A Day in the Life of Stage

I wake up every day at 8:50am. Today I pour some muesli cereal on top of a coffee flavored yogurt, which tastes exactly like Maui Babe smells, brush my teeth, and head off to sit on a bench on the main road in town and wait for someone to pick me up. This morning it's Alfred, a 40-year-old, very skinny man from the Philippines. Alfred works hard - he started as the dishwasher and worked his way up to appetizers. He speaks a fair amount of sometimes incomprehensible english, and has always been nice to me. Sometime we go down to the store room and sit on the freezers taking a impromptu break while he smokes a cigarette.

Outside the store room.

When I get in his car this morning he already has Abba playing. This CD has been on repeat in his CD player for the past two weeks and it still make me smile when he sings a long to songs from Mamma Mia.

We pass through the main road in town before turning off onto the very scenic and very narrow road that leads to Il Falconiere. I love the drive to work. Although, it can be a little nerve racking when the road is too narrow for two cars to pass, but it is beautiful as we pass an old church, a small waterfall, and the foliage lining the road is now full and in bloom.

We arrive a little after 9:30am and change for the day - I put on my chefs hat and strap on my apron and I'm ready. Today the sous chef, who I usually work with, is out for the morning, but he has left me a list of things to do. I love that I can just walk into the kitchen and start working. I don't have to wait for anyone, and no one will try and give me time consuming tasks that they don't want to do. And today, I'm especially happy because my main project is to make tagliatelle which I love doing. However, it wasn't always this way.

Everytime we had to make fresh pasta in New York, I hated it. But, when I came to Italy, I realized that it would be a valuable skill to leave with. So, at ALMA I took every opportunity to practice and took careful notice of how each chef rolled out pasta. Now, I am quite good at it, and I love doing it. It's a great feeling when the dough pours fourth from the machine in smooth, long, rectangles, like a thin blanket over my hands. Chef comes over to inspectmy work, he turns to me and says, "They are beautiful." This means a lot coming from Chef.

Me rolling out the pasta.

Cutting the the individual noodles.

My tagliatelle. The finished dish.

Since the sous chef is out today, it is my responsibility to make pasta for staff lunch. Today we use a cheese sauce made from leftover cheeses. There are some strong flavors mixed together, but is a good sauce for penne, served with eggplant, baccala - a white fish, and aspargus.

The outside patio where we eat lunch everyday.

Lunch service begins at 1pm. Today Chef has decided to man the pasta station while I finish making tagliatelle. However, my work only takes about 20 minutes. Chef dosen't need my help becuase it's not busy. It is then I realize my fate for the afternoon will be doing dishes. Our dish washer also has the day off, so someone has to do them. Oddly though, I find I like doing dishes here. It gives me something to do for the whole afternoon where no one can tell me that I've done it wrong or have to do it over. Also, because it's not my responsibility, everyone is extremely grateful that I volunteer to do them, because if it wasn't me, it would be them. So it's an easy way to score brownie points with everyone in the kitchen.

Back at my house in the afternoon.

For our afternoon siesta, we get out of the kitchen by 4pm, which gives me a good two hours to run and shower before going back at 6:30. I get home and quickly scarf down a banana before heading out into the warm afternoon that has become overcast with the slight threat of a storm. I run for 45 minutes using my traditional route on the main road of town, down a big hill, past the train station, and down a long, flat, dirt road that is usually vacant except for a few chickens that sucrry across as they hear me coming. I enjoy running on this secluded road that takes me out away from town because when I turn to go home I have a great view of Cortona standing proud and strong up on the hill as it has for many centuries.

A quick shower and I'm back out on the bench waiting for my ride. Tonight Alfred is off, which means Balla, my sous chef, will pick me up so I will most likely have to wait till seven. But out on my bench, I enjoy waiting. It's rush hour and I watch people heading home from work. Also, there is a tobacco shop on the same block which provides many subjects for people watching. These shops are so crucial to the Italian lifestyle that they have vending machines outside where locals can buy their tobacco and recharge their phones anytime of the day. Finally at five minutes to seven, Balla comes to get me.

