No way can it be time to get up yet. Nope, that's right 4:45. It's my first day of work in seven months. Why did I choose "cook at a cattle station" again? Oh right, food and accomodation included and no place to spend money. I stumble to the kitchen where lights and music (horrible top 40 pop music, no less) are already blaring.
Amelia, my boss, already has the meat cooking, and I get to do eggs. I'm cooking for 10 this morning, so I decide scrambled is the best way to go and do a whole dozen. Later I'm told, "Scrambled is for when you're trying to save eggs, so do half the number of eggs than people. Add some milk and really whisk them to get air in so they're really fluffy." Half an egg per person is piddly; I eat 3 eggs myself at home. Also, in my experience, people take more than one egg's worth when they're scrambled.
As everyone exits the kitchen, Amelia instructs me to make a cake for "smoko" (smoke break). "There should be recipes for cakes without butter in the book." Oh yea, we're out of butter. I panic as I look through the pantry, cold room, and store room and come up with no flour either. There is oatmeal, so I decide to improvise individual oatmeal in muffin tins. They explode almost immediately, so I choose undercooked rather than impossible mess and possibly no food if they completely bubbled over.
I get yelled at for thinking there was no flour since someone put it in the other cold room (I was not aware there was another cold room). But I did make something, so crisis averted.
People were in for lunch in about three groups. Ki-Vi is on her own. "So how late do you guys work?" "Dinner is at 7:00, so..." "That's a lot to expect out of people." "But time flies. I can't believe I've already had lunch!" My day is crawling, but I do admit that days and weeks did fly by after the first few panic-filled days.
That afternoon, I scour recipes left by former cooks and organize them into meals and desserts. I also start to organize the pantry and store room. We have a freezer full of mince (ground beef), some lamb chops, 10 kg plain flour, 10 kg self raising flour, 1 huge bag of potatoes, 2 huge bags of onions, 1 large box of apples, 1 large box of carrots, many cans of coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk, and some random cans of other food, but not much else. We weren't going to starve, but we had lots of similar meals until a big grocery trip was arranged and a "killer" done and aged.
For dinner, I cooked some mince (ground beef) and topped it with potatoes and carrots. It was beautiful; all the carrots and potatoes cooked (unlike many subsequent meals). There just wasn't enough for everyone; Dave had to eat leftovers. "Cook more food, lots more," I'm instructed.
By the time I finish dishes, it's 8:30 or 9:00. This may not sound late, but I soon made my lights-out time 9:00. It was another short night made even shorter by my anxiety keeping me awake thinking of what I had to do the next day.
