Tough Cookie

TOUGH COOKIE

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON

NATE BULLOCK MEMORIAL FUND-RAISER FRONT RANGE PUBLIC BROADCASTING SYSTEM

"Cooking at the Top!" FILMING FROM THE SUMMIT BISTRO

Killdeer Ski Resort, Killdeer, Colorado December the Seventeenth

Mexican Egg Rolls with Spicy Guacomole Dipping Sauce 1996 Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel

Chevre, Teardrop Tomatoes, and Poached Asparagus on a bed of Frisée; Shallot Vinaigrette Sancerre

Chesapeake Crab Cakes with Sauce Gribiche/1997 Les Monts Damnés Sancerre Sauvignon Blanc - Chavignol

Crisp Italian Breadsticks

Ice-Capped Gingersnaps/1983 Chateau Suduiraut Sauternes

-1- Show business and death don't mix. Unfortunately, I discovered this while hosting a TV cooking show.

Up to then, I'd enjoyed being a TV chef. The job didn't pay well, but this was PBS. Arthur Wakefield, the floor director, had crisply informed me that most chefs made nothing for guest visits, much less five thousand clams for six shows. He could have added: And what's more, those chefs' kitchens haven't been closed by the county health inspector! But Arthur said nothing along those lines. Like most folks, he was unaware that my in-home commercial catering kitchen had been red-tagged, that is, closed until ful1her notice.

So: Bad pay notwithstanding, I was lucky to have the TV job. Actually, I was lucky to have any food work at all. And I certainly didn't want more than our family and a few friends to know why. I could not tell my upscale clients - those who'd made Goldilocks' Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! the premier food-service business of Aspen Meadow, Colorado - that our plumbing wasn't up to code. And of course, I could never let it be known that my dear husband Tom was ransacking the house for valuables to sell off, so we could buy fancy drains and thereby get my business reopened. No plumbing? No drains? It sounded nasty. Sordid, even.

In September, things had gone badly. The county health inspector, giggling from the shock engendered by his surprise visit, closed me down. The bustle in our kitchen immediately subsided. Calls for catering gigs stopped. Suppliers sent letters asking if I wanted to keep my accounts current. Yes, yes, I always replied cheerfully, I'm looking forward to reopening soon! Soon. Ha!

Without my business, an enterprise I'd lovingly built up for almost a decade, I entered a spiritual fog as thick as the gray autumnal mist snaking between the Colorado mountains. I gave up yoga. Drank herb tea while reading back issues of Gourmet. Spent days gazing out the new windows in our beautifully – remodeled – but - noncompliant kitchen. And repeatedly told Tom how gorgeous the

kitchen looked, even if I couldn't work in it. . . .

Truly, the place did look great. So what if it didn't meet new county regulations mandating that every commercial kitchen sink have backflow protection? Months earlier, Tom had rescued the remodeling job after a dishonest contractor had made our lives hell. During time away from his work as a Homicide Investigator for the Furman County Sheriff's Department, he'd put in marble counters, cherry cabinets, expensive windows, a solid oak floor. And the wrong drains.