The Second First-Sunday Brunch
Once again I arrived at the bakery at 4 a.m. I had no idea how many people had made
reservations. I’ve been having a hard
time getting onto Facebook. The last
time I looked, a few days ago, there was one confirmation. On Friday a German gal at the High Tea said
she was coming with six people.
I had asked Julie, our current baker, to come an hour
earlier than usual. She said no with her
eyes, but nodded yes.
A Chinese guy, John, had come recently to the shop looking for part
time work. I asked him to begin this
Sunday morning, arriving at 9 a.m.
Although Han Dan and I have not been having joyous WeChats
lately, because she put her price at 5,500 rmb a month, I had promised her 100
rmb for this Sunday and so she came punctually, a few minutes before nine. Around 7:30 Randy had come by to slice the
bacon I had bought from him. Without a
word he climbed back on his bike and left, never to return this day. Last month he was a major supporter, but now
he seems to have lost interest in the bakery’s well-being.
Nine o’clock arrived.
It was time to start setting up the dining room, and begin making
coffee.
Han Dan did her best to spruce the place up, shifting
tables, putting on table cloths, setting up the cutlery, setting out the
dishes, putting labels into the little holders to place on the buffet
table. I glanced frequently at the clock
and at the door. Nine-ten, 9:20, 9:50,
but still no John.
During the month as money came into the till I slowly made
purchases. Thursday, on a marathon ebike
ride that took me to the east side of the city to the wholesale commodity market,
after unsuccessfully trying to buy salt sellers, I headed west across FeiLong
Rd towards Metro. On the way I
recognized a new word I had just learned on Google Translate, pifa.
This means wholesale. I
detoured through this warren of alleyways lined with stalls, and finally
stopped at a drinks place. There I found
dark beer and white wine and incredibly cheap prices. Although I had bought enough of the sparkling
drink online, I had to buy two more from this place just because it was so
cheap. I was worried about loading the
case of dark beer (bought for my personal consumption) on my bike, knowing I
would still have Metro purchases to deal with. (I was sorely tempted to buy a
case of Blue Nun Reisling at 60 rmb/bottle, but as rare and desirable as it
was, I knew it was impractical.) Then
the salesman told me he would deliver tomorrow afternoon, no charge. He was eager to point out that he would
deliver even smaller purchases, no problem.
Next I went to Metro and bought
about 16 juice glasses, at 5 rmb each.
They have a waist, so they can be stacked up. I did not have money to buy taller glasses; I
had reordered our plastic tall cups we use for Smoothies, and those would have
to do for water or whatever. During that
same trip to Metro I also stocked up on
cheeses. I bought 3 kg of Gouda, a
couple small packets of a very sharp cheddar, a box of Philadelphia cream
cheese altho I already had some NZ cream cheese from Taobao. I picked up a couple boxes of camembert,
which I erroneously referred to as Brie on the name card. I wonder if anyone noticed.
Just a few days
before the event, I managed to go online and find fruit juice. I bought 12 liters of orange juice and 6 of
peach juice. I also bought the sparkling
champagne-like drink that Randy had introduced us to. I stocked up on that one, and once again made
the strawberry cocktail, using the strawberries we had bought in season and
froze.
Sunday. First thing
in the door at 4 a.m. was to heat up the oven for the brotchen, which sits
overnight in the fridge. Next was to
make the bagels dough, since once Julie helped me shape them they would need to
go in the fridge for six hours. That’s
cutting it close, the earliest I could bake them was 11:00.
I had freshly-made puff pastry in the freezer, so I cut up a
couple of apples and made a filling with raisins and nuts. I then used frozen apples and strawberries to
create two kinds of toppings for the waffles. I planned to make apple turnovers and ‘bear
claws’. As it turned out, the bagels and
the pastries got to the oven only after all the guests had gone. The toppings sat ignored on the bakery
countertop until after all the waffles had been eaten.
We filled the shelf with fresh multigrain bread, anticipating
that people would come over from the annex to the bakery to pay, and also pick
up a loaf to take home. These later went
into the freezer, demonstrating how totally unpredictable people can be.
On Saturday I had cut up the Gouda, making packages of 200
gms each weighed and labeled. People are
always asking me where to buy cheese. I thought I’d help them out. Once again, unpredictably, no one took up the
offer.
Before Julie arrived I filled the three small pie crusts
with quiche; two spinach quiche, and one with the fresh salami Randy made a
couple weeks ago.
I assigned someone to chop and dice the red and yellow
peppers, and the mushroom. (what’s its name?
the one with the thick stem, it comes out of the ground in an
eggshell) I sautéed onions, and all of
this along with some sliced chicken sausage would go into the omelets. (The sautéed
onions sat on a shelf above the fry pan, unnoticed, although I reminded the
helper to include the onions with the peppers and mushroom.)
