?

The only waste was about two inches of sludge at the bottom of a plastic bowl with lots of peas floating about in it.  I wonder where they came from?!?

The highlight of the day was washing up with three lovely, chatty ladies (dishwasher broken for the last week or so) and putting everything away so it's all nice and clean for Steve and me to mess up in the morning.  I'm helping him as he's been let down by the lady who was due to help him out...still, volunteers have lives too!

Enjoyed my time on the poop deck but looking forward to the steady hand of Nora at the helm next Tuesday.