It’s late summer in Texas, and I am working as a chef in a 4-star hotel resort. The kitchen air conditioner is on the fritz again. Outside it’s a chilly 99 degrees with 80% humidity, but in the kitchen it’s closer to 125 degrees and about 94% humidity. You know when you're relaxing in a sauna and sweating from everywhere, including the soles of your feet? Well, imagine your soul sweating and you may come close to understanding what we are feeling.

 

Our fine dining restaurant is packed, we have two conferences going on and a bachelor party in the bar, so we’re busier than a one-eyed cat trying to watch four mouse holes. However, we are an efficient brigade of chefs, and we’re keeping our sense of humor about it all.

 

I finish the last of my prep and I am taking an uncovered five-gallon bucket of freshly cooked spaghetti sauce to the walk-in cooler. I make it into the walk-in without incident and am lowering the bucket to the ground when the handle breaks. The plastic container's bottom is only inches from the rubber mat, but the effect the impact has on the contents is like I had dropped it several feet. The sauce erupts from the white bucket like ash from Mount St. Helens did in 1980. I’m still slightly bent over and spaghetti sauce rockets into my torso and face.  It goes up my nose, down the neck opening of my shirt, and covers my white chef coat in red gore. It flies past me and covers everything, including the ceiling, with blended up tomatoes, ground beef, and bits of herbs.

 

I stand there in disbelief when the sous chef opens the cooler door and walks in. I can only imagine it from his perspective and the thoughts that are probably running through his head. The walk-in looks like a horror scene from a B-movie. His thoughts don't really matter because he busts up laughing, which brings me out of my stunned disbelief, and I laugh too.

 

They are serving spaghetti with red sauce in the cafeteria today. Anytime I smell spaghetti sauce, I think back on the White Bucket Eruption of 1998. The smells associated with the memory are so intense that every detail comes flooding back. The sudden smell of tomatoes, basil, oregano, garlic, and other herbs make my eyes water. Even though it wasn't a life-altering event, the details of it are burned into my memory.

 

I remember the kitchen layout, the people working that day, the blistering heat, and the feel of the spaghetti sauce running down the inside of my shirt. Even though this happened 23 years ago, I can still remember the look on Glen's face and the sound of his laughter. Glen was the sous chef who walked into the walk-in cooler. His eyes widened as he took in the scene, and then he burst out laughing. His laugh was not just a chuckle but a full-on belly laugh.

 

The one thing I wish I could forget was dealing with the consequences. I'm not sure if you can fully appreciate the amount of spaghetti sauce that erupted from that five-gallon bucket or the places it went. I cleaned the floor, rubber mats, and ceiling. I then moved on to cleaning every single box, plastic container, crate, etc., that resided on the shelves inside the industrial-sized walk-in cooler. The 4-star hotel resort's main building is almost 143,000 square feet. It has 168 guest rooms/suites, 8 condos, and 24,000 square feet of meeting space. There is a golf course, 2 pools, a wellness spa, and a lake. Now, imagine, if you would, the walk-in's size and the fact that I had pretty much covered every inch of it with red spaghetti sauce. It took me hours to clean up most of the mess, but several days to clean every inch of that walk-in.

 

 So, you see, I don't make red spaghetti sauce anymore. The memories, even after 23 years, are still too vivid. Once in a blue moon, I will eat lasagna or spaghetti with red sauce, but only if I am a guest in someone's house or the other food choices are fish. I will always associate the smell of spaghetti sauce with what I refer to as, The White Bucket Eruption of 1998.