Recently, I came into my daughter’s catering kitchen to help with some last minute food preparations for the wedding she was catering in the evening. I usually help to do the cutting and prep work, while my daughter and her helper, Julia, helps her with the cooking. Sure, I can make salad dressings and different types of salads, dips, along with cutting up veggies, cheeses and fruits and arrange them on platters. To be frank, I am pretty good at the presentation of the platters, and get my share of compliments. This time, I came in Saturday morning to help my daughter with some last minute preparations. She mentioned that she would be working with a skeleton crew. I mumbled something and she said, “Great, I can use your help.” With that, she handed me a gray, long sleeved shirt and black apron that the other servers usually wear.
When I showed up for work at the wedding hall, my daughter did a double take and told me how professional I looked. I think her actually words were, “You don’t look like a dirt ball.” And I took that as a double handed compliment.
I helped to set up the antipasto platters of cheeses, meats, marinated green olive and black olives, marinated mushrooms and artichokes. I helped to plate up over 160 salads with greens, black olives, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and purple onions. Later I would drizzle balsamic dressing (that I had made earlier) over each salad. My daughter pointed out a spot on part of my shirt, that wasn’t covered by the apron. “Look, you have a water spot.”
When she turned around, I sucked on the spot and said, “Nope, balsamic dressing.”
When the servers went out to remove the salads and appetizer plates from the tables, I decided to help. Hey, I am a mother and cleaning up tables comes naturally to me. I tripped over one of the skirted chairs, which were extremely close to one another. I didn’t fall, but decided I hated skirted chairs because one’s toes can get tangled up in the chair covers. I made a mental note to veto skirted chairs for my two daughters’ upcoming weddings. When I removed one of the plates, I managed to drop a fork on the floor and some dressing with a piece of cheese on a woman’s coat. The woman happened to have gotten up and walked away before this happened. I discreetly used my little finger to swipe at the dressing as I gracefully bent over and picked up the fork. I made a second swipe, as the man next to me picked up his napkin, leaned over and wiped the cheese/dressing off of his wife’s coat and said, “I never saw a thing.” I silently thanked him, moved away and took the plates into the kitchen. My daughter looked up from removing food from the oven and told me that I didn’t have to bus the tables. If she only knew.
My job at the wedding was to work at the buffet table; I would be handing out the Green Beans Almondine and the Twice-Baked Potatoes. I needed to make sure that each person got enough of the beans and only one baked potato. But when everyone had their food and they opened up the buffet a second time I could hand out another baked potato. It was hard to limit the potatoes when someone asked for two but I did promise that they could come back after everyone had been served the first time. That seemed to satisfy everyone.
In the end…I was able to get out early. It did take me hours for the swelling in my legs to go down with the help of some Aleve. It was interesting to see the end results of the wedding after helping to prepare for it.
As for the salad dressing stain and my tripping on a chair cover, and dropping food on a black coat…I guess that is par for the course for me. The next day I asked my daughter how the wedding went and she said fine. Obviously no one said anything to her. I was home free, until the next time or until she reads this blog.
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