Balla is the person I've bonded with the most here, probably because he speaks the best English, but also because we get along very well. He is a middle-aged man from Morocco, has a wife and three kids, and I think I see him more than they do. I am very grateful that he has been a part of my life here. I work with him the majority of the time in the kitchen and he always tells me that "I am number one" and he is very appreciative of my work. It serves as a great source of encouragement.

I love walking into work around dusk. The sun has begun to set casting a beautiful glow on the grounds. Il Falconiere is landscaped beautifully. My favorite part is how so much of the landscape is edible. A vast part of the grounds are made up of olive trees and rows of grape vines, but there is also wild rosemary with beautiful purple flowers, wild asparagus, bay leaves that grow in huge bushes, and the edible flowers we use for garnish. Tonight I pick a few of these purple flowers to garnish risotto with.

Staff dinner is waiting for us since we arrive a bit late. Tonight it's just penne with a light tomato sauce, some rabbit legs, and a salad of fennel and tomatoes. Nothing fancy, but it feeds the staff and we are ready for dinner service at 8:00.

This evening there are four tables for a total of eight people which means I will get to do some of the cooking. I arrange the mise en place for the pasta station - sauces warming in a double boiler, cutting board and knives in place, fresh herbs, other sauces, and olive oil out on the counter.

The orders are slow tonight so I clean fava beans while I wait. People always say that when you start out in a restaurant all you do is peel potatoes, well for me fava beans have been my potatoes. They are time intensive as you have to take them out of the pod, and then peel each individual bean. It is relaxing and mindless work that can actually be a nice relief some days in the kitchen. After I remove the beans from the pods, they have to be blanched in order to help take off their outer layer. I pour the beans into the boiling water in the pasta cooker. In a minute I take them out and start peeling, but when I turn around, all the water to cook the pasta has turned purple! My sous chef comes over, looks at the water, and just laughs. I of course panic because we need to use this water to cook for service and I immediately start apologizing. All he says in reply is, "it's no problem." The exact same phrase he used the night I knocked the blender into the dish I was plating as I reached for a garnish. The blender made a really loud noise, a big mess, and ruined the dish, and he just said, "no problem, don't worry." He had extra of everything and put together a new dish in no time. He's great to work with.

I finish the fava beans and have my first order - passatina, a pureed pea soup with stuffed pasta. This dish only requires reheating food that we've already prepared -easy. Next order is one pici and one tagliatelle. This is a little more complicated. I have to cook two different kinds of pasta, one frozen one fresh, and make two different sauces, one with seared fish on top. As I begin to plate the pastas, stressing a bit about getting them out while they are hot, my sous chef comes over to help. He says to me, "you are good worker woman, and good woman. I tell my daughter that you are nice, and she is so happy. I tell her you are nicest girl in the world." All I can think to say back is, "and she believed you hunh?" We laugh a little as we each plate one of the pastas and send them out to the table.

Then it's time to clean and go home. I do a lot of cleaning at stage, but it is also a good way to make friends at work. I walk out of the kitchen into a beautiful, cool night - refreshing after the hot kitchen. We change and Balla drives me home. The full moon lights my way as I walk up to my house, hearing my roommates from the open window above. In the living room Francesco is playing his guitar while Antonio washes his clothes by hand. I begin to talk to Francesco about music and he asks me to sing "Light My fire" by The Doors. I explain to him that I don't sing, but he goes to get his song book anyways. I continually tell him that I don't want to sing, but once he starts playing, I realize he needs help with the rhythm and I join in. His guitar is not in tune so I, as unbelievable as it sounds, carry the tune while he strums. Antonio took a video and I can only wonder if it will ever surface on Facebook.

It is now 11:45 and my roommates sit outside my bedroom door in the common room talking and smoking. I make a cup of green tea, go on the computer, and go to bed - this is a day in the life of stage.