The Gate 2019

Happy Christmas and thanks for reading this far. This year we are cooking 114 turkeys in The Gate kitchen, a huge number because we are looking after the Warehouse team and some other Crisis centres. I left four of the Afternoon team at midnight last night still in front of the ovens and returned at 3pm this afternoon to find them at their stations,  James said they finished at 02:30hrs Christmas morning! We stood at whiteboards listening to Chef allocate out the tasks for today and everything seemed surprisingly calm and relaxed for a 7pm target serve time. James was TurkeyMan, just 60 of them today, Sagar was RoastspudandvegMan and I was ParsnipMan. I say it every year in my diary that if you ever cook a roast or BBQ poultry please invest in a digital thermometer probe to test the centre of the bird to avoid stomach upsets or trip to A&E. I do the parnsnips every year because it involves a couple of hours in front of two large woks of very very hot oil balance...

The kitchen was running at full tilt today prepping today's meal and some of tomorrow's, with all of the kitchen assistants working head down in all the areas. It took about three hours before I worked opposite a sister team and we were able to say hello, exchange names and have a chat. The industrial dishwasher broke down yesterday so we have had to switch to manual to wash-up so we second in a pair of general volunteers to join us and then slave over the oven steel trays and pans and then hundreds of plates and cutlery. They fired up their phone Spotify which drowned out the ever present karaoke coming in from the general guest and volunteer area. A dash down to the local superstore to buy up their entire range of breadcrumbs (sorry shoppers too slow), to coat hundreds of of fantastic fish, vegetarian and vegan cakes being handmade by a team of four, racing to see who could make the most the fastest. One of the sisters ending up in hospital with unexpected anaphylacti...