Pastoral Center. That last was supposedly going to be held at my catering and conference center, the Roundhouse. The plumbers had assured me they would be done by then. I had too much on my mind to call them for the fifteenth time and bug them.
In the hallway, Tom, Julian, and Marla were talking in low tones about Dusty’s friends, who should be called, who else in the church could bring in meals and run errands for the Routts. I should have been helping them. But somehow talking about the Routts, after all I’d been through during the last eighteen hours, was more than I could handle at the moment. I walked into the kitchen.
Nora had handed me the recipe for the birthday cake she wanted for her husband. It was from one of Charlie Baker’s last paintings, she said, The Cake Series II. She’d bought the painting for Donald and was giving it to him for his present. Charlie’s recipe, Nora claimed, was an historically accurate version of Journey Cake, a confection the pioneers had baked on a board and eaten as they journeyed across America in their covered wagons. Actually, what Nora had given me was just a list of ingredients, which was all that my good old pal Charlie Baker, for whom I’d catered and with whom I’d cooked for the St. Luke’s bazaar, had ever put at the bottom of his paintings. I made myself a latte and remembered Nora’s happy expression when I said I was an old hand at Journey Cake, also known as Johnny Cake.
I pulled out flour and spices and thought about tall, cheerful Nora Ellis, whose straight blond hair fell in a perfect curtain around her head. When we first met, she told me she’d had good and bad luck with caterers. She’d already been burned, figuratively speaking, by both a Denver and a Boulder caterer. Worrying about these mishaps must have been why she was so stressed out when she was running the charity event Julian had catered, I reasoned now. Anyway, my talks with her had always been very amicable. To avoid a repeat of her two unfortunate events, she wanted tastes of the dishes I proposed to serve. I’d acquiesced. In point of fact, most party givers wanted a taste test these days. Problem was, you couldn’t measure efficiency of service, politeness of wait staff, heat of the food, and myriad factors that were just as important as how things tasted. Nora had told me she’d heard that unscrupulous caterers often made blatantly dishonest substitutions. At the Boulder party, her guests were supposed to be served poached salmon. Instead, they’d gotten choulibiac, an infinitely cheaper dish made from leftover bits of salmon. The Denver caterer had unabashedly offered up pork loin instead of the promised roast suckling pig.
“Oops,” I said.
“Yeah, oops,” Nora replied, her pretty face alight with an equal mixture of anger and humor. “Oops, guess what caterers got reported to their respective Better Business Bureaus?”
In the end, Nora had decided on stuffed Portobello mushrooms and empanadas with guacamole for appetizers. For the main course, she’d opted for beef tenderloin, that long, luscious piece of meat from which filets mignons were sliced. Hot beef in the middle of a cold October day was appropriately festive, I assured her. Served with feathery mashed potato puffs, a light salad, and steamed vegetables, the lunch would not be too heavy. And, I added with a smile, beef tenderloin was something a caterer simply could not fake.
As Nora and I had drunk cup after cup of spiced apple cider in her mammoth kitchen, I’d assured her that things would go well. I had a long list of references, which I handed to her. She’d been very jovial, waving her hand and saying she was easy to please. I’d smiled. But now I was more wary, as I wanted to keep Julian’s experience in the back of my mind.
I didn’t have time to ponder this issue, but I did need to make the Journey Cake. If the party did not go forward, I could serve it at Gus’s christening the following day. I
In the hallway, Tom, Julian, and Marla were talking in low tones about Dusty’s friends, who should be called, who else in the church could bring in meals and run errands for the Routts. I should have been helping them. But somehow talking about the Routts, after all I’d been through during the last eighteen hours, was more than I could handle at the moment. I walked into the kitchen.
Nora had handed me the recipe for the birthday cake she wanted for her husband. It was from one of Charlie Baker’s last paintings, she said, The Cake Series II. She’d bought the painting for Donald and was giving it to him for his present. Charlie’s recipe, Nora claimed, was an historically accurate version of Journey Cake, a confection the pioneers had baked on a board and eaten as they journeyed across America in their covered wagons. Actually, what Nora had given me was just a list of ingredients, which was all that my good old pal Charlie Baker, for whom I’d catered and with whom I’d cooked for the St. Luke’s bazaar, had ever put at the bottom of his paintings. I made myself a latte and remembered Nora’s happy expression when I said I was an old hand at Journey Cake, also known as Johnny Cake.
I pulled out flour and spices and thought about tall, cheerful Nora Ellis, whose straight blond hair fell in a perfect curtain around her head. When we first met, she told me she’d had good and bad luck with caterers. She’d already been burned, figuratively speaking, by both a Denver and a Boulder caterer. Worrying about these mishaps must have been why she was so stressed out when she was running the charity event Julian had catered, I reasoned now. Anyway, my talks with her had always been very amicable. To avoid a repeat of her two unfortunate events, she wanted tastes of the dishes I proposed to serve. I’d acquiesced. In point of fact, most party givers wanted a taste test these days. Problem was, you couldn’t measure efficiency of service, politeness of wait staff, heat of the food, and myriad factors that were just as important as how things tasted. Nora had told me she’d heard that unscrupulous caterers often made blatantly dishonest substitutions. At the Boulder party, her guests were supposed to be served poached salmon. Instead, they’d gotten choulibiac, an infinitely cheaper dish made from leftover bits of salmon. The Denver caterer had unabashedly offered up pork loin instead of the promised roast suckling pig.
“Oops,” I said.
“Yeah, oops,” Nora replied, her pretty face alight with an equal mixture of anger and humor. “Oops, guess what caterers got reported to their respective Better Business Bureaus?”
In the end, Nora had decided on stuffed Portobello mushrooms and empanadas with guacamole for appetizers. For the main course, she’d opted for beef tenderloin, that long, luscious piece of meat from which filets mignons were sliced. Hot beef in the middle of a cold October day was appropriately festive, I assured her. Served with feathery mashed potato puffs, a light salad, and steamed vegetables, the lunch would not be too heavy. And, I added with a smile, beef tenderloin was something a caterer simply could not fake.
As Nora and I had drunk cup after cup of spiced apple cider in her mammoth kitchen, I’d assured her that things would go well. I had a long list of references, which I handed to her. She’d been very jovial, waving her hand and saying she was easy to please. I’d smiled. But now I was more wary, as I wanted to keep Julian’s experience in the back of my mind.
I didn’t have time to ponder this issue, but I did need to make the Journey Cake. If the party did not go forward, I could serve it at Gus’s christening the following day. I
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