Second time's the charm

I taught the second halves of two classes this week, and both of them were tons of fun. In both cases, I felt like the first classes weren't my best--they were okay, but we didn't really get warmed up. It was nice to have a second meeting, and it was almost like seeing old friends again--there's really a camaraderie that's formed by cooking together.

The Cake Decorating class made some really lovely cakes, frosted like the pros do it, with cool garnishes, including this minimalist one (made by an engineer, can you tell?)


I can tell you that it's very difficult to make corners as clean as you see on that cake. That's why you almost always see borders piped around the edge of cakes--the corners look bad.

The Cooking Basics class was also a good time. We made some great food, of course, and it was cool to find out a little more about the class participants. Among the students were an Episcopal priest, a Russian kettlebell trainer, and a manufacturer of hiking and camping equipment--the diversity made for some interesting conversation when we were all enjoying the fruits of our labors at the end of the class.

Tonight we had a nice private event, and the participants made a chocolate-hazelnut torte that was really fantastic. It's hard to produce a fancy baked good in an just hour or two, because that type of dish usually requires a lot of cooling time, but this torte was easily ready by the time we got to dessert. Luckily the torte served 12 and there were 11 guests, so yours truly got to taste some at the end.

And finally, we have posted our class schedule for April. We've got some cool new classes, including one on sauces, and another on sushi (and other things you can roll). I'm expecting the sushi one to sell out, because a lot of people have asked about it, so sign up early if you're interested.

Just call me Legal Eagle

My list of new experiences that I have had because I am a business owner was augmented today: I filed a suit in small claims court. Let me hasten to note that I decry our litigious society as much as the next person, and I'm not planning on making this a habit, but I am unapologetically glad to be suing Old Dominion Freight Lines, even if I lose. The reason I'm suing them is because they dropped my big industrial mixer during transport, and now the bowl-lift mechanism is messed up and the mixer will only run on medium speed. Want to see what happens when you try to mix flour into muffin batter on medium speed?


Because of this, I can't use the big mixer, which means I have to make our pastries in a million small batches on the little mixers, which is getting old. When I first set up the mixer and realized it had concealed damage, I called the freight company to report the damage, and they sent me a claim form to complete, which required getting an estimate for the repairs. Things were a little busy for me around then, but I found a repair guy (of course I didn't already have a repair guy, so this took some work) and got him out there, and his assessment was even worse than I thought: he took it apart and said that the internal damage was extensive, and the repairs would be $1300. I duly noted this and sent the claim form back to the freight company. They responded that they would only consider claims made within 15 days of delivery (which would have been in November, when we didn't even have lights in the building, much less the 220-volt outlet for the mixer), so too bad. I wrote them some letters, asked to speak with supervisors, etc., but they kept saying no. They said that everyone knows about the 15 day rule, which I certainly did not know about, and couldn't have done anything about even if I had known it, because I didn't have a way to test the mixer at that point. What bothers me about this is that they aren't even arguing that they didn't cause the damage, and there is no doubt in my mind that they did. They are hoping that I am dissuaded by technicalities, which, for the record, I am not.

In my last letter to them, I threatened to "contact my lawyer", which I did--that would be my dad. The crack legal team of Brinig and Brinig determined that I could file in small claims court, so I filled out the notice of claim and summons to trial forms, and today I went down to the courthouse before my aerobics class. It took me a really long time to find parking, so I didn't have much time, but I figured it couldn't take that long to drop off my papers. I went through the metal detector, at which two security guards were debating whether the shotgun one of them owned was single- or double-action (I feel like if you own one of them, you should know), and got in line behind three other people. There were three clerks helping people, which seemed promising, but as it turned out, turnover was not quick. I waited it out for twenty minutes, and got to be first in line, but then it was one minute before my aerobics class was supposed to start, so I had to bail.

After my class, I came back (the security guards were debating whether there was fruit in a Manhattan) and made it all the way to the clerk. She looked at my forms and said she wasn't sure if I should file them because it wasn't clear whether the shipping company actually "conducts business" in Denver, which is a requirement for filing in small claims court. She said I should go down the hall to a free legal class that was just ending, and ask the instructor what he thought. The instructor was about 22 years old, although he looked comfortable in a suit, which I can't say about any of my friends or former colleagues (an interesting reflection on the types of jobs I've had). He said I was "probably" in the right court, and the only way to find out was the file the suit and go to my court date, at which the judge would throw the suit out if I had filed it incorrectly. This does not seem like an efficient system.

