Julia's Child (9781101559741)

by Pinneo, Sarah

  Ricky craned his neck around toward us with a grin and a wink. Wylie’s outburst pleased him. He put his arm around Bonnie, patting her back, although they hadn’t even met properly. But it made for a nice tableau.

  Meanwhile, an officer of the court read off the charges. “Disorderly conduct and resisting arrest,” he droned.

  “Your Honor, may we approach the bench?” Ricky dropped his arm from Bonnie’s shoulders and took a step forward.

  The ruddy DA met him in front of the bench, and they held a whispered conference.

  “I hope the bail isn’t thousands of dollars,” Marta said under her breath.

  Good Lord! I hadn’t thought about bail. And I was about to spend probably several thousand dollars on a website.

  The sounds of the conference drifted toward us. “With all due respect,” Ricky said, “the charges amount to a verbal argument between a sleepy au pair and a police officer on a subway train. We ask that the suspect be released to her host family. The Baileys, standing right behind us, are eager to have Bonnie back at home. She has no prior record and a good job with people who love her.”

  The judge, the DA, Ricky, the court reporter, and the handful of other bystanders all turned to look at us. I had a moment of absolute self-consciousness, far worse than I’d experienced that morning on live TV. I smiled in what I hoped was a warm, friendly way, and Luke quickly put one arm around me and the other around Wylie.

  The judge gave a slight cough and looked down at the DA.

  The DA rolled his eyes for just a fraction of a second and then said, “The people are willing to consider adjournment in consideration of dismissal in this case.”

  Quickly, before the DA could change his mind, Ricky said, “Your Honor, we’ve reached an agreement of ACD.”

  “Granted,” the judge said, giving the gavel a quick tap on the bench. He handed paperwork down to the DA. “ACD. The defendant is ROR.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Released on her own recognizance,” Marta said. “Don’t you watch TV?”

  It was over that quickly. Ricky led Bonnie toward another door, on the opposite side of the room, which a bailiff opened for them.

  “Where Bonnie go?” Wylie sniffed.

  “Outside, honey. We’ll go get her,” I explained.

  Marta bid us good-bye at the courtroom door. “I’m sure you’re heading home with Bonnie. That girl needs a bath. I’m off to work.”

  Marta was right. Even though I was anxious to figure out how to capitalize on my big appearance, I couldn’t chuck Wylie into a cab with a shaken Bonnie and bid them adieu for the rest of the day.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll join you as soon as I can. The website . . .”

  “I’ll find Derrick. If he’s on board, you can start talking about it from home.” With that, Marta turned on her heel and departed.

  I carried Wylie toward the exit, wondering what the fallout from Bonnie’s embarrassing escapade would be. This was going to be far worse than grapes in the community room.

  Luke read my mind. He put an arm on my shoulder as we headed toward the sunlight. “Let’s go with, ‘it could happen to anyone. Don’t let it happen again.’ ”

  I laughed. “Okay. I’ll staple my lips together on the way home.”

  He kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck with that.”

  To: marta@juliaschild.com

  From: juliaschild@gmail.com

  Re: website contents

  Good work getting Derrick to design our site! I don’t need to know all the details of your negotiations! ;-) I’m working on the recipes while Wylie and Bonnie nap.

  The first time I wrote this one, I put “organic” in front of every ingredient. But it looked overzealous and uptight. (Don’t say it—kind of like me.) What do you think?

  Apple and Cheddar Muffets

  That Lizzie Hefflespeck Declares

  “Absolutely Not Gross”

  Ingredients ½ stick (¼ cup) butter

  1 very large apple or 2 small ones

  ⅔ cup all-purpose flour

  ½ cup yellow cornmeal

  3 tablespoons granulated sugar

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1 egg, lightly beaten

  ⅓ cup whole milk

  1 cup sour cream

  1½ cups (6 ounces) grated cheddar, divided

  Instructions

  Preheat the oven to 425°F. Generously grease and flour 10 muffin cups (or 12 for smaller muffets).

