Bread on Arrival

by Lou Jane Temple

  “I don’t want children, H. You know that.”

  “Hank, another war isn’t going to break out here in America next week like it did in Vietnam when you were little. You’d be such a great Dad.”

  “You mean like my Dad was? He tried to do the best for us. He took care of his family by working for the U.S. Army. And that’s what killed him when the north came. I’ve grown up without a Dad. I don’t want that for anyone else, so the best way to avoid heartache is no children. You had Iris. That’s enough for us.”

  Heaven pulled off Hank’s shoes and socks. She kissed the instep of his right foot.

  “Oh my God. Don’t start, H. I’m so tired, I can’t even lift my legs to take off my own shoes. I still don’t want kids.”

  “I’m not starting anything, darling. I have to jump in the shower and go to work.”

  “No you don’t. It’s Sunday.”

  “Tonight is the combo farewell to the ARTOS baking conference and wake for Dieter Bishop. He seems to have had a serious case of dough drunk.”

  Hank’s eyes were closed but he immediately opened them. “What does that mean?”

  “Say good night, Hank. I’ll tell you everything when I see you next. When will that be?”

  “I don’t have to go back until Monday morning,” Hank murmured as he pulled up the covers. “Heaven?”

  Heaven was headed for the shower. “Yes, baby?”

  “Didn’t you tell me something about rye?”

  “Yes, Dieter is, was, a rye bread expert. Why do you ask?”

  Hank didn’t answer. He was breathing evenly with a look of profound peacefulness on his face.

  Heaven had to go back and kiss his forehead. “The sleep of a truly righteous man,” she pronounced softly.

  Then she hit the showers.

  * * *

  “Thanks for coming with me, honey.” Heaven said to Iris as they were driving to the cafe.

  “Mom, I’m leaving in a couple of days. Of course I want to be with you. Besides, I started this bread baker’s convention and I want to finish it and, it’s more fun cooking when the place is closed.”

  “Yeah, those pesky old customers always get in the way when the place is open.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to pay for this party, do you?”

  “No, the host committee took some of the conference fees for this party, just as they did for the lunch at the hotel and the barbecue tour. I won’t make a penny, but I won’t go in the hole for a change.”

  “Well, that’s something. What are we fixing?”

  “I thought we’d do a country, harvest kind of thing. They had a Mennonite feast on Thursday, barbeque on Friday, a hotel lunch on Saturday, I thought fried chicken was the only thing left. I remember my grandmother talking about cooking for thrashers.”

  “Thrashers?”

  “In the old days, everyone didn’t own their own combines to harvest the wheat. A farm would hire the company that owned the machines, first horse-drawn, then later, gas combines. They would supply the hired help as well. Thrashers were hired hands that went down the Great Plains, from Minnesota to Texas, working to get the wheat harvested. I have photographs, they used to harvest with big teams of horses that pulled the combines in your great-granddad’s time. Grammy used to tell me all the stories. The women would go from farm to farm and help cook for the thrashers. Supposedly the thrashers could eat more than anybody.”

  “And they made fried chicken?”

  “Yes, and loads of fresh vegetables and mashed potatoes and pies. And they set up long tables out in the yard, like we ate lunch at Ernest Powell’s.”

  “Have we seen Ernest Powell lately, Mom?”

  “Ernest gave his big plea to the bakers for bread machines for the poor yesterday at the luncheon.”

  “They didn’t laugh at him, did they?”

  “They positively embraced the idea. ARTOS has started a foundation to buy and give bread machines to needy families all over the country. I was wrong about them being too snooty to accept a bread machine for any reason.”

  “I think most of the bakers seemed like nice enough folks, even if they’re famous. I knew they’d come around to help ol’ Ernest, who deserves some credit. Those Kansas farmers are a tricky lot. They act dumb, but they could run the country better than the politicians.”

  Heaven wheeled into her parking spot behind the restaurant. “Good old Kansas common sense. It must have skipped a generation, from your granddad, straight to you.”

  Iris smiled and hugged her Mom’s arm. “We don’t have to make pies for one hundred, do we?”

