Things are settling down...knock on wood

Things have changed a lot in the past few weeks. Jill and I are getting adjusted to the routine, which is making life a lot easier for us. It used to be that every day we’d come in to work and have no idea what was going to happen, but we’re starting to be able to predict and prepare much better. Jill had her first afternoon off last week, and today I worked for fewer than eight hours. I had the weird experience of not really knowing what to do with the rest of my day.

Another great change is that the café has been getting quite busy on the weekends! There was a very nice article about Generous Servings in the North Denver Tribune last week (read it here), and lots of people read it and came into the café to check us out. Hopefully they were impressed by our coffee and pastries, and charmed by the little spiral cookie (called tuile, pronounced “tweel”) we give with every drink (seriously, it would charm my socks off if someone gave me a free cookie with my coffee, especially if it was as cute as our tuile). Plus, there's Jill's latte art:

We hosted another fun private event on Monday, where the group made a menu including hand-rolled gnocchi and pear-cranberry bread pudding. On Saturday we had the first session of the “A Chicken in Every Pot” class, which was tons of fun. I even enjoyed doing the dishes after that class because I was so amused by the fact that we actually had cooked chicken in so many pots. I admit that sometimes I think of the class names before I think of the class content—in the case of the chicken class, I think the two thoughts came to me simultaneously. A class where we focus on creative ways to cook chicken! And a funny-sounding presidential campaign slogan! What could be better? Today I realized that I had missed a great opportunity to use the word “canoodling” in relation to a Valentine’s Day class. Ah well, next year. I am making homemade truffles in personalized chocolate boxes in honor of the Day, so if you’ve got someone to give one to, come in and pre-order yours now for pickup between February 10 and 14. Homemade truffles, in case you haven’t had one recently, are about three thousand times better than the packaged candies, and they’re best when they’re fresh, which they aren’t going to be unless you buy them from a shop that makes them on site. This picture is of our sample box, which has been sitting on the cafe counter for a week, so it's looking a bit ragged.

We’re trying some new types of classes in February and March, in response to requests and suggestions we’ve gotten. We’re offering one class for teens and adults to take together, and another for parents and kids. Plus, we’ve got a whole slew of new class topics on the schedule, from Indian food to herbs and spices to salads.

Jill and I have been working on our smoothie recipe, which we want to be able to make completely from scratch (no weird store-bought smoothie “bases” or powders, full of strange chemical-tasting gums, which is what most coffee shops use). We tested all kinds of thickeners for our smoothies, and we’ve finally developed a fantastic recipe. We tried making a vanilla smoothie (with no other flavors except our homemade vanilla syrup), which is not something either of us would ever order, and we agreed it was good enough that we’d like to have another one. So if it ever warms up here, we’ll be ready with a great lineup of warm-weather drinks.

Have you ever found a dog hair in your muffin?

One of the interesting things Jill and I have observed now that we are cafe owners is that a lot of people don't know that you aren't allowed to bring dogs into food establishments. I mean, universally not allowed. It's not a rule we made up, it's the Health Department. And let's note, for the record, that every single person who works in our entire building owns a dog, so it's not like we hate dogs. But it's a little weird that people just walk right in the door of the cafe with their big, hairy dogs. I'm not talking teacup dogs, I'm talking Irish setters.

Jill got tired of intercepting people who came in with their dogs and nicely informing them that they had to leave their dogs outside (and one person then tied her large dog to our brand-new patio railing, right next to the sign that said "Please do not touch railing" because the concrete was still setting), so she put a sign on the door that said "No animals allowed". I thought this sounded kind of negative, so I suggested the following sign:

"We're sure your dogs don't shed, drool, sniff inappropriately, or have kennel cough, but the Health Department still doesn't allow them to come inside. For waiting patiently, and because we really do love dogs, we have homemade dog treats to give them. Feel free to tie your lovely canine to the tree behind you."

We thought it was funny, but the next day we saw a woman walking her dog come up to the door, read the sign, and turn around and leave. That was not the intended response. Sorry, we don't sell senses of humor.

Speaking of humor, one element of our building that we have received lots of compliments on is our bathroom decor. We covered the walls with our many prestigious awards and certificates, framed in Wal-Mart's finest $2 frames, including Jill's 2003 "Know Your Constitution" award, my certificate for having the highest average in Science in sixth grade, and Biscuit's (my dog) diploma for finishing obedience training. It's hard to capture the effect in pictures, because it's best when you're actually sitting on the toilet and have time to read all the certificates, but here's a look at the bathroom:

Fixing Stuff

Lots of my cooking students ask me how late I stay at work after the classes end. The answer is, pretty much forever. I often don't get any baking done during the day, because there is an endless number of errands to run, financial records to update, and phone calls to make (mostly to people I called the day before, who were supposed to call me back but didn't--I estimate that over 75% of the people I call do not return the call or do whatever their job is that I need them to do). So it's not until everyone else leaves that I really get in the zone with baking. The only problem is, after I bake until 1:00 am, I still have to clean the kitchen, which involves hours of dishes and mopping. The amount of cleaning I do on a daily basis is getting to be a drag. Luckily, I'm getting faster at it as well. And yesterday we had cleaners come, which we are planning on doing once every two weeks as a special treat for Jill and me. Not having to mop made it one of the best days of my life. My joy was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I had to repaint the bathroom (during our sewer backup there was some, uh, material that got on the walls). This is at least the tenth time I have had to paint since I first thought the painting was finished.

