Canadutch
American Idol is back…. Oh yeah, you know what that means. Blog city! Well, that is of course if I find someone in the mix that I really want to win. Otherwise it’ll be a “meh” season in idolville. Last year’s Idol was great, so much drama and intrigue and …. soo… much…. Booooo. *pant*
Bo, Bo Bice, that is. If you don’t know who Bo Bice is you clearly are not cool enough to be reading my blog. That is all I have to say on the matter!
Tonight I am making sweet and sour meatballs for dinner. There really isn’t anything more to that story other than the fact that I really love sweet and sour meatballs. What I don’t like is making them. The meat is always cold and makes me think back to when I was a teenager and got a job working in a chinese restaurant where I slaved on Saturday and Sunday mornings making eggrolls. Hey maybe there is a story behind the meatballs afterall!
I remember I was still in high school and still dating high school sweetheart, D. He got a job working at a placed called the Peking washing dishes and somehow roped me into taking a job there making eggrolls. I thought I’d be in the kitchen with my boyfriend and these other people he always talked about. No not the case! I was trapped in the basement with this older chinese woman who didn’t speak a word of english. When I asked the owner if I was allowed to have a little radio down there I was told, “NO!”.
On Saturday morning we’d dump the cabbage, ground beef, 5 spice mix and the other stuff that went int the egg rolls into the most massive metal bowl I’ve ever seen. We’d stay bent over that bowl mashing the stuff until my back screamed for mercy and my hands were numb from the cold. Then we’d sit with these metal trays and grab blobs of this mixture and squeeze it into a cylinder shape and fill the trays up with them. That was the Saturday part of my job.
On Sunday I’d go back in and the little blobs would be taken out of the fridge and we’d sit at this table. We’d unwrap the eggroll wraps and place them in two rows of four. Then we’d mix up this paste mixture with flour, water and egg. With a brush we’d brush across the rows and down so that all the edges of these wrappers were covered in this paste. We’d then place a little blob in the middle of each, roll it up, press it dwn and then squeeze the ends together. Then we’d place them on another tray where they’d go into the fridge to wait to be cooked.
There we’d sit for hours, across from each other, not saying a word…. It really was like slave labour. But DAMN, were they the best eggrolls I’ve ever eaten!
Other random things I remember about working there:
The people who owned the restaurant were total crooks.
One of the owners worked in the kitchen. He was chinese but his name was Michael? Wtf… He used to hit on me in a really sleezy way. He was old, and he was ugly. I was a teenager.. he didn’t have a chance.
Another one of the cooks carved a giant carrot into the shape of a penis and chased me with it.
My boyfriend thought he was funny by getting me to sniff some box of stuff that made me feel like my eyes were going to bleed.
Fuck sake, looking back on that job I’m sure there were at least one or two laws broken and a sexual harassment lawsuit in the making. Why didn’t I do anything about it then? I could have sued those small town Chinese mafia men for every penny they had! *Sigh* But then where would people get the amazing eggrolls?