  “No, the ARTOS gang is out at Hearth and Home Bakery baking Dieter’s last rye sourdough bread and they’re going to make an apple crisp or cobbler or something. And Robbie, the day dishwasher, is a great chicken fryer. He’s coming in at noon,” Heaven said as she unlocked the backdoor of the cafe and disarmed the alarm.

  Heaven and Iris made a pot of coffee and a prep list. She had just finalized the menu the day before. September was a transition month for Kansas City in terms of vegetables. The root vegetables were just starting to be harvested and the tail end of the summer produce, like tomatoes and zucchini, were on and off. Max Mossman, her organic produce man, had arrived with plenty of green tomatoes and only a few zucchini, lots of cucumbers, the last of the corn that Heaven made into corn chow-chow the day before, and some great looking potatoes and squash. With a sigh of satisfaction, Heaven put the menu and prep list on a clipboard that she hung on a nail near the worktable. Heaven hated to start cooking until she had a prep list. If you couldn’t cross something off the prep list there wasn’t any sense in doing it.

  ARTOS SUNDAY SUPPER MENU

  Fried chicken

  Meat loaf

  Mashed potatoes and gravy

  Root bake of turnips, parsnips, sweet potatoes, celery root and carrots

  Black-eyed peas

  Collard and mustard greens

  Sweet and sour red cabbage and apples

  Fried green tomatoes

  Marinated cucumbers and onions

  Corn chow-chow

  Watermelon pickles

  Tomato preserves

  Bread and cobbler from the bakers

  “This seems like lots of items to whip out, Mom,” Iris said doubtfully.

  “Yes, but it’s all pot food. Nothing except the chicken needs constant attention. And only the fried green tomatoes need attention at the last minute. We’re not going to have appetizers. It’s not the farm way. When the bakers get here, around six-thirty, we’ll give them time for a drink, then put all the food out and we’re done with them. I can hardly wait.”

  “Speaking of the farm way, what drinks go with this menu, lemonade and iced tea?”

  Heaven smiled. “That is what your grandmother would have served, that’s for sure. And we will have big pitchers of milk and tea, both sweetened and unsweetened. I told the bartenders last night to squeeze a lot of lemons for me. I thought we’d have something that involves gin and lemonade, maybe frozen into slushes. And beer, and although I know wine was never a part of a thrashers’ supper, I have to have it. I got Rosemount Shiraz for the red and Cakebread Sauvignon Blanc for the white. We’ll put the drinks we’re offering on the bar in big pitchers and tubs. I don’t want anyone to think they can just pick from behind the bar. ARTOS can’t afford all the booze this crew could drink. If they’re like most chefs, they can pack it away.”

  “Is anyone else coming to help?”

  “Don’t worry. We don’t have to do it all. As I said before, Robbie will be here at noon. He’ll do the chicken and stay to do the dishes later. Four front-of-the-house people will be in, a bartender, Joe and Chris. And Murray will be here late in the afternoon, to meet and greet.”

  “Mom, I bet you miss Sam, don’t you?”

  Sam was a young man who had started working at Cafe Heaven as a busboy when he was in high school. He grew up in the restaurant. Although he hadn’t wanted to go to college init
ially, Heaven had talked him into giving it a try. First, he had gone to the junior college in Kansas City and continued to work at the restaurant. Sam had always been a great draftsman, and finally decided to take the plunge and become an architect. He had gone to New York last year to attend Cooper Union and because of his schedule, hadn’t been able to come home for the summer. “Of course, I miss him terribly. He was here the first day this place opened. He and Murray. I know I must be happy for Murray, that he’s started writing again, but I’m afraid he’ll get famous and leave too.”

  Iris was busy peeling parsnips for the root bake. “Poor Mom. Your favorite waiter grows up and goes to college, your maitre d’ goes back to journalism, and your daughter tells you she won’t be moving back to Kansas City.”

  Heaven threw a potato peel across the room in the direction of her daughter. “I refuse to feel sorry for myself until I put you on the plane. I’m thrilled for Sam. And for Murray. And as for you, I know whatever you do next, you will be a huge success.”