John finally arrived at ten.
I set him to cooking bacon on the griddle. The previous day we had experienced an
interruption in the power flow, just in the one wall that held a plug in the
kitchen, which we used for our small mixers and blenders and such, and on the
reverse side of that wall facing into the bakery the one special strong plug
for the griddle. Now on Sunday this
became a serious problem. The griddle
kept going on and off, as John tried to cook the bacon. I was also using that griddle to make the
omelets. Meanwhile, we were trying to
boil the water for the coffee, as I was using the French Press rather than the
drip machine.
We managed to make a few cups of good coffee, but after that
we could not get the water to boil. I
tasked others to use alternative methods, but no one quite got the idea of
adding 90°C water to fresh ground coffee.
I didn’t have time to micromanage this.
So a few people got good coffee, but the second cup might have been like
tepid dishwater. Ugh!
Libby said she would come early to help me. The first guests arrived about 9:45; Libby
arrived about 10:30. The coffee pot was
still empty when the first guests arrived.
I made a good waffle batter, folding in the egg whites. I set up the three appliances on the buffet
table with name cards identifying their purpose. I had the waffle iron, a toaster, and a
griddle for grilled cheese sandwiches, or egg muffins (which never came to
fruition although its label was out there for all to see). I did put one cheese
sandwich on the griddle, but then walked away from it. The cheese melted out all over the griddle by
the time someone noticed it.
The waffles mostly burned, though HanDan did manage to
rescue a couple of good ones. Batter was
spewed out all over the machine and its drip plate.
There was plenty of bread, of rye bread and whole wheat, for
people to toast. Cheeses and condiments
were set out. There was fresh
fruit.
I took time to carefully snip the grape clusters to leave
little spines for people to pick up small clusters. But while they were in a bowl in the kitchen
and my back was turned, Julie came along and plucked all the grapes off the
spines. I then sent her off to buy more
fruit. She sliced up bananas, unevenly,
not thinking about how they turned brown quickly. She had bought a couple of peaches, which she
peeled and clumsily sliced into random slices.
She arrayed these on a dish. That
was my embarrassing fruit plate. She had
also bought a watermelon, but ran out of time I guess. There it sat for a couple of days, in its
plastic bag on the floor.
I never got to make milk tea. The basket of brotchen I set out went
quickly, while at the last brunch they sat uneaten. I should have made twice or thrice the
quantity.
People came. Alexandra
and her five guests, Tillman and his four guests, a table of two Chinese ladies
and their children, Lindsey and Blake, Libby and Jason, filled the annex to
overflowing. There was a table of people whose names I do not know, from a
company called Heller. A new guy, Edgar Espinoza, arrived after
11. This is the person who had sent me a
message via FB asking if I could cash money for him. He was having trouble
getting cash from his American bank, having forgotten his debit card password
or something. He apparently had read on
Facebook that I have a business, and assumed I was rich. This gave me a good laugh.
It was a disaster.
After all the lessons we learned last month, about assigning workers to
specific work stations and tasks, we simply didn’t have enough workers to carry
this out.
People were gracious, complimenting me on the good food.
Earlier in the week Randy had persuaded me to lower the
price of the buffet, from 138 per person to 115. He said the Rexroth people declared it too
expensive. I told him that mean they
wouldn’t come at any price, but I asked my friends, and Libby and Emily agreed
my price was too high. We grossed
somewhere over 2,000 rmb. I can’t be
certain, because during the meal workmen arrived with two sacks of flour and a
load of plastic cookie jars. I was embarrassed,
not having enough cash to pay them. I asked
Tillman to advance me enough, I think I needed 300 rmb. So perhaps the total intake was 2,300. XiaoLan was manning the cash register, she
and Han Dan were writing down the name and amounts for each guest.
With that money I was finally able to pay XiaoLan the 800
rmb that her pay envelope had been shorted.
The next day we were notified that our electricity account
was about empty, so the rest went to pay up kitchen electricity for the month.
My first instinct is to cancel the next scheduled
Brunch. It will be a holiday weekend,
many people will be traveling.
But my next thought is, the college kids will be back in
town. Maybe I could find about five of
them to come for the next event and be servers.
The following thought was flitting around my brain on this
Sunday morning, a thought too obvious yet unrealized. I need to lay out a detailed plan and time
schedule in order to make this event run smoothly. That in itself is a lot of work, and I’ve
been just too busy. But I need to take
the time this month to do just that.
If I advertise better, and limit the number of reservations
and give a deadline for them, I will raise the price back to 138. If only I can actually set out the buffet I
planned, it would be worth it to any guest.
Or so I believe. Only I know the
expense in purchases, time and effort that goes into it. And so I believe this is the true value of
it, but only if it is done correctly.