  Peel and core the apples and dice finely. If your toddler is helping, peel and slice an extra one to share. If you play your cards right, he or she will be busy eating the apple slices while you’re measuring out the dry ingredients.

  In a small skillet, melt the butter and sauté the apple until tender and just beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.

  Meanwhile, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sour cream, and 1 cup of the cheese. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients; then add the apples and butter. Stir just to combine.

  Spoon into the prepared tins, and top with the remaining ½ cup of cheese. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffets comes out clean. Cool for 5 to 10 minutes on a rack, and then turn the muffets out onto a plate. Serve warm or room temperature. Muffets will stay fresh in an airtight container for 2–3 days.

  Chapter 11

  The day after my TV appearance, I sat at my desk, trying to choose the imagery for my new website. There were several distractions, including a very hyper Marta. She migrated repeatedly between the outer office, where Derrick, the pierced twenty-something Web developer, was attempting to bring our site to life, and our tiny cell. She would dash in, bump into my desk, and ask, “Did anyone call?” Marta was sure that our phone would be ringing off the hook with new orders for muffets.

  “No, not since you asked me two minutes ago. Would you look at these?” There were pictures spread around my desk. I didn’t have any idea which of them best conveyed the new face of organic baby food. “When the customer first lands on the site, what should they see?”

  Marta shrugged. “A picture of our packaging and logo?”

  “Of course they’ll see that. But what else? A child? A vegetable? Perhaps a child hugging a vegetable?”

  “That sounds good.” Marta turned on her heel and again headed out the door toward Derrick’s desk.

  “Maybe,” I said to the empty room. “I’m just afraid the cliché police might come and arrest me for that one.”

  Marketing children’s foods was, relatively speaking, a new problem. In 1927 a young mother grew tired of standing in the kitchen and straining peas for her infant. She implored her husband, who ran a food company, to make special food just for babies. The woman’s name was Dorothy Gerber, and the rest—as they say—is history. The iconic Gerber baby face, with its tousled hair and apple cheeks, is one of the most recognized logos in the world. One woman’s quiet request became a marketing department’s dream.

  Pandora’s box was opened, and a new little consumer tumbled out. Babies became special customers—special enough to require their own brands of food and drink, in enough variety to fill their own aisle in the supermarket.

  And the newest trend was food for toddlers, with their own distinct consumer tastes and whims. They required their crackers to be shaped like fish or bunnies and their ravioli to be no larger than a half-inch square.

  And thank God. Because without consumers’ willingness to go deep into their wallets for toddler-friendly food, Julia’s Child would not exist. I was not completely comfortable with that. I was throwing fuel onto the fire of the very same kind of overmarketing that I hated.

  Marta trotted back into the room.

  “I am a parasite,” I said. I pushed my chair away from the desk with disgust. It promptly smacked into the bri
ck wall immediately behind me. “Maybe I should put an amoeba on the home page.”

  Marta rolled her eyes at me. “Will you just choose some pictures already? It’s just like you to get all tangled up with the meaning of the universe. How hard can this be?” Then the phone rang, and Marta had to quit scolding me and dive for it.

  I sifted again through the stack of shiny, glowing children’s photos we’d pulled off of a stock photography website.

  Marta plunked the telephone receiver back into the cradle with a little shriek, her hand resting triumphantly upon it. “An order! A big one!”

  “Terrific!” I said, happy to be distracted with good news. “From whom?”

  “From Entrefina, the big gourmet shop in Brooklyn Heights. You know it?”

  I laughed. “That’s so funny! I was just telling Mr. Pastucci that I hoped to get in there. They must watch The Scene! Terrific news, Marta.”

  Marta gave a curious frown. “Actually, they didn’t mention the show. But I assumed that’s why they called.” The phone began to ring again. Marta shrugged and answered it. “Julia’s Child.” Her dark eyebrows rose to form two peaks. “Julia is . . . taking an order at the moment, but she would love to speak to you. Just a minute, please. Gracias.” She placed the call on hold.

