Tucker & Jenn's Blogg

Friday, April 13, 2007

When it rains, it pours....

Well today has been very eventful...

I'll start with the salad bar fridge that died in the middle of the night... Once Monte discovered this, I went upstairs to wake up Tucker early & give him the unfortunate news. Of course he rushed down stairs to find that hundreds of dollars of prepped food had gone bad. :( Bummer huh? There's more....

Not only had all the food gone to waste. We basically weren't going to be able to serve anything off of the menu since we lost everything that was already prepped and meant for today. So Monte and I dove right in and started peeling peppers etc. It was about 6:30am at that point. After a while we where able to offer everything except Classic Bene. All of the Canadian Bacon had been in the fridge that died.

So once the repair man showed up he determined that the motor on the fridge was shot. So we have to buy a whole new set up. $1700, yikes! Right as we get this news, the fire alarm blares in the dining room, with two tables of people dining in for breakfast. Apparently the repair man had gone through the entire restaurant and blew the coils free of dust on all of the fridge & freezer units. Well the fire panel is right next to our largest freezer down stairs and there was so much dust the fire alarm thought it was smoke and sounded. So needless to say the fire department arrived shortly just as I discovered the computers had crashed and the credit cards weren't processing.

I'll tell you what, I thought what else could go wrong at that point! So I did CC's the old fashioned way, by hand.

Our first guests of the day where well aware we where having problems, with only Quiche to order from and all of the racket in the kitchen. Plus they where here when the fire alarm sounded. They informed me that today is Friday the 13th. I have never once in my life ever experienced anything odd on a Friday the 13th. But today is one for the books! And still two more hours till closing, sigh...

Sorry, no picture with this post.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Crab & Photos :)

So not much going on here that is really worth reporting to you about. So I will just show some random pictures I have taken over tha past couple of weeks...

Tucker working on poached eggs for benedicts. Did you know he starts every Saturday with at least 60 poached eggs!!

Ah yes, my favooooorite cake ever: Paradisiaque. I think it was looking particularly good this day :)

Tucker getting ready to bowl.

This would be me bothering Tucker while he is trying to have a phone conversation...

Oh! What do we have here?

It's crab & it's alive!!

Bye Bye Crabbie! This is the first one...

A close up of Tucker mincing capers for our tartar sauce.

I was suprised to find all sorts of veggies in the pot with the crab. Tuck told me that at Le Doyen they allways boiled their lobster with all sorts of fresh veggies. So that is the treatment our two crabs recieved.

Here Tucker is struggling to get the second crab out of the bag. He wouldn't let go, his little claws where holding on for dear life!

Ha ha! Tucker finally won!

Here is us while we are waiting for our crabs...

Another shot of the pot.

Ready to see how they are doing!

Getting some good color :)

Yum this was one good crab!

The End.

Friday, March 16, 2007

My Husband's first Master Chef appearance!!!

Tucker had been working, the past week & a half, on making enough cake to feed 300ppl for a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. It was exciting to watch Tucker near the end. He was practically giddy once they had dipped 337 Hazelnuts(part of the garnish). Here are some pic's from yesterday's moments...

Getting Montes truck all
cleaned up for the "long" haul over to the convention center!

Tucker & Monte cutting the cakes before we left.

Close up of Tuck, sorry, still can't figure out how to flip the pic's!

Monte standing next to the speedrack, in the back of his truck, at bay 16 outside of the convention center.

Tucker waiting outside bay 16...

Oh that's right, we had xtra time to pose :)

still waiting outside bay16.....

I think we waited for about 10 minutes & that was about the last of the sun.

Time for one group photo!!

Monte offered to snap one of us :)

The next few are of Tucker rolling his 308 dessert to the industrial elevator.

He looks excited!

Still rolling.

Almost there!

As soon as we arrived to the main kitchen, they where plating the vegetarian plate. They needed more help, so we all pitched in.

This is the staging area, the room was gigantic!!

They had these signs posted every where. Made me feel so proud of Tucker every time I saw one. So I couldn't help but snap a picture to share with you!

This picture is of Thomas Hurleys, of Hurleys Restaurant, salad plate. It was a pretty amazing dish, ask Tucker about it... (He was licking his fingers after TH drizzled the dressing on the smoked mushroom)

Here we are back in the kitchen. Tucker is plating crepes onto plates.

And here we are, Tucker's desserts!!

Wow!! Look at all of them...

This is the poster that all of the Master Chef's signed. I have one, and am going to get it framed for our front entry way.

Here is an up close, you can see Tucker's sign. and where he and the restaurant are listed in print. Pretty exciting!

I don't have a picture of Tucker up on stage. I didn't know he had gone up when he did. I was busy putting 6 caramel dots on the plates... I was kind of bummed, but at least I snapped some good pic's.

Something I want to add... When we where greeted at bay 16 the gentleman who greeted us introduced himself and his wife as being direct beneficiaries of the event, there son has Cystic Fibrosis. He thanked Tucker for his generosity and hard work. That's when it sort of hit, wow, we are really helping people tonight!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Leila 1 year birthday!!

Here are the picks of Hailey & Leila while they visited us on Leila's 1yr Birthday!! (Unfortunately I can't figure out how to sit the pic up right...)