First catering gig

My friends invited friends, my team members invited some friends, and the numbers grew and people changed their plans to be there as they thought it was so much fun to have a team of chefs in training cook for them and eat food that is natural and delicious. We started prep around 4 pm and started serving food around 6:30 pm. It was a casual type of event where people served themselves from a table and could eat where they wanted. The menu was simple but varied from our diverse group and included dal, curried rice and chutney, a coconut noodle dish, a Louisana crawfish stew with rice, beet salad with goat cheese and walnuts with a wasabi dressing (I made this), and variety of mochi dishes (rice cakes were made that day by the buddhist church on the Upper West Side during their mochitsuki or rice pounding festival to make rice cakes for New Year's festivities) from Yuki such as baked mochi wrapped with seasonings in nori, baked mochi in a very lovely miso based soup and called "oden", and baked mochi in a sweet adjuki bean soup, which were my favourites and everyone flocked around them as well. With the friends piling in, we thought we would not have enough food so I thought of something from what we had on hand, which turned out quite well and everyone seemed to like. It was toasted baguette slices covered with a goat cheese, olive and black bean spread and topped with a cherry tomato slice and dill. This was like an improv class in action and I really enjoyed this. The audience was very interested in and appreciative of our cooking, and thought it was such a treat. Some even said that we could start catering for them if we had a business, which was the greatest compliment to have people saying that they would actually pay for our food.

On Sunday, I had another shift at Pure. It was a busy night in the kitchen for the sous chef and full-time staff. Yuki and I helped with preparations, including preparing some vegetables, making the salad and dressing for the family dinner, preparing "sour cream" for the tacos (made with coconut meat and cashews and is really similar to sour cream), and a cashew cream cheese, which was rich and creamy. We were about to finish our shift, when one the staff cut he