  I studied her. “What are you playing at, Marta? Who is it?”

  Instead of answering, she chanted, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—”

  “Who is it?”

  She winked at me. “It’s Whole Foods. But let’s not look too eager.”

  I lunged for the phone. “This is Julia Bailey.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Bailey. My name is Kai Travers, and my wife enjoyed your appearance on The Scene yesterday.”

  “Oh! Thank you so much. Please call me Julia.”

  “Okay, Julia. I’m the frozen foods buyer for the Northeast region at Whole Foods Markets.”

  I didn’t speak right away. The man who held the keys to the freezer case next to the pizzas was finally calling for me. I let the moment wash over me, savoring the sweetness. I had been waiting for this call for a long time.

  “Ms. Bailey? Julia?”

  “Yes!” I came to. “Whole Foods. I’ve heard of it.”

  Kai Travers laughed. “Excellent. Listen, I was planning to sample children’s products at the All-Natural Kid Stuff Trade-show next month. Will I see you there?”

  My mouth opened and closed like a fish. “We . . .” I gulped. Not the damned trade show again. “No, instead we’re . . . marketing the product more directly to our buyers,” I floundered. “It’s . . . We take a really personal approach with our marketing, you see. I find that it helps to maintain the integrity of the product, which I understand is really the Whole Foods way of doing things . . .”

  Eavesdropping from her line, Marta gave me the thumbs up from across the room.

  “And that goes way beyond our marketing,” I continued. “I’ve got my own plot of organic farmland in Vermont, and—”

  “Hmm. I understand, Julia,” Kai said. “So you’re not on the trade show circuit yet. Very well. But can you produce your product in commercial quantities?”

  “Of course!” I practically shouted into the phone. “We’re delivering to a dozen independent shops in Brooklyn, and our distribution grows larger every day!”

  “Hmm.” Kai seemed to be mulling this over.

  I held my breath.

  “Well, you certainly have a head start with the national TV publicity. And that makes my job easier. So here’s what I think I can do. How about this? Send me a gross of muffets. If you can deliver them immediately, we’ll try them out in three of our Manhattan stores.”

  “Terrific!” I said. I was in! I wanted to leap over the desks with joy.

  “This is just going to be a trial, okay? We’ll give the muffets a shot, in those three stores, for a month. Until the trade show. Then, after I get a look at everything that’s out there, I’ll firm up my kiddy lineup for the Northeast region.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, a little less certainly. So I was on probation. Either way, my little company would live or die in the next sixty days.

  “Now, let me give you some numbers. Do you have a pen handy? If we decide to take you regionwide in two months, that’s fourteen stores, well, sixteen by November. The Northeast region includes Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. We need one case per SKU for the initial delivery. Then we need you to be ready to deliver a three-case follow-through per location. Who are you using as a distributor?”

  I hesitated. “My, um, distributor is local to New York,” I said. My distributor was me in a hatchback Subaru.

  “Oh,” Kai said diplomatically. “Why don’t you call Bob over at Enorme? Tell him that Kai recommended him.”

  That particular distributor had laughed at me when I’d approached them without any orders in hand. “I’ll call him, Mr. Travers.”

  “Kai.”

  “It’s a pleasure working with you, Kai. You’ll love the muffets. You know, we also have other lines. We make couscous with—”

  “Let’s just focus on muffets for now, Julia. Can’t wait to try them! Oh—and is your website down? I tried to look at it this morning.”

  “Yes! It is down.” It had had the same “Under Construction” sign since I bought the domain name a year ago. But he didn’t need to know that. “We’re down temporarily, in order to add some recipes, as I mentioned on the show.”

  “I’ll look at it tomorrow, then. And feel free to have your people call my assistant, Janice, with any delivery questions. Talk to you soon, then.”

