Heaven’s Gate
80 Proper Ingredients
I was worried about Whitney, of course, but the way she explained it, it was no worse than any other police action. She could be working for the sheriff’s office and be in just as much danger. Which made me more concerned for Judy as well. Damn it!
Nonetheless, June progressed. We got ourselves stabilized with our new responsibilities. The first big hire we made was for a director of programming. We were going for someone with good experience and advertised widely. You can’t imagine my amusement when I saw Patty Stills’s resume. I almost gave the now former program director from Lifelong Women’s Network an interview. That’s karma for you. She’s the one who tried to strip Heaven’s Redress show out from under us and then manipulated us into producing shows they would never air while they launched their Dress for Success show. Fashion shows were a dime a dozen now. We were holding our own with Fashion Week because Leonard and Pam were so adorable. And she still filled the bill of gorgeous supermodel with a gay best friend.
Of course, the real excitement in my life had nothing to do with HCEN. Rebecca, bless her heart, would get me through my day’s work by forcing me to concentrate on helping Rose manage our new empire. But by mid-afternoon, she would make little shooing gestures and tell me to ‘go play.’
I felt like the Pied Piper when I left the office. The kids would be waiting outside, having just come from school. They would all fall in around me as we walked over to my new little shop next door to the Heartthrob Café. I still didn’t have a name for my bakery, but it was almost complete. The two gas-fired masonry ovens were built into the wall with a brick facing surrounding them. When you opened the door, it looked like you were cooking in a fireplace. Next to them was a huge convection oven. I figured we’d bake cookies and rolls in the standard oven instead of the masonry oven. We’d learned our lessons, both in the studio and in our kitchen in the big house, about having enough oven space. This beauty was forty inches wide and had an equal depth. I could put four cookie sheets at a time on each of three racks for a standard cookie capacity of twelve dozen. I didn’t anticipate making that many cookies, of course, but I still planned to bake cinnamon rolls most mornings. I could bake a dozen loaves of bread at a time in each of the two masonry ovens. This was all the capacity I expected to need.
“What’s that, Papa?” C-Rae said pointing at the newest piece of equipment to be delivered.
“That, honey, is our new dough mixer. In the bakery, we need to make a couple dozen loaves of bread at a time. We still have to knead the bread before we set the loaves to rise, but this will take care of mixing the dough,” I said. What I was interested in, though, was the new surface for my bread table. There was still a plastic film sealed to the center island countertop, but I could see the blue-veined white marble clearly. At five feet wide and four feet across, I could toss a lot of bread on this baby. “Okay, what we get to do today is wipe down all the surfaces so they are nice and clean. Then we’ll start unpacking the tools of our trade, washing them, and putting them on the shelves and racks where they belong.”
The tools of the trade included cookie trays, knives, spatulas, bowls, rolling pins, measuring cups, hot pads, bread peels, measuring spoons, scales, and everything else you would find in a well-stocked kitchen. We were getting close. So very close.
“Papa, when do we start getting the ingredients?” Matthew asked.
“Good question, son,” I said. “This is important to all good cooks, kids. Where do eggs come from?”
“The grocery store,” C-Rae said. My six-year-old daughters, Xan and C-Rae, were a study in contrasts. Xan was still smaller than James and Céleste, even though she was almost two years older. And she still seldom spoke. I knew for a fact, though, that she practiced her French each day and studied with Jessica when she was home. C-Rae was an out-going chatterbox who was as tall as her eight-year-old brother Matthew. I laughed at the answer.
“Let’s go to see Maribelle,” I said. We left the new bakery and walked past the café to our little community grocery store. C-Rae immediately ran to the cooler and pointed at the eggs.
“See?” she called triumphantly.
“Maribelle,” I said as the kids all gathered around. “Do you lay these eggs right here in the grocery store?”
“Exactly what kind of an old hen do you think I am, Brian?” she asked indignantly.
“We’re working on ingredients for the bakery. I asked the kids where we get eggs and C-Rae said the grocery store. I thought we’d better investigate.”
“Oh, I see,” Maribelle said, grinning. “Well, raising chickens to sell eggs to the public is more than I’m equipped to deal with. It’s hard enough getting the goats milked every morning before I come to the store. But Mr. Matheny, who lives over on the other side of the quarry, raises chickens that are fed organically and are uncaged. He supplies eggs for the co-op and for our little store. One of the things I’ve insisted on since opening the market here is knowing where our food comes from. These eggs come from Mr. Matheny’s uncaged chickens and I’ve personally examined what they get fed. It’s just like all the fresh vegetables that we sell. Ross and his little crew plant vegetables right here on the ranch and we sell comes from that garden. He’s hoping that this summer some of you kids will be out there in the garden helping weed and harvest these good vegetables.”
“’Matoes,” Céleste said. “Aunt Nic’lette wants ’matoes.”
“She’ll get good ones from our garden, and I’m sure she will be making that yummy Caprese salad when you go visit her,” I said hugging my red-haired daughter. She was looking more like Liz every day.
“Yum.”
“We’re going to need a lot of eggs for cakes and cookies,” I said. “Will we be able to get them here?”
“I’ve talked to Mr. Matheny, and he thinks we’ll have enough to meet your needs. But, Brian, where are you going to get your flour?” she asked.
“That’s a tough one, Maribelle. The farmer raises the grain and then it is collected and sent to a mill where they mix it with the grain from a lot of other farmers and grind it up into flour. How am I supposed to know where my flour comes from?” I asked. This was a great time for teaching the kids and Maribelle and I went through all the various ingredients, talking about labels, organic food, and sometimes just doing the best we can. There just is nothing like sharing this experience with your kids.
I’d designed my little bakery so that the kids could be with me when I was baking in the morning. There was a barrier so that the little ones couldn’t just wander into the kitchen area and get caught in equipment or burned on hot trays, but otherwise, they had little café tables so they could sit around to watch. I had a simple four-burner gas stove that I could cook their breakfast on, as well. Other than feeding the kids breakfast, though, it was not a sit-down café. All my breads and rolls would be in the Heartthrob next door.
Next week, we’d be live. It was more exciting than opening a new show.
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