Let me preface this story with an explanation. I take mother out to dinner several nights a week just to get us out of the house. It helps to socialize her and, after a tough day at work, it takes the chore of cooking and cleaning off my hands. Since the average restaurant is too noisy for me to deal with mother, I searched for a place that offered less noise and less public exposure of how I have to deal with a person in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's while at the dinner table. I discovered that the bar at our local Outback is much quieter than most places we patronized over the past three years. We sit on the side farthest from the main dining room and have somehow managed to become the occupants of the same table each time we visit - the last booth at the end of the bar by the restroom hall.
Remember the TV show Cheers? Well, that place exists right in my own back yard! The young people tending the bar and the wait staff in the bar section introduce themselves to everyone who enters and asks for their name. The servers create a white paper tent and write their names on one side and the patron's name on the other. The card is stood up on the bar in front of the guest with the employee's name facing the guest and the guest's name facing the other occupants of the bar. They do this for everyone. They chat with each individual and make everyone feel like they have known them for years. There is a running joke about being the 'bar wife' or 'bar husband' of regular patrons. They rib them when they hear a regular has patronized another establishment. It is a very cozy environment. For a long time I enjoyed observing the camaraderie from our little booth with just a tinge of jealousy. Dinner conversation with mother is, to say the least, nil. I never expected these delightful young people to include some old lady and her mother into their 'bar' world.
However, it wasn't long before we merged into the fold. First, they had to learn our routine. I don't know how many times I had to tell them not to bring bread to the table. Mother's little hands would snake out and snatch it before I could ward them off. I am sorry to say that we are high demand, high maintenance customers. "No bread. Don't let her touch the silverware. Don't put her drink in front of her. Take the table tents away. Put her food on a cold plate. Bring an extra plate for me to put her food on. Don't refill her glass or you'll get to change her diaper. Put that on the other end of the table. Don't cook our steak until she has completely finished her salad. No croutons on her salad." Sigh. You see my routine. Dining out with mother is complicated and not a lot of fun, but staying home and washing dishes is even less so. If I were to write our needs down on paper for each new waiter I'd have to carry what would be tantamount to the Dead Sea Scrolls. I can't imagine what the staff said about me back in the kitchen or break room.
After a while they memorized our needs and ordering our meal went from being an ordeal with a series of demands and reminders about what not to bring to our table to a smooth, seamless dining event. (If anything can be considered smooth and seamless with mom.) With less detail to remember and worry about, all I needed to do was pick which meal: A - 10 oz rib eye, B - plain chicken, or C - the salmon. I no longer had to tell them what kind of dressing for mother's salad, and her tea arrived in a child's cup with a lid on it every time.
So now you know why we can be found in a bar several nights a week. But, even though I do not want to be home cooking every evening, I miss tinkering around in the kitchen. I decided I would get in the kitchen on weekends and do some practice cooking for the upcoming holidays. My only dilemma was what to do with the food. I needed to find a way to get rid of food that mother certainly couldn't have and, truth be told, I should also not be eating. With no plans of big family dinners at my house, what was I to do with all the stuff I had in my mind to make? Ah hah! I had an epiphany! Broke college kids tending bar will eat anything!
My first efforts at beer batter bread a couple of years ago were okay. I didn't like the consistency and was looking for something more in the way of a holiday type of bread with different flavors, so I began the experiment anew. The first two loaves had the weight of a missile. The dogs watched in anguish as I chunked them in the trash. After pages of notes and modifications, refer to photo above, the next two efforts were edible, not moist enough for my end goal, but I took them to the bar and asked the gang for their input. The kids at the restaurant slathered the loaves with butter and wolfed the bread down like it was a tasty morsel indeed. Proof they'll eat anything. After a few weeks of polishing on the recipe, I hit success. I knew it must have been good when the bartenders started hiding the pans below the counter out of sight of the other waiters. I would arrive with a bag in hand and the words 'bread's here' would pass from one waiter to the next. We had running discussions on which flavors they liked while I worked on my hand written notes prior to the arrival of our meal. They kept up with my progress like they had a vested interest in this study. Oh, yeah, they did - they were hungry! Homemade bread trumps McD's dollar burger any day. I'd walk in and be asked by total strangers, "Are you the lady who made the awesome bread?" I had gained a reputation that needed to be lived up to.
Cookies were next to conquer. I wanted something easy without 37 ingredients that required spending most of my time measuring and mixing. I Googled a few recipe ideas, but decided to launch out on my own. I mean, how wrong can one go with this? Every other cookie recipe seemed to have the same basic ingredients, just too many steps for me. Most called for the same cook time and temp, and almost every recipe called for dropping the dough on an UN-GREASED baking sheet. Guess what I learned? WRONG WRONG WRONG. Don't believe some cooking diva's directions. They must have rabid badgers cleaning their kitchens behind them after the show. I scraped 24 cookies off three pans with the sharpest knife I could find. Wasn't working. I ended up soaking the pans, cookies and all, in water until they could be removed. Does anyone know what wet bread dough in the bottom of the kitchen sink feels like? Ick! I pulled out the parchment paper and started over.
My local grocery store put cake mixes on sale one day, and I had a stroke of genius hit. Cake mix has flour, salt, baking powder and flavoring already measured and mixed together. All one needed to add would be something to make it moist to bind it in dough form. I stacked the cart full of every flavor marked down. I spent the first afternoon making four dozen dark chocolate fudge cookies. The smell of warm chocolate cookies wafted in the door of Outback with my entrance. I melted the heart of every man in the bar. When the smell hit them they transformed before my very eyes from grizzled cowboys and weary businessmen into eight year old boys with the memories of days gone by in their mothers' kitchens.
A few nights later, one of the floor managers came to my table to check on us. He told me that he wanted to post a note in the break area to notify everyone he'd pull rank on them when the next batch of goodies were due for delivery, because the last batch of chocolate cookies disappeared in nothing flat. I assured him I brought plenty this time. I was informed I was incorrect - there would never be enough chocolate cookies coming from my kitchen. They all agreed I needed to keep practicing.
hhhhmmmmmmmm I wonder why?
Then I made the mistake of being bored one Saturday and decided to roll five pounds of hand made meatballs in my Italian sauce. Now that was a scent that made everyone in the bar turn when I walked in. I got so much attention newcomers looked around to see if Beyonce entered the room.
[For those of you who know what I look like - I HEARD THAT!]
The only downside to the situation is when I get a new waiter. "No bread, no tea, don't put that there, don't do this, don't do that. Here's a cookie." They look bewildered until a regular staffer can take them aside to explain that I am not just any demanding old battle axe. I am the demanding old battle axe that brings goodies.
Oh, one more thing. I forgot an important line in the bread recipe. Remember that the beer goes into the bread mix, not the bread mixer. Drink wine instead. Your product will turn out much better. At least, you'll think so . . .
