FrankenPizza

So, as I have mentioned, the clients where I work learn to cook and all that. They have regular assigned nights, often with a cooking partner (two residents working together; we try to pair up one with little to no cooking knowledge with one who has some or a lot), and staff will help out.

The cooking schedule of partners shifted over the week and the new schedule was not posted (this is done in Menu Planning, a group which does exactly that) and none of the residents seemed clear on who was cooking when. So no one stated they were to cook today and thus had no official meal. The recreational counselor, a peer counselor (meaning she is a consumer herself of the mental health system) who is staff at Eucalyptus House, often helps out in the kitchen. So does my counterpart, Laura, who is a "day" counselor, meaning she stays for about seven hours, from 2pm to 9pm (with me on Thursday) or 11:30am to 8:30pm (on Sunday) and helps out with various tasks, from the bureaucratic to the clinical.

It's a good thing that Sarah and Laura work in the kitchen with the clients. I have a lot of patience in this job. You kind of have to. And I'm pretty good in a lot of areas except the kitchen. I have no tolerance for unskilled in the kitchen. Unkind? Probably. But I just really have a hard time not barking at people when they put the spoon they were using to stir the meal for 15 people (12 residents and three staff) into their mouths and then back into the pot again to stir. Okay, get my drift?

But Laura has tons of patience in this arena and thusly, I let her do the milieu kitchen stuff. Sarah helps out but has some strange ideas about cooking and thusly, I also stay out of the kitchen when she's cooking. I'm better at getting people to clean their rooms or do their house jobs (chores).

So Sarah steps up to get a couple of residents involved in cooking an impromptu dinner. They're lucky she was there because if a resident doesn't show up for their cooking night and hasn't made provisions to have someone else do it, and no one steps up to the plate, well, tough shit. I leave the kitchen and pantry open and they can make their own. I believe in community accountability. Oh, you want dinner? Go talk to the cook and tell them. Let them know you are not pleased when they get back home from wherever after missing making dinner for the house.

So she did manage to get a couple of people involved and eventually the call went out, "Dinner! Dinner's ready!" with the cooks going around the house like heralds, up and down the stairs, sometimes banging on bedroom doors. I wander into the kitchen and ask what had been made. A resident, one of our most functional-why-are-you-even-here clients, a really smart guy who I've had quite some interesting talks about the history of Indo-European language, says, "It's FrankenPizza." And upon seeing said dinner, exactly after the moment he said it, I burst out laughing, because indeed, it was so.

A couple of those store bought crusts they must have rustled up from the pantry, covered with straight out of the can tomato sauce and I don't mean sauce as in has other things in it like pasta sauce but really, just the old grungy tomato paste/sauce. Then browned and not even fully drained of the grease, ground turkey mashed on top in strange piles like weird hair tufts or something with a few stewed, canned tomatoes perched here and there. No cheese on one, slices of the individually sliced and packaged American "cheese" artfully draped over the other.

FrankenPizza indeed! I love this phrase. It's a keeper for sure and with so many possibilities. FrankenCasserole, FrankenCake, FrankenSoup, etc. But I have to say, FrankenPizza rolls off the tongue the best!!