A lot of other niggling things have gotten taken care of recently, too. We had a repair guy come out to fix the pilot lights on our stove (I've been lighting the burners with matches all this time). He replaced the pilot light supply tubes ($20 in parts, $140 in labor, including charging us for two hours of travel despite the fact that his company is located about four miles away), and also remarked that he really liked our stove set-up (we have the stove inset into a stainless steel prep table), and he'd never seen anything like it. Having the stove repair guy compliment your stove is pretty great. In case you haven't had a chance to fully appreciate it in previous photos, here's a closer view from the front of the room and the back:




Be honest: you really want to cook on this stove, don't you. In other repair news, I also utilized my extensive plumbing knowledge to fix a leak in our pre-wash sprayer (which required use of a wrench) and our dishwasher (requiring teflon tape), plus we made the light store send us replacements for the four (out of 31) long-life fluorescent bulbs that have already burned out, and we got Aaron to help us fix the drip from one of our sink faucets. Why are this many things broken when they are all brand-new, you ask. This is a good question.

And in a very exciting development, we received our cafe tables today--only two months late! We can finally return the really bad rental tables we have been forced to use all this time, and I can begin my campaign to get the table company to reimburse us for the rental fees (it's $400 worth of fees, and my guess is that it will take me eight hours of arguing and I have a 70% chance of getting that money reimbursed, but it's the principle of the thing). Unfortunately the table company forgot to include the hardware for assembling the tables, but that didn't slow us down, we just went right to the hardware store and bought the requisite screws. We put the tables together and are adjusting to the new look (the new tables are very small, which was a design decision we made a long time ago to maximize seating in our limited space, but it's going to take us a little while to get used to the way the place looks now). Soon (hopefully) I will be able to show you good pictures of how the place looks, because Aaron, our contractor, is also a professional architectural/interior photographer, and he's going to take some pictures and let us have copies.

Happy 2008!

2007 was quite a year for Generous Servings. We opened, we closed, we opened again, we closed again. Our resolution for 2008 is to stay open for four consecutive weeks. Jill and I got back from our sister's wedding in Hawaii on Friday and defied jetlag to get everything ready for our Grand Opening of 2008, which occurred on Saturday.

The cafe was busy, which was great, plus I taught the first day of the two-day Winter Vacation Culinary Camp for Teens. I have six kids in the camp, and it's a young group: the oldest is 14. This camp has the usual mix of personalities, although none of the kids is particularly shy. Lots of people in the cafe watched part of the camp through the window between the kitchen and cafe, plus pedestrians on the street stopped to look through the storefront windows, and one of the kids asked me whether it bothered me to have people watching me all the time. I said that I usually didn't pay attention to the audience, but the kids decided that the best thing to do would be to wave at everyone who stared at them. Over the next few hours this turned into vigorous waving and jumping around, and then into doing the disco "YMCA" letters and bursting into song every time someone walked by. It's an interesting form of advertisement, but better than one of their other ideas, which was to pretend they were tied to the table and motion for help to see if anyone would come rescue them.

When not harassing passersby, we made Asian Crispy Chicken Salad for lunch, and then walked to Sunflower Market for a tour of the meat and produce departments. The guy stocking produce was charmed by my young charges and kept coming over to give us samples of stuff. The cashier asked if they were all my children.

When we got back, we made salsa and guacamole for a snack, and then worked on our dinner of steak fajitas with homemade tortillas and arroz verde. We made brownies for dessert, and we started the most popular recipe: homemade marshmallows. Marshmallows are really fun to make because the mixture goes through several dramatic transformations, and the kids were big fans of eating the marshmallow before it hardened (when it's basically marshmallow fluff).



After the first day of camp, I would trust the kids more than 95% of adults I know to do a good job of mincing garlic, taking brownies out of the oven at the right time, or measuring flour accurately. They also learned tons of cooking trivia: how to tell if a sugar syrup is at the hard ball stage, why some people think cilantro tastes like soap, what the numbers that designate sizes of shrimp mean. And they're getting good at knife skills: by tomorrow evening I'd bet money that any of the kids would be better at chopping than his or her parents. That's one of the most satisfying things for me about these camps: the kids really learn to cook.