I learned an important lesson today: towels are a method of communication in a commercial kitchen.
I was serving lunch today, at our son’s school, and everything was going great, for the first few orders, until it was discovered that I had forgotten the meatballs for the spaghetti we were serving. They were still in the oven.
Chef Husband had slipped them into the oven earlier, before I arrived, and left me a code that I hadn’t deciphered. A towel.
Apparently, when you want to remember something is holding in the oven, or chilling in the fridge, you drape or tie a towel on the door. I had seen the towel on the bread warmer handle (thinking it was there to use to pull out the hot pan), but the forgotten meatballs were holding in a different oven, and apparently also had a tied towel reminder on their oven door (that I didn’t see, because I wasn’t looking for it).
When I glanced at the menu, my faux pas became glaringly apparent and upon discussing with Chef Husband my error, he said, “Didn’t you see the towel I left for you?”
Ahhhh, no. Saw one, not the other. Now I will be purposefully looking for them and making sure my procedures and checklists are right in front of me.