Anyway, I filed the suit. I asked how to get the sheriff to serve it to the company's agent, and the clerk told me I had to go to the sheriff's office, which is in the Webb Building. My eyes lit up, which he misinterpreted as enthusiasm for going to the Webb Building, but it was actually because I know where that is (a major step when have no sense of direction). The Webb Building, a.k.a. the What Is the City But the People Building, is where you go to get building permits! I've spent a big chunk of my life there.

So I paid off the sheriff, and my suit is on its way. I felt really pleased, imagining the "customer service" person I communicated with at ODFL finding out about this. It's just not fair that they treat small fish so poorly, and I hope I make things difficult enough for them that they'll be nicer next time. Even if we lose the suit, I feel like I've taken a stand, and that's important to do when you can. Remember the Alamo and all that.

Lots of classes!

This past week has been busy, and the coming week is pretty full too. We had a private event last night that went late, and then I taught a class this morning on hors d'oeuvres. Jill and I ended up doing a lot of cooking for the private event, so we were both really tired, and I fell asleep on top of my comforter without setting my alarm, so I barely woke up in time for my class today. It wasn't an auspicious beginning, but the class participants were great and we had a good vibe going, so it turned out to be a lot of fun. We made some very tasty hors d'oeuvres, including coconut shrimp, potstickers, empanadas, and chicken satay. Look how happy these people are to be making empanadas!



I also taught classes every evening of last week except Monday (my "day off", which is actually the day I spend on the phone lighting fires under people's feet to make them do their jobs). I was kind of dreading the Valentine's Day class, because I knew it was made up of four couples, and I was afraid there was going to be a lot of canoodling. Nothing wrong with a little of that, but it's hard to teach a class and get the food made when pairs of people are physically attached to each other. However, my fears were for naught, because the everyone in the class was totally fun and had a great sense of humor about the fact that it was Valentine's Day and all normal people feel kind of silly acknowledging the cheesiest holiday of the year.

Tuesday night was the first (of two) Cake Decorating classes, and Wednesday was the first (of two) Cooking Basics classes, so I get to see both groups of people again this coming week. I'm looking forward to that--it's fun to get to know people a little better than a single class allows, and it's also very satisfying to be able to see progress from one class to the next. I've been thinking about different ways to foster that type of longer-term relationship with the class participants--maybe some kind of cooking club? Then again, that concept brings images of 1950s housewives clucking over each other's Jello creations, which is not what I'm going for. I need to develop the idea a bit.

Muffins and magnets

I just taught a very nice class on pasta (From Simple to Spectacular, in fact), and I am now drinking some of the leftover wine and procrastinating on doing the dishes. I know from experience that this is a very bad idea, because the food starts to congeal and harden on the dishes, so it just makes them more difficult to wash, but I am feeling mellow and blissfully unconcerned at the moment. Ask me how I'm feeling in four hours, when I'm still doing dishes.

Anyway, the class was fun and turned out some nice food, which for the first time I remembered to take some pictures of for our website (stay tuned! I'll be posting them any day now...). I also took a picture of the apricot-almond muffins I made, because I made a really fun garnish (it's a caramelized apricot):


How can anyone resist ordering one of these muffins? Heck, I would buy one just to figure out how sharp the point is (actually, very sharp). By the way, we just started selling our muffins by the half-dozen and dozen, if you want to pre-order some for a meeting or brunch.

I also finished a project today that we have been planning for months: our awesome bulletin board. Coffee shops always have those messy-looking walls covered with posters and bulletin boards--I am actually intimately familiar with those walls, because I used to poster to advertise my cooking classes in California. We like the idea of having a place for community announcements, but we wanted it to look cooler. This was, in fact, one of the things Jill and I discussed for hours before we even owned a building. Our first idea was to put up a magnetic board, because magnets look better than tape and it's easier to take down outdated posters. Then we thought it would be really fun to have a random magnet collection. You know all those weird magnets that you can't remember where they came from, but you feel bad about throwing away in case they might be the only memento you have of some really important trip or relationship? Yeah, I don't have any of those. But if I did, I would want to put them on the Generous Servings magnet board! We are officially starting a magnet collection, so if you have any magnets to contribute (the kitschy-er, the better), bring them in and we'll give you $0.10 off your drink.