  “Whoa, what happened to you overnight? When we went home last night you were a big baby, ready to sell my poor pickup the minute I went back to school. Today you sound positively rational.”

  “It happens once in a while. Now I think I’ll make my Mom’s famous meat loaf recipe. The meatloaves don’t have to go in the oven until four or five but I’ll make the mixture now and get that out of the way. It’s such a messy job.”

  “Raw ground beef and eggs and stuff? Yeah, and I know you mix it up with your hands.”

  Heaven pointed to a box up on the shelf. “Now, I try to remember to use the handy, dandy rubber gloves on the messy jobs. Health, food safety, bacteria under the fingernails, you know.”

  “Stop. I don’t want to think about gross stuff like that. Do I have to wear those rubber gloves?”

  “No, we don’t wear them for normal chores. It’s much better to use bleach water and wash every surface down as you go. That kills the bugs better than anything.” Heaven pointed at a plastic container on the counter. “I just automatically fill up a container with hot water and bleach when I come in the door. I did it as soon as we got done with the prep list. Try to get in the habit of washing your table and knives with bleach water and do it when you get back to England. You’ll have fewer colds.”

  Iris rolled her eyes. “I have never known you to be a germ freak. But I’ll take your suggestion, thank you very much. Should I peel the turnips next?”

  * * *

  At three in the afternoon, the kitchen was full of good smells, chiefly that of the fried chicken. Robbie Lunstrum had two deep hotel pans full of crispy cooked chicken parts, covered with foil and sitting on top of the big twelve-burner stove. He had two more pans of raw chicken marinating in buttermilk and two huge cast iron skillets full and crackling with chicken and his cooking solution, which Heaven suspected was a combination of cooking oil and lard. She tried never to look over when Robbie was loading his skillets. That way when people asked, she could honestly say she didn’t know if lard was involved. Heaven was afraid you couldn’t get such good tasting chicken without using lard.

  The root bake was in big pans too, layered like escalloped potatoes only better. Red cabbage and apples were simmering, greens were in a big pot with a ham hock thrown in for good measure, black-eyed peas were almost done, beer batter was ready for the slices of green tomatoes to be dipped in and then fried.

  Heaven had sliced the cucumbers and onions, added sugar, white vinegar, water and just a little Louisiana hot sauce, and put them in the walk-in cooler to cure for a few hours. Every time she made cucumber salad like that, she thought of her mother and the big garden they always had on the farm.

  At the time, it had been something to gripe about when it was her turn to pull weeds. But through the years of her childhood she had come to look forward to the first salad of baby leaf lettuce in the spring, and everything that followed from that patch of earth in the backyard next to the kitchen. As each vegetable and herb sprang from the earth and flourished, it had a moment of glory at their table. Tomatoes, peppers, all varieties of beans, greens, chilies, and beautiful herbs were prepared and served in all kinds of ways. The family worked on the plans for the plot together each year, trying new things as well as the top ten favorites. There was a famous family feud over which tomato varieties to plant. The O’Malley’s grew eggplants before eggplants were cool. One of their neighbors had taught them the ancient Indian way of growing corn, beans and squash together. The corn stalks became a place for the bean vines to wind around, stretching up to the sun. The squash crawled along the ground in the shade of the other two.

  Even though Heaven never gave it a thought when she was growing up, the current trend in cuisine that emphasized the regional and the seasonal was just how she had been taught to cook. Canning was another part of her childhood. She had been flooded with good canning memories in August when she’d made tomato preserves and put up pickles made with watermelon and cantaloupe rind. Tonight, they would have those and the corn relish she had whipped together the day before. In the Kansas before refrigeration, farm families preserved all the garden bounty so they could eat through the winter, and those habits remained. Heaven was glad she had learned to can.

  “Heaven, come out and look at the dining room,” Chris and Joe called, almost at the same time. They had come in an hour before to set the tables. Iris had wandered off to help them.

