FEEDING THE VILLAGE

ACCOUNTS OF A SMALL TOWN SUPPER CLUB

MARCH 29, 2023

I warmed up the three old hotdogs in the pot of sauerkraut on the stove.  At nine thirty, after the dish pile and dish rag laundry, I put the dogs in a bowl with ketchup, gabbed a fork.  A full day dinner event and I just don’t eat.  Food is all around, but time alludes me and the rush to pull it off is cornerstone in my mind.  We always make just enough and never too much which means we don’t eat, even if time allowed.  So I eat the hotdogs from the stove pot late after everyone is gone….then have a shower.  Toweling off I feel the edges of my face.  When you are tired everything moves slowly so you feel the bones and notice as the towel moves from cheek down neck to the shoulder.  I settle there and think how nice the water runs and the towel dries but my hair still smells of smoke.  Half clean is better then completely run down and dirty so it will suffice and I can crawl into bed.

The oven sank into the DG….decomposed granite in the driveway.  Cade is good.  My dad said a man is only worth as much as his four wheel drive truck.  Cade has a good truck.  It can haul the ridiculous weight of our pizza oven on wheels….in and out of mud all day long.  Our sojourn into the Embers Only Pizza project has been christened by months of rain so between the mud and the flat tires on the trailer moving things about has been a challenge to say the least.  I don’t do any of it.  It’s all Cade.  So the oven hitch sank into the DG and we borrowed a car jack….on pieces of slate stone and wood Cade jacked the oven up and whipped it around into place.

I watched for a second and went back to making pastry cream….batches and batches for the profiterole dessert with market strawberries.  Strawberries a hearty price at the farmer’s market but they’re the kind that slice red and not white….ripe and sweet, the early bird berries.

The choux pastry needing a good hot kick in the oven before dropping temp and letting them brown up.  It’s pronounced “shoe”……the pastry, and puffs up hollow inside for fillings.  The go-to for cream puffs.  One might think it’s named for the slipper like shape of the respected eclair but “choux” in French means cabbage. The pastry gets its name because the little balls of choux paste puff up and look like little cabbages all in a row.  I find great happiness in these bizarre food facts….the naming of our classics.  They are stories ages old that still apply in most kitchens.  Some crazy old cook probably came up with it.

Set up, food prepped and people show up.  I wonder who will sit at the private table in the bushes by the rock.  The germans did.  We gave them an additional crate for more table space.  It had a way about it that felt special.  I felt okay when I realized they came prepared in down coats and scarves.  They would be warm enough.

I wonder who will get the one odd plate at the head of the table by the wood pile.  It is oval and painted with a bird….fancy feathers and all.  A woman who ate pizza from a very old oven of mine when I was in my early twenties sat at the bird plate.  The early days of pizza parties for garden shareholders.  Some people stay around and witness your life and see your struggles and your changes.  Sometimes we forget they are all around us.

I wonder if the collard greens bunched up in the old duck soup tureen won’t wilt.  They look like old estate elegance set against the old bakeshop in the woods.  That’s what Anna Thomas used to call my shop. The Bakery In the Woods.  She would come up with friends and glean the frangipane and almonds from the sheet trays after I scooped the almond croissants into a box.  And here the shop still sits wood soaked amongst the saturated Eucalyptus trees in mud and flood waters.  The board and bat build, two tone in color after the bear took off the siding.  He went after the one tiny jar of honey sitting smack in the middle of my dough table.  Typical bear.  Now we have locks on things, like the windows and the trashcans.  But honestly, if he wanted the honey he would find a way to get it.  Who are we to think we have any control over a creature like that.

My brother came in red faced and eyes watering.  I asked him to run fires for the ambiance and entertaining.  Also to warm the place up but the wood was too wet.  We smoked the joint and the wind picked up.  A calamity of sorts.  Maybe we should name our oven Calamity….after Jane the wild west sharp shooting woman…spitting out pizzas in a cloud of smoke!  Brilliant name!  The smoke was not so brilliant but we managed and for all the fuss behind the scenes I’d say we pulled it off.  With pizza you can pull most things off.  People forget their problems and just wait for the next slice.

I joke that we offer adventure dinners.  Only the strongest survive.  Get your gear and take a seat…..hope you brought your beanie…maybe a pocket knife too.  I caught the neighbor and the farmer eating out of the old salad bowls by the dish sink.  Clenching a pizza crust in one hand and cleaning the salad bottom bits with the other, no forks required.  Other guests wanted to help clear the tables.  They said it felt like home so that was the most reasonable thing to do.  It was not reasonable and I told them to sit down.  They had bought tickets for goodness sake, but I smiled at the idea.  You pay us, we feed you, you clean up.  It’s funny and I  thoroughly appreciated the gesture.  But no really, we are here to take of you so sit down and let me give you a cream puff.  Want a cup of coffee?

These dinners make me happy.  This is our small community……eating, making friends and telling stories.

My trainer from the gym left with a couple new clients and a tutorial on how to make an emoji avatar of himself.  He now sends encouraging pep talks to his clients via a little animated head with glasses, a goatee and a beanie cap.

From the oven I hear Ms Laura La Rue telling stories around the fire pit.  Stories of town and it’s folk.  Comic relief from a pregnant woman on her second cream puff.

Pete, our local weather man, scans the flooding under the trees with a devilish smile because really he’s just a storm chaser with a passion for drinking down storm water from his rain gauge….perhaps it gives him super powers.  We plan our back hills bread baking adventure while pulling pizzas from the oven.    

Cade just keeps making pizza  after pizza, dancing around the little girls playing waitress at his feet.  He’s still smiling, maybe not for long, but we take what we can get. 

Chazzy waltzing in farm stylish chic, we give him dinner in exchange for the beautiful garden mixed green bounty in our salad bowls.  He clears tables when the guests leave, consolidates the left overs for Saturday late night snacks. Maybe grabs the last sip of wine and a bottle of sparkle on the way out the door.

And dear Frances, my super star on the line, entertaining guests and picking up the slack.   She pockets a tip here and there for the future of her horse projects.  Early lessons in where the money comes from when sometimes, to those sweet young eyes, it looks like money grows like apples on trees.

Night is done when the guests have gone….tables cleared, fires out, dishes washed and I am in bed three plain hotdogs and a warm shower later.  My friend used to joke in the bakeshop “We’ re feeding the village!”  And yes, yes we are.