Jill then had the inspiration to use magnetic paint to make a whole wall into a magnet board. And I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to use some of the picture frame scraps left in the building by the previous tenant. Over the past few days I have painted a section of the wall with magnet paint (more painting...), and today I put up the frame (made of four different styles of frame), and we added our budding magnet collection. How cool is this?


You might want to zoom in on that picture so you can see the really great "Hang 10" magnet that Jill bought in Hawaii. We thought we had lost it, but today I was scrounging around and found it in one of the fifty-three compartments of our roll-top desk.

Also visible on the extreme left of the above picture is our homemade vanilla syrup, which is 500 times better than the commercial stuff. Today we perfected our recipe for homemade mint syrup. During the tasting, Jill made a few lattes to sample the syrup in, and I have to tell you that they were fantastic.

And finally, we got our knives sharpened today, and we scheduled a time for the knife sharpening guy to come back and sharpen anyone else's knives. I'll send out an e-mail if you're on our e-mail list, but in case you want to plan ahead, it's going to be on Monday, February 18. You can drop off your knives the previous weekend, and pick them up on Tuesday. Sharp knives...what a joy.

Fun in the snow

It started snowing (again) this afternoon, which prompted Jill and me to play one of our favorite guessing games: will Robert show up? Robert is one of the more colorful characters we've gotten to know as business owners. He's a small, wiry guy with gaunt cheeks and very few teeth, and on several occasions I've seen him with black eyes or lacerations on his face. He usually smells rather strong, some of his fingernails are black, he stoops, and his hands shake. He calls me "dear" and clings to me when we shake hands. I think he's about 40, although it looks like it hasn't been a very comfortable 40 years.

We first met him during the early stages of the building renovations. He was part of the concrete removal crew that excavated the old floor, and his job was to stand in the dumpster and move large pieces of concrete around. One day back in September, when I was taking a break from hammerdrilling plaster off the brick walls, Robert asked me what my plans were for snow removal. I had actually been wondering what we were going to do about that--I certainly did not plan to shovel snow off our sidewalk every morning before the cafe opened--so I was eager to hear Robert's proposal. He said he lived a few blocks away and had a snow-removal crew who would come three times a day, when necessary. He said they did snow removal for many businesses in the area, and he was only taking two more customers for this winter. I asked how much they charged, and he said he was running a September special: $150 pre-paid. I thought he meant $150 each time, which was outrageous, but he clarified that he meant $150 for the whole winter, which was also outrageous, in the other direction. I almost fell off my ladder in my haste to sign up. Robert went to great lengths to offer me references, including dragging one of his other clients into the building as the poor guy was walking past, and Robert also painstakingly hand-wrote a "contract" on a piece of notebook paper, pledging his services to "Mary and Jill".

During the rest of the fall, Robert showed up at various times looking for extra work, including on the day that I fired one of the painters who was supposed to do the exterior of the building. Robert said he did painting, and he quoted a very low price, so I hired him. I gave him half the money up front, but he didn't show up the first eight times he was supposed to paint. I called him every time, and sometimes he would tell me long stories about how his truck's transmission had broken for the second time in a year, so he bought a new truck, which then failed the emissions test, so he couldn't go pick up the power washer from Home Depot... One time he said he had had to go to an unexpected funeral. Another time he was supposed to meet me at the building at 9 am so I could let him in to plug in the power washer, and when he stood me up I got really mad because normally I am still asleep at that time, and instead I had gotten up just to stand around and wait for Robert. I called his house at 10 am and a woman answered whom I had obviously woken up, and when she put Robert on the line he told me that his water heater had broken and he'd had to fix it, but he'd be at the building the next day. Uh huh, and I'm the Energizer Bunny. He kept asking for more of the money (to pay the truck registration, rent the power washer, etc.). I finally told him to forget the power washing and do the painting or I was going to hire someone else and make Robert pay me back all the money I'd given him, and then he showed up and used a paint sprayer without masking the windows or ground, so there was blue paint all over the glass and sidewalk (there still is paint on the sidewalk). I told him he couldn't do any more painting, or have any more money, until he cleaned up the mess, which he never did. I figured we'd seen the last of Robert.