  For two young men who had never been on a farm, they did a good job of faking it. The dining room looked like an uptown version of the tables at Ernest Powell’s. Arranging the four top tables into long continuous rows, they had covered them with white tablecloths, and over that, vintage tablecloths from the forties printed with fruits and flowers from Heaven’s private tablecloth collection. Down the middle of the tables stood artful bunches of wheat tied with gold ribbon into mini-sheaves.

  “Love the wheat, guys,” Heaven said.

  Iris was busy tying a ribbon. “Look, Mom. I just did a Martha Stewart thing.”

  “I won’t hold it against you, honey. Now will you three start on the bar? Enough of this gracious living shit.”

  Chris and Joe were undaunted. “You like it and you know it, boss. What time is it?”

  A voice floated into the room from the kitchen door. “Almost four I think. Of course it’s almost four somewhere in the universe every moment.”

  This statement made Heaven and Joe and Chris and Iris all stop and stare. It came from Pauline, not usually known for her New Age proclamations. Heaven rushed over to help Pauline with the very many loaves of bread she had in her arms. Pauline had a very strange glimmer in her eyes, almost a sheen of yellowish light. She was sweating, which surprised Heaven. Pauline worked in the heat all the time and didn’t sweat like this. Heaven bet the bakers had been drinking a little wine as they worked.

  “So, Pauline,” she said, “how’s it going? These loaves look great.”

  Pauline smiled beatifically at the group. “And they taste good too. We ate the first fournee for lunch,” she explained as she arranged the loaves down the middle of the tables. “There are more. I have to go back and pick up the rest of the bread and the dessert. But I just had to share with you.”

  “And what, pray tell, is fournee?” Chris asked cryptically. “Something with alcohol I bet.”

  Iris was the most fluent French speaker. “It means baking. Have you been having a good time today, Pauline?” she asked cautiously.

  “The best,” Pauline answered airily. Then Pauline’s behavior became even stranger. Each time she came to a wheat centerpiece on a table, she very delicately picked it up and tossed it on the floor, and replaced it with a loaf of bread. Everyone was so astonished by this behavior that she trashed three wheat arrangements before Heaven rushed to her side.

  “Pauline, I think you’ve had a little too much…”

  “Champagne,” Pauline said with a giggle as she grabbed a few wheat stalks out of the next grouping and started t
ossing them, one by one, in the air.

  Heaven grabbed the remaining stalks out of her hands. “Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we go together over to the bakery to pick up the rest of the bread and the dessert? Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  Iris and the guys, alarmed to see the ever-practical Pauline turn into a wood nymph throwing natural materials around, reacted favorably to Heaven’s suggestion.

  “Don’t worry, Mom, we’ll be fine,” Iris said. “You go with Pauline. As soon as Murray or the bartender comes, I’ll go back in the kitchen and check the prep list.”

  Heaven gently pushed Pauline toward the back door as she looked over her shoulder at the other three. Pauline was singing that old rock chestnut “Louie, Louie” at the top of her lungs, dancing as well. “Make some coffee,” Heaven said. “We’ll be right back.”

  Mrs. O’Malley’s Meatloaf

  4 eggs

  3 lbs. ground chuck

  1 10 oz. can tomato puree

  1½ cups fine bread crumbs

  2 packages dry onion soup mix

  1 16 oz. bottle creamy Italian dressing

  ¼ cup mustard, either Dijon or coarse ground or yellow, then another ¼ cup to finish

  1 tsp. each kosher salt and white ground pepper

  1 T. each soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce

  Mix all ingredients together, using 2/3 cup of the dressing. Form into two loaves and mark them with crisscross marks with a sharp knife. Bake on baking sheets at 350 degrees for an hour.

  Make a glaze with the remaining Italian dressing and the second ¼ cup mustard. Pour over the meat loaves and return to the oven for another fifteen minutes.

  Thirteen

  The Hearth and Home bakery was almost deserted when Heaven and Pauline arrived. This surprised Heaven.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked. There were two bakery employees with white, brimless baking caps on, obviously the vanguard for the night shift, looking over the clipboards that Heaven assumed were their work orders for the night. Other than that, it was quiet.