  He gave me his phone number. And he was gone.

  Marta and I stared at each other for several seconds, from opposite ends of our little room. Then, coming to our senses, we jumped out of our chairs, shrieking like schoolgirls.

  “We did it!” Marta yelled, as I whooped with joy.

  Our door popped open. Derrick, the Web developer, stuck his head in. “Everything okay in here?”

  “Yes!” I said, offering him a high five.

  He returned it expertly. “Good. I thought maybe you ladies saw a mouse or something.”

  I tried—as I always did—not to stare at his pierced lip. “Things are fantastic, Derrick. We just got an order from”—I paused for effect—“Whole Foods.”

  “Terrific,” he said politely.

  Of all the little businesses housed at Chelsea Sunshine Suites, ours was the only one that made a product you could touch with your hands or buy at a store. Every other start-up was “virtual”—websites, consulting, and viral e-marketing. We were quaint by comparison. I didn’t expect Derrick to understand.

  “I’d better get back to work on your website, then.” He turned to disappear back to virtual land.

  “Hey, Derrick?” I stopped him.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just promised Whole Foods that the website would be back up tomorrow. Is there any way you could . . . ?”

  His mouth fell open in surprise. A ray of light from Marta’s desk lamp hit the stud in his lip, and the full spectrum of colors was reflected in the glinting light. “Tomorrow tomorrow?” He looked at his watch. “Good thing I came in early.”

  “I really appreciate it. Listen, I’ll buy you lunch today, in case that helps.”

  He winked. “Better get a whole lot of coffee too.” Then he shut the door.

  I took out my calculator. “Okay, Marta, let’s crunch some numbers. We can bake, say, two gross of muffets in one night at Zia Maria’s. So—going forward—if Whole Foods has sixteen stores in the northeastern loop, and each sells out of its initial stock once a week, that means our production would have to increase to . . .” I stabbed at the calculator, my frown lines multiplying along with my numbers.

  “What?” Marta prompted.

  “We’d have to bake . . . Let’s see . . . How many hours per week, and how many nights . . .” It couldn’t be true.

  “How many?”r />
  “Nine,” I sighed.

  “Nine hours?” Marta asked hopefully.

  “Nine nights.”

  “But last time I checked, there were only seven.”

  “I know.” My heart raced. “We can’t cook nine nights a week. Or even seven. But . . . I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s a phase-two problem—only if we survive Kai’s probation period.”

  “But we will, Julia. It’s a great product, and it’s going to work. We’re going to need that inventory.” Marta sat heavily into her chair. “It’s time to find a new kitchen. One that lets us cook during daylight hours.”

  “Right.” My mind whirled with all that needed to happen. Which problem should I tackle first? It was just like the age-old riddle: the free-range chicken or the cage-free egg?

  I took a deep breath. “We need a plan.” I took up a pad and a pen with a flourish. “So, first we get this website up—”

  “First we bake the initial order for Kai,” Marta broke in.

  “Um, okay. Both of those things are first. Next, I’ll have to find our new production facility. And we get the distributor lined up.” Good Lord! I wasn’t going to see my family for a month. “We’ll have to work like Cinderella to do all of this.”

  “At least you already have the handsome prince,” Marta observed, tugging on an earring. “We’re going to need some help in the kitchen,” she said. “On short notice.”

  “Mice into footmen?” I suggested.

  “I was thinking of my cousin Theresa. She just lost her babysitting job.”

  “Great!” I said, though I hadn’t meant to sound so gleeful about someone losing her job. “Why don’t you give her a call? There’s someone else I need to call,” I said, digging around on my desk for the number.

  “Who?” Marta asked.

  “ANKST. The trade show. Now that we’ve hooked up with our fairy godmother, we can restate our revenue figures. I’m going to demand that we go to the damned ball.”

  Chapter 12

  The voice mail message was brief, but it was just the one I’d been waiting for. “Da eagle has landed,” declared a scratchy male voice.