Thursday, June 16, 2016

Fleshy Fungal Fruits

As I usually enter through the rear kitchen door and fleetingly glance into the restaurant at extremely busy or slow moments, it catches me off-guard how charming our little place is:




A truckload of flowers were delivered a couple weeks ago, and with attentive weeding and watering (not by me) are holding up pretty well.  One of the dishwashers is regularly pulled for gardening duty, resulting in several bathtubs' worth of rhubarb, which ends up in tasty strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake.

Drinking beers on the stoop the other day, hearing stories about employees of yore really put my own efforts into perspective.  I have not (yet)

- peed myself and the common room couch* in a drunken stupor
- arrived to work drunk
- nearly come to blows with my boss's husband
- strewn random foraged mushrooms about the employee kitchen to dry, only to later consume and sicken from them

*it was later aired and burned
due to utter lack of effort to identify shrooms, some guys risked paralysis and death; apparently drying mushrooms smell pretty icky


Maybe I can only handle one order ticket at a time, and maybe I forget about the potatoes darkening in the deep fryer for an ill-fated extra thirty seconds; maybe I spray everyone and everything when I wash dishes, and maybe I don't actually distinguish between over easy and medium eggs...but you can count on me never to throw food or spatulas at or sexually harass my coworkers.

Continuing this vein of self-affirmation, I chose a great hike for a great day -- the Triple Lakes trail, seen on this perfectly clear sunny morn (featuring Lake 1):




I hoped for a moose carefully plodding the shallows each time, but Lake 1 was empty, Lake 2 was bare, and Lake 3 dotted by a few ducks.  But it was gorgeous, and the 1,000-foot gain to the ridge had some rewarding views.  I even passed a troup of impeccably-confectionery-chocolate-looking mushrooms.

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