“Roxie, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. What can I do you for, Mrs. Oleson?”
“I’m in a bit of a pickle, dear, and I’m hoping you can help me out.”
“I’ll do what I can. What’s up?” I replied, confused but intrigued.
“Well, you know I always bring cakes to the ladies’ luncheon, and this year I’ve just totally overextended myself. Linda and Evelyn were positively raving over the walnut cake they had at the diner last week, and I wondered—”
“You want a walnut cake too?” I finished.
“Actually, I’d need four. And maybe . . . do you have something different you could make? They’ve already had the walnut cake, so I thought maybe we could surprise them with something new,” she said, her voice getting quiet and sneaky. “Eleanor made her famous sponge cake last week, and I need to step it up a notch or two.”
“Something new,” I repeated, glancing over at the barren cake display case with worry. Not about how I was going to bake more—but because I wanted to do it. “When do you need these?”
“Tomorrow?” she asked hesitantly.
Yikes. I looked again at the display case. This morning it had held eight cakes, each sliced in eighths, individually for sale. Now there were only crumbs.
Did I want to do this? Could I do this was a better question, adding another thing to my already packed schedule.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, decision made, grabbing the yellow order pad out of Maxine’s apron pocket as she passed by. She frowned, eyeing me from under the beehive hairdo that held a—
“I need this too,” I chirped, plucking the pen from the hairspray-stiffened swirl. She cracked me on the ass with a dish towel in complaint.
“Carrot?” I parroted back to Mrs. Oleson, my mind immediately racing. “Traditional? With nuts?” I was giddy at the thought of shopping at Leo’s for the ingredients. Mmm, I could do a cream cheese frosting. I’d seen tubs of it at Maxwell Farm from the dairy next door. What else could I pick up there? Oooo, maybe he’d pick me up. Maybe he’d finish what he started that day in the silo—
Shit, I was on the phone. “Pick them up tomorrow morning,” I instructed Mrs. Oleson, flustered.
As I hung up the phone, the Scott family walked in. Mom, Dad, and two kids, with the point-five bun in the oven and ready to pop out.
“Have a seat anywhere that’s open,” I called, leaning over the counter to see if there was a booth or table free. There was one in the back, and Mrs. Scott was able to waddle uncomfortably over and sit down.
“Looks like someone is making a name for herself in this town,” Chad said over his menu.
“I don’t even know why you’re pretending to look at this—you always get the same thing. Tuna melt, potato salad, cherry Coke.” I rolled my eyes, smacking the top of his head lightly with his menu.
“She knows her customers’ orders, she’s becoming famous for her sweet treats, she’s emphatically not crushing on a farmer—what a summer Roxie Callahan’s having,” Chad said.
I smacked him again, not trying to hide my smile.
After sending his order to the kitchen, I started rifling through one of the old cookbooks my mother kept behind the counter. An old Betty Crocker from the fifties was chock-full of American classics: sponge, angel, devil, coconut, pound . . . And then came the mother lode: the European Dessert section. Tiramisu, Black Forest, Pavlova, and Irish Mousse. I was about to read the recipe for the boozy take on mousse pie when Mr. Scott approached the counter.
“God, I haven’t seen that in twenty years!” he exclaimed, pointing to the picture of an Apple Amber pie. According to the recipe, it was a whiskeyed-up meringue pie. Fresh farmyard apples sweetened with cider, sugar, and lemons, blanketed with rich, brown meringue piled high.
As Mr. Scott leaned closer to stare at the cookbook, he looked like he was about to drool. “Are you making this?” he asked hopefully.
“I don’t know—maybe. I’ve never made it before.” But I could, easily, and the regulars would love it. Hmmm. Apples weren’t in season yet, but peaches would be soon. I mentally started converting the recipe from apples to peaches: maybe less cinnamon, a splash of bourbon. Did Leo have peach trees? Hmmm, sweet, luscious peaches. And sweet, luscious Leo.
Zombie Pickle Class. A phrase never before uttered in the history of phrase uttering, let alone printed on a sign. But there it was in the diner’s front window, propped up by a ten-gallon plastic pickle tub. Which was high art apparently, according to Chad. “It’s ironic, it’s homey, it’s perfection!” he’d said when he’d dropped it off earlier that day and strong-armed me into letting him put it in.
Though I tried to insist that teaching him and Logan hardly constituted a “class,” he’d insisted more. So here I was, surrounded by cutting boards, cucumbers, garlic, and a few dozen jars, waiting for my first class to start. The diner was quiet, the front lights turned down and jukebox off, just the faint hum of the fridges audible in the kitchen.
I yawned, leaning on the countertop. I’d only managed about three hours of sleep the night before, and it’d been a long day. One of the line cooks had called in sick, so I’d worked both the breakfast and the lunch shifts on the grill. My back creaked, my shoulders ached, my finger was burned by a sauté pan.
But I was also surprisingly . . . exhilarated. I’d worked a hard day, did everything I needed to do, put out fires—literally, and made sure every single person who came through the door enjoyed the hell out of their lunch. I’d made a new version of tomato soup today. I’d slow roasted the tomatoes with basil and a bit of chervil before pureeing them, rather than using the standard canned. I’d used crème fraîche instead of half-and-half. Then I added brioche croutons, tossed with gruyère and black pepper. Did we sell out of that soup before 11 a.m.? Possibly. Did we get way more take-out orders for soup than we’d had since I’d been home?