[66] The Insider's Outsiders

[66] The Insider's Outsiders:

Farmer's Market week two. Cooked 5 doughs. 10 Everything bagels. 28 Cubby Bubbys. 12 Veggie Publishers. Sold 5 bagels. Sold 15 Cabbage Burgers. For a grand total of $111 dollars. Grit sold all her eggs and all her cookies. For a grand total of $83 dollars. Not bad. It was not the super busy day that the other Boothers predicted. In fact it was less than last week, but it was also cold and overcast. I gave the extra bagels away. And some of the Cabbage Burgers. But I saved a bunch in order to freeze them and see what happens when I thaw them out in a few days. Maybe I will be able to make enough of them to keep the business running when we are in Wyoming in July. If the freezing maneuver works. The question is; Do I just thaw them and see how they hold up, or do I thaw them and reheat them and see how they hold up? I guess we will find out next week.

We, meaning me and Grit. Meaning, Dosa's Get Out Service ended up on the front page of the Harold. In full color even. Not sure if I can insert the foto, but if I can [insert foto here.]

The caption said: Market Time Sedsel Gillette, foreground, works on a personal project as Joey Truman of Dosa's Get Out Service prepares baked items for customers at Rochester's first Farmers [sic] Market of the season. (Harold / Jerry LeBond) I think we will frame the photo and hang it at the booth. Just so people know we are legit.

The same cast of characters this week. Minus the guy that ate a dozen and a half of raw Grit Eggs. I mean, I did see him poking around, he just didn't come over and eat 18 raw eggs and a Cubby Bubby.

Grit traded four cookies for two slices of pizza. The pizza was good. Just plain. I tried to get a pepperoni slice but the closest they had to pepperoni was a beet slice. And I can't say this more clearly: YUCK. If I wanted my pizza to taste like dirt and make my shit look like I was shitting blood I would just drop my slice on an ant pile and make sure I ate all the gravel that stuck to it as well. Don't get me wrong, I understand that people like beets, but to those people I say; Do you also eat sod as a salad with your dinner? Would you like me to bake you a dirt clod the next time you come over for dinner? Because I can, and I will.

I suppose I should figure out how to serve the Cubby Bubbys hot, or at least warm. Maybe the pizza guys will let me use there stove thing. I mean, I know that they probably make more money selling their shit, but the amount of work and employees they have they must be losing tons of money every time they do this thing. I mean, I got up at 6a this morning to make sure I had enough time get my things ready. And that was just too much. But for them. They have all sorts of extra shit they have to do. Make doughs. Make toppings. Keep the toppings cold. Keep the oven hot. Cook each pizza order as it comes in. I mean, at one point they had a line, but so what. They must need to clear $300 dollars every Friday just to break even, and I don't think they are doing this as a Social Experiment. I mean, I am not a Capitalist, but as far as business models are concerned, theirs kind of stinks. Not to business shame them, I mean, their pizza was pretty good. I just don't think it is drive all the way to bum-fuck Vermont Friday Farmer's Market because the pizza is Outta This World, good.

Two times today somebody had a sample of the Veggie Publisher and said; Oh boy! Spicy! That was pretty entertaining. I mean, I did add a couple of vinegar soaked garlics to the mix. Maybe people in Vermont are like G when she was younger. Anything that had any sort of flavor she would call spicy and refused to eat it. I am still surprised that she likes to eat the pickled ramps that the Publisher makes. But she is getting older, and tastes change. But the idea that the Veggie Publisher is spicy is a lark of fantastic measures. I mean, it has some spice, that is true, but I specifically don't make them spicy. I mean, they have a secret spice or two, but biting into one and hitting a tiny sprinkle of dried out pepper that you would easily confuse for a black pepper flake and thinking that is spicy is hilarious. I mean, do these people buy pepper jack cheese for special occasions? Serve it on Saltine crackers for Cinco De Mayo? I mean, they love a good sharp cheddar, what is the disconnect? I mean, sharp cheddar isn't spicy, but it is kind of intense. Is it just that spicy flavors are impolite? Like they find it rude for things to be tastier than they expect them to be? Like would a Vermont housewife having an affair with somebody that wanted to do it doggy-style consider them a Latin lover? I mean, maybe the problem with white-ness up here isn't that people are repulsed by people of color, it is just that their idea of people of color is so radically milquetoast the anyone that isn't third generation Vermonter seems like something Canadian's would put in a Curiosities of the Dark World museum? What I mean is that maybe Vermonters aren't racist, they just can't process what race truly means outside or the Vermont context. That Vermont-style is not a cultural thing, it is a way of life. Naïve to the outside world. The way Norway seems to be. I mean, maybe in Vermont the people are spice-curious, but every time they bite into something that has pepper in it they just can't process where the sensation comes from. And their brains get all confused. Like eating sushi for the first time, or something. I mean, I don't know, just a theory I am working on.

