Gild the Lily

Cream. It's all about the cream, I tell ya.
Think about it - you've got your cream pies, cream puffs, cream cheese, Boston cream donuts... imagine pumpkin pie without whipped cream on top? Not even worth eating. If something looks unappetizing I hear a little voice in my head: "Meh, poot leetle bit whip cream - now, ees goot." (for some reason, all the good cooking advice in my head is in a Greek accent.) No matter what kind of gunk I'm serving, if I top it with a dollop I'm guaranteed at least one "mmmm". Why is this? Beats me.

Oh, so much has happened in such a short while - including the consumption of several litres of whipping cream. The assistant cook has come and gone, the new cooler has finally been finished, the second crew has been fired...

As it happened, I did share my good coffee with the Chef. And she did load my dishwasher wrongly, but I didn't care. She saw that things were not entirely FoodSafe, and she didn't care. It was fabulous having someone to "talk food" with, even if she did talk down to me a bit, like assuming I didn't know what "minionette" was. (It's actually spelled "mignonette" and it's like a vinegar sauce for oysters. I googled it when she wasn't looking.) She didn't cook better than me, just different. Sort of "new-school" vs. "old-school". Probably not enough whipping cream invoved in her meals; the guys did revolt and demand more meat.

In any case, sharing a kitchen never works well, and I'm not entirely disappointed that her position was no longer needed once the second work crew hit the chopping block. Now I have sole possesion of the kitchen, dining hall, cooler and pantry, and I know if my can of chickpeas is still there on Monday morning. All is as it should be.

The second crew? Well, it was astounding to observe the work ethic of that bunch. Or lack thereof. One guy actually said "I didn't expect to have to work to keep my job." ?! That just leaves one speechless. Is it just me, or is that the most amazing oxymoronic statement ever? Heavy on the "moronic". It became a running joke amongst the first crew that Monday mornings were devoted to fixing whatever the second crew had messed up over the weekend. Sometimes all of Monday. We started calling them "the A Team" and "the F Team". And then one bright Monday morning the Foreman was doing his rounds and discovered that, despite repeated instruction, the fellow doing the cooler floor had completely bungled the tile job. Not out of ignorance, but out of stupidity, or spite, or stubborness. The entire floor had to be ripped up and redone. (Happily, he'd FUBARed it so badly that the ripping up part was pretty easy!) And the Foreman said "ENOUGH!", made a flying trip to the manager's office (which, in this case, was the front seat of said manager's pickup, as the toddler was sleeping in the back - we're an easy-going bunch around here) and that was the end of the WonderDummies.
Granted, a couple of them made the cut and will join Team Allstar for the Monday - Thursday shift. This includes the guy who smoked pot after work on his first day up here (we don't allow liquor - never mind the alternatives! But no solid evidence and no repetition, so...); and the dyslexic medic who, according to his First Aid records, prescribed Advil for Bill's "menstrual" pain.
(Foreman: What's this??
Medic: Oh, um... it was the other day... for pain...
Foreman: Bill?! Menstrual?!
Medic: Oh, it's supposed to say "muscular". I'm dyslexic.)
(Now that he's dyslexic we can't make fun of him. Phooey.) So, we've got PotHead and MyslexicDedic here; they were the cream of the crop of Team F!! Wow. You see my point.

But, all it means to me is that I throw another pie in the oven, another jug of cream in the KitchenAid mixer. Life goes on.

The Cream Pie Curse

How many times have I seen something... at a store, a craft sale, on tv... and thought -"yeah, I can do that."? Too many. It's that mentality that has me currently swimming in deep waters. Or drowning. And blogging about it.

It's nearly 9am, I have half an hour before Coffee Time. At the moment I'm cooking for a construction crew of 10 - one of which is my husband. They'll want coffee and cookies soon, which I'll take over to the worksite so I can spy on their progress. From my "office" window I can see the whole place - a forest education camp on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. A pile of construction sand protected from the snow with a giant orange tarp. Hubby cruising on his new tractor. Half-demolished cabins and buildings-in-progress. Exciting times around here.

So, a list of the things I thought "I Can Do That" about, and am presently attempting:

• cooking professionally
• cake decorating
• designing crochet patterns
• painting murals
• homeschooling
• carving a totem pole
• greenhouse gardening
• landscape designing
• interior decorating
• running a Kids' Club
• writing music
• blogging

I'm sure this list will grow with time. I must add that not everything is coming along successfully... I'm on my third totem pole attempt, my greenhouse is full of dead plants, and right now one child is diligently working on school while the other is dozing blissfully. Or maybe reading in bed. I haven't actually checked. So add "parenting" to the list, under the category of "may or may not be doing adequately".

As far as the cooking goes - that all started 4 years ago when we first moved up here. My husband was hired as the Caretaker and I tagged along and looked for stuff I could do. The camp cook at that time was looking for a couple of days off, so I said "I can do that!" and jumped right in, feeding up to 80 camp kids at a time. Since then, I've cooked for various groups; the University of Calgary geology class; Boy Scouts; a teen addictions councelling group; even a sustainable-living activist group who wanted the 100-mile diet. And I'll tell ya, 100 miles from here gets you... nowhere. I may have stretched the boundaries on that menu, a bit.

So now our camp has a bigfatjuicy government grant to rebuild and remodel, so I'm cooking part time for the construction crew. It's been an all-new experience, an eye-opening shocker, at times. Like watching 10 men devour 10 quarts of chili and 4 dozen fresh-baked buns. Then cream pies for afters. Ah yes, the cream pies.

Did I mention that my family suffers from a cream pie curse? Wait - I have to put coffee on...

Ok, coffee's perking merrily.

I have a vivid mental picture from childhood - when my mom was cooking for a harvesting crew one hot summer. We had a pickup with a camper on the back, which we filled with hearty fare and drove out to the field to feed the masses. One day mama made beatiful banana cream pies heaping with heavy whipped cream and we just knew the men would be thrilled to see them. We rocked gently over the furrows in the field, and as we arrived the grain trucks and combines pulled up close like eager puppies to a bowl of gravy. Flinging open the camper door with a flourish we were horrified to see a pale puddle of melted cream flowing across the counter. A lesson in the importance of refridgeration in the maintenance of healthy cream pies.

So this week I tried my hand at cream pies - one coconut, one banana - my first ever. Homemade crust, crisp and flaky in the pans. Carefully stirred and thickened vanilla custard - no powdered junk in my kitchen. The coconut pie was topped with meringue and and doused liberally with toasted coconut... the banana pie was piped in a swirling mass of whipped cream. And it was good. Remembering the Melted Pie Fiasco, I transferred the banana pie to the fridge. Well, tried to. You see, part of our camp facelift has involved complete deconstruction of our walk-in cooler in the commercial kitchen. So I've been doing all this cooking out of my 800 square foot cabin, with my tiny tiny kitchen. And I've got stacks of cans, boxes of produce, and carts of baking supplies lined up and piled up in every spare inch of my house. Including a week's worth of meat defrosting in my over-crowded fridge. So as I shifted the pork to make room for the pie, the crazy pan leaped out of my hand and threw itself, kamikaze-style, against the bottom rack of the fridge. Half the pie clung to the pan, half lay face-down on the bottom shelf. I sat right down on the floor, pork-in-lap, to have a good cry. But my kids are troopers - at my Gasp!and-waaaaail they rushed over and took charge. One got a wet cloth, one patted my shoulder and said "you could scrape it back into the pan - no-one would ever know!" Out of the mouth of babes. With some artful patching, and a little extra leftover whipped cream for good measure, the pie was resurrected and dessert was saved!

But I'm through with cream pies!!