1/3
This week was my switch to food prep!! Packaging was cool and all but I love food, so chopping, cooking and eating food is more my thing. To start off, when walking in at 8 am I noticed a truck out front labeled “Charlie’s Produce – Local Produce in Season”, I did some research and its a food delivery system in the PNW focusing on sustainability and sourcing locally, pretty neat. Anyways, I walked in to meet Juan who was very kind and helpful. He started me off working with peppers, I had to weigh them out according to the recipe but because peppers lose a lot of water weight and seeds after prep we doubled the weight. After getting them trayed up and in the oven at 425 for 25 minutes, I chopped basil. It smelt SO GOOD but I really had to chop 5 bags that I had to destem each one, so by the end of it with green hands I was ready to be done. Juan was nice enough to show me how to chop in a way that wouldn’t hurt my wrist or chop my fingers up, I can use these techniques at home when cooking now. When the peppers were done and the basil was chopped here came the fun part….
I had to hand peel each pepper, deseed and chop 6 trays. I made it through 4 trays in 3 hours… sounds harder than you think. The green peppers were ripe so they were really hard to peel and then when you open them the water retention bursts all over the place and the seeds stick to you. I put on my happy face and went through it because I knew they needed the help! Everyone was so friendly and cracking jokes with me so it was bearable. Also, because some peppers had little baby peppers growing inside of them it was a fun surprise every time. My field supervisor, G, stopped in today and made a joke that the baby peppers were similar to me being pregnant, it was funny. These employees work long hours and handle quite a bit of food the way I did so I give them a lot of props for their hard work.
Every scrap of food was composted as I went which made my greener heart happy. Lunch was made for us with the fresh produce, I was bummed I didn’t take a picture because Juan, the chef, made a beautiful plate of stir-fried rice with a fried egg on top. I’m loving this place!