I got up at 6a to make sure I had enough time to cook and let the Cubby Bubbys rest before going into town. I think that is about right for making five doughs. That is two and a half hours of baking time. Plus some. And if I am making bagels, I need an extra 30 minutes. So that is at least three hours of baking time. And in order for the things to be able to be transported without getting soggy and ruined I need at least an hour after the last thing comes out of the oven. So that is four hours. And I need at least an hour and a half to let my doughs proof after I make them. I mean, I was pretty busy all morning. I was ready to go by the time I should have been ready to go. Just barely. I had to have most of my shit ready by 1p. And I did. But I also had to take a shower and put shit in the car. And make sure I had everything. Because once you leave the house there is no coming back. It is a 30 minute trip. Round trip. I mean, I forgot a pen and the business cards today. I needed the pen. The business cards, only kind of. I wished I had them, but there was no need to haul ass back to Beaver Haus to get them. I mean, leave a eight year old in charge of the booth for 30 minutes? That is a recipe for disaster. For lots of reasons. I think Grit would have handled it just fine. She has skills most eight year old’s don't have. But there was a moment when I had to run to the car and get something and came back to her selling a Cabbage Burger to somebody that was so very much on the precipice of disaster that if you go back to my critique of beets on a slice of pizza you would understand. I mean, if I was buying a thing from an eight year old and I expected it to be clean and well cared for, I would be a pretty wonderful person. Because watching a kid pick their butt with gloves on is not the kind of thing a health inspector would just look the other direction about. Which is why Grit's cookies come wrapped in paper. The appearance of cleanliness is one thing. The actual cleanliness can be easily mitigated at a different point in time. Buyer beware.

I'm not saying that Grit is a dirty little Germer. I am just saying that I spent many very focused hours making sure that the Cabbage Burgers were sanitized. And if at the last minute you put a pair of tongs in the hands of an eight year old, things are bound to happen. Even if they are wearing gloves. And who knows? Maybe I should put the Cubby Bubbys in paper packaging as well. I could get one of those rotating Meat Puck things the gas stations have. To keep them hot and contained. That way people could choose their own amount of involvement. Decide their own amount of risk. I mean, Vermont is just two days from being 80% vaxxed. I think the risk of getting Covid is quite low at this point. But we are back to the old ones again. The good ol' yearly sicknesses. Colds and flus. Salmonella.

I mean, I have spent thousands of hours in kitchens in my life at this point. The rules have been burned into my brain. And they are good rules. I mean, just once, once in your life take a trip to Manhattan and buy a Knish from a lady on the street by the West Side Highway that seems a little too true to be real to be posted where she is, and you will give yourself all sorts of time to consider the regulations we put on food vendors. You will be able to write a novel on the amount of toilet paper you will need process the information. And you can use your shits like ink if you need to because there will be plenty of ink to spare. If you know what I mean. And by that I mean diahhrea.

I learned today that the oven my oven is horribly unreliable. I don't know what to make of it. There is some very hot spots and some very cold spots. Things will burn in places and things won't get cooked in places. Part of the reason is the big pans that I am using. It turns out they were cheap. They always seemed cheap, but I am starting to think that I can just use the oven grates, with parchment paper instead of the pans. I mean, why not? They are the same size. I can just put one of the large pans that takes up all of the space in the oven as a drip pan. And since I have two of them now, I can just swap them out as they become messy. That way I don't ruin the oven and I don't end up burning things or undercooking things that I then have to cook longer in order to compensate. I mean, it is just an idea. A decent idea though. When life gives you lemon zest you make Hollandaise, am I right?

