Killer Pancake

Steamed sole with spa-style hollandaise sauce

Grilled mushroom and

Japanese eggplant on field greens with red pepper sherry miso dressing

Corn rolls, breadsticks,

and Grand Marnier cranberry muffins

Nonfat chocolate torte

I was in caterers’ hell.

I groaned and surveyed the spread of crudités on my kitchen counter. If looks could kill, I asked myself, would this tray of cauliflower do the trick? Actually, the crisp cauliflowerets, delicate buds of broccoli, slender asparagus spears, and bias-cut squash, celery, and carrots looked appealing enough. So did rows of crunchy brussels sprouts, bright-red cherry tomatoes, and small, musky-tasting mushrooms. But there wasn’t a drop of rich, homemade mayonnaise, not a puff of whipped cream, not a slice of tangy cheese in sight. And forget dimpled pats of sweet, unsalted butter or luscious dollops of sour cream. Behind the vegetables stood imposing jars of low-calorie dips with horrid colors like pink (raspberry) and orange (carrot). I dipped a spoon into the raspberry, tasted it, and shuddered. Made according to the client’s recipe, it was too thin and had the metallic taste of saccharine. A similar foray into the carrot spread revealed a chunky concoction that kindergartners might make for a project on vitamin A.

In other words: hell.

I steeled myself as I washed the last flecks of broccoli off my fingers. Sometimes the proprietor of a catering business has to give herself a pep talk. As the owner of Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! I was no exception. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I observed as I wiped my hands on my apron. I’d seen enough clients drool over six-layer fudge cake to know that folks eat with their eyes before the food ever reaches their tongues. But eating with the eyes was a concept I associated with chocolatey, creamy, and calories. Or perhaps flaky, fudgy, and fattening. Disheartened, I stepped away from the sink and cast another look at the entire first course to be served at that afternoon’s banquet.

“It looks great,” I reassured myself aloud, “… if you’re a rabbit.”

So much for the pep talk. Why on earth had I agreed to cater the July banquet introducing the fall line of Mignon Cosmetics? My irritation blossomed to frustration, a frequent occurrence when the rationale for taking a job melted away. The weather—cool in the beginning of June, when I’d agreed to cater the banquet—was now, at the beginning of July, unbearably hot. In the flat stretch of land that abutted the foothills west of Denver, the thermometer had topped 105 for the past three days. Although the mercury in our mountain town of Aspen Meadow, forty miles west of Denver, had fluctuated only in the upper nineties, that was still unseasonably warm. Definitely too hot, I had discovered, to be mucking around in the kitchen taste-testing food made with buttermilk and nonfat sour cream.

Not only that, but I had my doubts about the Mignon Cosmetics people, the same people who had provided the dip recipes. I mean, did they really think the cowboy-worshipping folk of Furman County, Colorado, longed for a lipstick named Fudge Royale? A blush named Lust? Could people truly be enticed to spend a hundred dollars an ounce for anti-aging cream fortified with kelp and placenta? Whose placenta, I wanted to ask rod-thin, pale-haired Harriet Wells, the senior sales associate who’d hired me to do the banquet. I agreed with Harriet that the more sophisticated, well-heeled customers would enjoy making their purchases in the magnificently refurbished department store of a remodeled mall, where the effects of aging, at least on a building, had been painstakingly eradicated. But structures, I pointed out to Harriet, could be restored. People are another matter.

On the other hand, maybe I was wrong. Women, Harriet Wells told me, crave the idea of fudge on their lips. And, she went on, the word lust makes them at least think of blushing. What was worse, my thirteen-year-old son Arch had recently watched a television special on advertising. To my dismay, he had dutifully reported back an ad maven’s statement: Make a woman insecure enough and you can sell her anything.