CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES , Part IV

Sally was in the hotel bakery working with corn syrup. As she pulled the spoon out of the white bucket, long strands connected the spoon to the syrup even though she was now 10 feet away.

“I hate this stuff. It really makes a mess.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean”, added Jim between bites of an oatmeal-raisin cookie. “You should have seen the fat-free ranch dressing that I opened the other day.”

“Oh? What does it have to do with this?”

“It acts just like that, you know, the strings go all over the place. It’s the snot thickeners that the chemists put in.”

“Snot thickeners? That’s gross!”

“Yea, that’s the one kind that they never told you about in Culinary school. Like okra. Ever cooked okra?”

“Sure, it gets slimy.” Sally pondered this a moment; “What are snot thickeners?”

“They’re for people on diets that don’t like roux or egg yolks in their food. They can be xanthan gum, ground sassafras leaves, baby fiddlehead ferns, or corn syrup!”

“Snot.”

“Muco-polysaccharides.”

“Right”, said Sally, half-believing. “What else didn’t they tell us in culinary school?”

“Well...” Words were slow to come from Jim’s mouth, “There is the 6th Mother Sauce.”

“No way.”

“Yup, the sixth Mother Sauce.”

“Well pray tell what that might be.” Both of Sally’s hands were on her hips.

“Now looky here,” whispered Jim while getting Sally into a corner, “you’ve got your Veloute made of stock, your Bechamel made from milk, Espanole made from beef and ham, Tomato sauce, and Hollandaise made from eggs, and now one more!”

“What?” shouted Sally in nervous excitement.

“Soy Sauce.”

“Soy Sauce?”

“Yes, the mother of Teriyaki sauce. It fits all the requirements.”

“Have you told this to the Chef?”

“No, he’s from the old school.”, admitted Jim. “I don’t think he’ll go for it.”

“You don’t think he will like the discovery of Soy sauce?” inquired Sally.

“I said that he went to the old school. I mean he was apprenticing as a young chef before Marco Polo returned from the Orient.”

“Oh”

“But I think that under this new world order thing, the French are going to have to admit that the Orient is there. Sooner or later they will have to make Soy sauce the 6th Mother Sauce. What do you think of that.”

“Mmmm”, Sally murmured as Jim looked both ways then skated out of the room. But inside, she thought: He had better keep that revelation to himself.

The new chef walked into the bakery. Zowie, was he cute! Sally almost lost her balance. She mentioned that the gang meets a Paddywinkle's Pub after work for a cold one. Maybe he would like to come and meet the other culinary professionals -- he agreed.

Sally got off work first, so she and another baker went to the bar and waited at a table for others to show up. Soon, Mike walked in and looked lost. "Over here!" yelled Sally over the din of the music and talking. Mike strode over to the table all smiles. "Good evening ladies."

After introductions and a beer, light conversation started. The baker excused herself and left the table.

"Mike, where did you work before you came to the Hectic Hotel?", Sally was trying to be polite.

"Yes, I used to work as a grocery superstore Chef for Winn - Dixie."

"I didn't know that Winn-Dixie had Chefs!" said Sally in true amazement.

"Oh yes, I worked for them for 3 years before I burned out."

"Burned out? Tell me about it."

"Well, when I first started, I was out of work and this looked like a fine opportunity. An air conditioned kitchen in a new clean store. A beautiful place to work, everyone in uniforms and my own display kitchen. The pay was OK but they had benefits. Or as I should say -- Phantom Benefits! Oh, that's another story. Let me stick to the work."

"I made soups and salads for the showcases, and some of the hot food. I'm glad that I stayed away from that, though, because the food sat in the showcase literally all day."

"Yuk." Sally squirmed. "How long did you keep your salads."

"I only liked to keep them 3 days, but the manager didn't throw food away unless it looked mouldy. So we kept them 7 to 10 days as a rule. I worked the salads around so that I didn't make the real perishable ones. That's the main problem, I guess. Each department in the store had to make a certain profit percentage called Gross Profit. No one at the working level gave a damn if the store as a whole made a profit. Each department was pitted against the others for gross profit. So the managers would steal dish soap from each other and things like that."

"You mean they saved the salads and soups so they wouldn't have to make any fresh? How did they get repeat customers?"

"Many times they didn't. Individual deli managers don't care about repeat customers. They make their gross profit on bologna and american cheese. The purpose of the Chef is just to fool the customers into thinking that all the food is fresh -- like the Chef is supervising it. Which of course he isn't because there is always a woman supervisor who knows nothing about food preparation."

"Always a woman? Didn't they have any men deli managers?"

"None that I met. Chefs didn't get promoted either. The guys that came up through the grocery store ranks didn't believe that Chefs belong in the grocery management club. And that made it a lot worse because whenever I got supplies off the shelves or in the other departments I got yelled at. Yes, the other managers hated the chef taking 6 tomatoes or 3 red bell peppers. It messed up their precious displays of produce perfection!"

"That sounds awful. Did you ever go to the Bakery? What kind of place was that to work?" inquired Sally, her eyes big and loving.

"Oh you would get a kick out of how Winn-Dixie runs the bakery! Would you believe that the bakeries in all 1175 stores bring in $10K to $15K a week; but if you go to the bakery department to borrow a cup of flour--they don't know what you're talking about! What's flour? We don't use that here! Do you know that the whole operation is proof and bake? They may bake it but they don't make it!"