I hope I wasn't too harsh on Grit about her packaging skills. I didn't mean to be crude. I hope you know that. I was just trying to make a point about the delicate nature of serving food at a bazaar in the middle of Summer. She is very conscientious about everything she does. Very focused and deliberate. It is just that she is eight years old. Next week she will be nine. Professor Curly will be nine next week too. Sixty-nine that is. Ah, yeah. Just jokes. But they are both having birthdays next weekend. Plus G is graduating from 8th grade. Next in line is high school. Her mom sent me all the pictures of all the first days of school since she started going to school. Mind fuck. I don't know if you have kids but I warn you, it just gets more intense as time goes on. You think you are worried now, just wait. It is both scary and beautiful at the same time. If you think you can control this world in any sort of way, you can't. You just can't. What things look like today are not how things are. The world we live in is violent and unpredictable. And if you think you have agency over it you are greatly mistaken. I mean, if you really think about it, it is a wonder that you can even get to work without getting struck by lightening. And add a child to the calculation, I mean, if you really want to live in a world of absolute danger, have a child. Have that child become a teenager. Have that child become a teenager in the world that we live in now. I mean, take all that hubris you think you own, where you would easily, Easily! die for your kid and then realize that there is no way in the fucking world that you can protect them from what is coming down the pike. I mean, it is scary as shit. I had a dream the other day that I was going to the Nazi gas chambers and as I was getting onto the elevator that would take me there I saw G just hanging out, being okay with the world. I was able to get out of line and give her a huge hug. But in my mind I knew she was going to have to get in line herself to be taken to her death. And there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, I don't even know what to say. We relinquish control like we had control in the first place. We never do. We never will. Life is fucked up. Bringing a child into this world is really fucked up. And by the time you realize this it is too late. I mean, you hope that you can give them a long and happy life, that you can work as hard as you can to make that possible, but then in the back of your mind you know that they will have the same fucked up time on this Earth as you did. And you can't protect them from it. And you would give everything that you can possibly give to prevent that from happening, but you just can't because there is absolutely nothing within your control. Even if you had all the money in the world you cannot prevent the suffering of your children.

I guess the only real comfort is the knowledge that I enjoyed my suffering when I was younger. I enjoyed being broke and angry for most of my adult life. Maybe G will adjust as well. Have a pragmatic view of what suffering is and embrace it. I mean, my biggest problem up until now is that I feel alone most of the time. Not because I am alone, but because I have a million ways of dealing with loneliness in order to combat the empty feeling that is Society. And maybe G has been given the tools to navigate that sort of self-destruction that I was not able to avoid. And she can just live her life without feeling like there was no hope for being understood in a way that makes you confused and explosive. I mean, if I think about what a good life for me would be, for anyone really, and especially for my daughter, it would be a way to just be satisfied with a daily life. Even if it meant that nothing happened and everything was just barely tolerable. And that is probably a pretty shitty thing to wish upon someone, a normal life, considering that this is America and all, and everyone that isn't dead in the ditch because they haven't pulled themselves up by their boot-straps, but I don't know, the other option is just screaming into the void, and sure, that is good for you and me, Fritz, but I don't think the public would understand.

That is a line from Contempt. A pretty good movie. Assholes abounding. I still don't think I understand that movie. And I have watched it a million times. Maybe what I am saying is that I wish a life for G that isn't like mine. Where you are 40 before you can let go of some of your anger because life is a disaster. I am not saying I want her to get a job at Target and work her way up to middle-management. But maybe. Just maybe she will keep a journal. And when she it 90 she publishes the journal because she had such a long and wonderful life that didn't hurt her feelings every day all day.

Don't have kids. They break your fucking heart. Because you can't protect them the way you think you can. And they become adults. And life is hard.

Stay gold, G. Stay gold.