The first time it snowed, Robert and another guy showed up and shoveled, much to our surprise. Robert asked what time the cafe opened in the morning, so he could make sure he got there to clear the walk before our customers came. The second and third snowfalls, he didn't come. We bought a shovel and salt and did it ourselves. The next few times, Robert or the other guy came (whenever Robert came, he would knock on the window and wave to make sure I saw him), although they never managed to make it before the cafe opened. Whenever we saw Robert, he would say something like, "I'm going to come back tomorrow morning, before you open--no excuses this time!" About half the time he didn't come. Last month he told us that he was sorry about not coming sometimes, and he'd had to fire the guys who worked for him because they were so unreliable. From now on, he was going to take care of it himself. He didn't come the next time.

Robert did come this afternoon, although it's still snowing and he may or may not come tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I unearthed my car and went in search of a cake box that's the right size for the birthday cake I'm making. We've had several requests for birthday cakes, and while that wasn't part of our original business plan, it gives me a chance to keep my cake decorating skills sharp, so I'm happy to oblige. One surprising thing is that many people who order birthday cakes can't decide what message they want me to write on the top. I kind of figured that was a rhetorical question. Anyway, to get the cake box for the big cake I'm making, I had to put up with the astounding number of drivers who go ten miles below the speed limit because of the snow, which is an inexplicable Denver phenomenon. Come on, I lived in California for the past seven years, there is no way I should be a better snow driver than most Denverites. Maybe this inability to drive in the snow is somehow related to the altitude.

Four weeks and counting!

We have accomplished our New Year's resolution to be open for four consecutive weeks. Jill and I went out to dinner at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant to celebrate. We wanted to try something new, so we asked our waiter what he recommended, and he immediately said emphatically, "14C. Is best." We didn't know exactly what 14C was, but we ordered it, and it was quite tasty (it was garlicky fried shrimp served over a sweet-and-sour cabbage salad). The waiter came back and asked how we liked it, and we said it was very good, to which he replied, "Yes. Is best." That man has a straightforward relationship with food.

We had a good day in the cafe today--we sold out of all our hot food and pastries. Don't worry, we have lots more for tomorrow: I just made more croissant dough today, plus we've got breakfast pizzas with acorn squash, pancetta, and sage; apricot-almond muffins; apple-cream cheese danish; peanut butter cookies; and more. A woman came in this afternoon and paused in the doorway, looking around. We asked if we could help her with anything, and she told us that her husband had brought her one of our orange-cranberry-walnut muffins this morning, and after tasting it, she had to come here and see the place for herself. I'm not sure what she was expecting to see, but as long as she likes the muffins, that's the important thing. A few weeks ago we heard from a guy who had bought a blueberry muffin on his way to work, and after he ate it he called us to tell us it was the best muffin he'd ever had. That was very nice--I have to admit that I've never considered calling a place after I left to tell them how good their food was.

The cooking classes are filling up, too. We had a full class for last night's Fast and Easy Asian-Inspired Meals, and The Zen of Chopping class tomorrow is also full. The Zen of Chopping class is really fun, and recently I saw proof that the skills really stick. At the beginning of one of the Winter Comfort Food classes, I doled out vegetables that needed to be chopped to everyone, without giving many specific instructions (I don't worry too much about precision chopping in my general classes). A few minutes later, I came back to check on the person who was mincing the onion, and I was amazed to find a pile of the most beautifully minced onion I've ever seen. I was so surprised I stuttered. My incoherent exclamations brought the whole class over to admire the onions, and when I complimented the woman who had chopped them, she said, "Well, you're the one who taught me how." I hadn't recognized her as one of my previous Zen of Chopping students! Even better! I think all the other participants in that class signed up for tomorrow's Zen of Chopping class, and now it's full. I'm looking forward to sending another ten expert choppers out into the world--my small contribution to making the world a safer and more peaceful place.

We'll probably add another Zen of Chopping class to the schedule in March, because we have a waiting list for our next two sessions. If you're interested in getting an e-mail when we add classes, and when we have our next knife sharpening day, please send a message to Info@GenerousServings.com with the word "subscribe" in the subject line (we won't spam you).