"Oh my God, is that what they are really doing in the Marketplace stores? Aww, you poor thing." cooed Sally. "No wonder you didn't like it there. And they had... what did you call them? Phantom Benefits? What are they?"

"Ha! Ha! That's just my name for them. A Phantom Benefit is a benefit that the company says you're going to get, but when your try to use one, the benefit isn't really there. The insurance is a good example. Everything had deductible. The vision, dental, medical all had separate deductibles for each person no matter how big the family! After that, you had co-payments. To add insult to injury, the more serious the procedure, the less percentage they paid. Do you believe it?"

"Profit sharing was another. You made the money, shared it with the company and they made the profit! Ha! It was just a 401K plan! That company never shared any profit with the employees! You know, when I heard profit sharing, I thought of a Christmas bonus or maybe some ESOP stock shares or something like that. They hated having any employees paid above minimum wage at all even thought the corporation is in the Black to the tune of $1.5 billion a year."

"Well the Hotel doesn't offer very much."

"Yea, but at least they're honest about what they don't offer. I can deal with that. Besides, Winn-Dixie will probably get rid of the Chef program pretty soon, anyway. They can't stand paying anyone more than the minimum wage."

"Mike, would you be honest with me?" Mike nodded. "Would you like to share a bottle of wine at my place?"

In a flurry of smiles and goodbyes, they went out the door arm in arm.

Jim was driving down a paved 2-lane country road, lost somewhere in the Deep South. His pregnant wife was looking at the road map, flopping and folding it. Jim asked his wife for the 10th time "Have you found out where we are yet?"

"No, dear" she sighed firmly. "But would you pull over somewhere. I have to go to the bathroom."

"Again?"

"Yes, dear. Men don't know what it's like to be pregnant."

Jim looked around but there were only fields of crops near them. Then a sign appeared: Sam's Ribs and Butts -- 3 miles ahead.

The restaurant was empty except for an overweight blond waitress. Jim's wife was hungry, so they ordered. When they finished, the women started-up a conversation about pregnancy. When the waitress heard that Jim was a Chef, she suggested that he go to the kitchen to meet Sam the owner and head cook. Jim thought that was a good idea as the women traded stories about babies.

"Hi! Are you Sam?"

"Yep"

"My wife and I enjoyed your barbeque."

"Where are you folks from?" drawled Sam.

"Well, I work at the Hectic Hotel, in another State." added Jim, not wishing to admit outright that he wasn't of southern decent.

"Ohhh"

Sam finished wiping the counter. "Would you like to see the chimney?"

"The what?"

"OK, follow me."

Out the back door they went to a little barn. It was a post and beam construction and had a roof, but the sides were screen.

"This is the screen house. In the middle, there, that's the chimney", proclaimed Sam proudly. "I made it myself."

In the center of the building stood a miniature silo, made of stone, about 5 feet tall and 5 feet around. A large circular metal china-cap lid was suspended by pulley and cable over the chimney. Coals were still glowing in the bottom.

Sam explained "The meat goes on the rack on top and the wood goes in the bottom hatch door. Then we put the lid down until the meat is done."

Jim looked over the chimney. "Wow! So, the flames never reach this high to burn the meat."

"Exactly. All the smoke has to stay inside."

"But with that huge lid down, how do you know when the meat is done? Do you lift it up to check every now and then?"

"NO!" exclaimed Sam "I tell when the meat is done by experience." "If I kept lifting the lid, that would be wrong. It would break the first law of barbequin'."

Jim looked bewildered "What first law of barbequing?"

Sam just shook his head. "You may be a Chef, but you don't know nothin'." Sam took a deep breath. "Now sit down here and pay attention." They both sat on a crude wooden bench inside the screenhouse.

"Chef David told me this when I was little, and now I'm gonna tell you. The worst thing that a man can do is serve burned-up meat. It's an embarrassment to him and his whole family."

Thoughts of hundreds of over-seared quail raced through Jim's mind.

"To prevent that from happenin' we got 3 rules, an I want you to remember 'em. These are Chef David's 3 Laws of Barbeque. Rule number 1 is NEVER LIFT THE LID TO CHECK YOUR WORK. You keep the lid down. Then the smoke stays in and your meat won't get burned-up."

"Rule number 2: THE SAUCE GOES ON THE TABLE. You know, a good sauce has good ingredients -- and that's expensive. Only the dumb yankees slobber sauce all over the fire. That just wastes good sauce and burns-up the meat. Now why would a body wanna do that?"

"Now rule number 3 is very important. Now we've gotta keep quiet about this one or we'll get in trouble." Sam looked around before continuing...

"NEVER LET WOMEN AROUND THE BARBEQUE UNLESS THEY'RE BRINGING REFRESHMENTS."

"Why?"

"Now you're a smart boy. Figure that one out yourself. Let's go back in, or the women will talk all day."

Sally gracefully walked up to Jim on his first day back from vacation. "You seem all recharged!"

"Yea,"smirked Jim,"And I didn't miss this place."

"Oh, how could you not miss all of us? Did you have a nice time?"

Jim started telling her the secrets of barbeque.

"Wow, that makes sense. But what is the 3rd rule?"

Jim thought about what Sam had said to him, then suddenly got an equal-opportunity-employment chill up and down his spine. "You'll never hear that one from me."