Valerie's wedding

Valerie had no idea what she was asking for when she cornered me to cater her wedding. She had no way to know what was involved. Still, I could not refuse. And I could not charge her either. This would have to be a gift. And she had better not get divorced. And how did I get in this mess to in the first place? 

My mad skillz were known. She saw them previously in action at my house. 

Valerie Mayz came over with the Kansas City District bank examiners. They took up a floor in a building across the 16th mall from the rest of the employees at the Federal Reserve Bank Denver who have their own State examiners, and their own bank auditors at their Fortress taking up the whole block where Tabor Opera House once stood. 

At the time they were a separate lot, a whole different class of people, so they thought. They behaved aloof  and dressed differently than most save for management and our own examiners. So they were reluctant at first to join me at home, but once they did word got around over there in their office and without especially trying and doing nothing at all special I nonetheless attained a reputation as host. 

I know what party did it too. 

For Valerie, I baked half-way nine pounds of bacon, I think, maybe more, to render the fat, to start if off but cook incompletely to be finished later. A bucket of grease was collected.

You don't just reach into the chicken liver bucket and grab a chicken liver and wrap it with bacon and stab it with a toothpick, no, you take each liver and trim off the gunk, anything unsightly, anything with tubes or connective tissue, only nice pieces, then slice the trimmed pieces to uniform chunks. Tiny liver chunks. Each chicken liver makes ten or a dozen. Then do that a couple hundred times. You have piles of liver gunk and piles of usable pieces, and piles of liver waiting to be looked at.

Water chestnuts for crunch. Easiest out of a tin. That's the way to go. But to go that extra mile, fresh water chestnuts are much better. They are impossible to peel without wasting half of them, and difficult to slice evenly too, they're a total drag to deal with but deliver an outstanding crunch, and going through all that one imagines alternatives like jicama or possibly apple, but fresh water chestnuts are best but unfortunately not recommended. Way too much of a drag for this number. But if it were just you and me, well, that's a different thing. 

The bacon is smeared with brown sugar to overload the sugar already cured in the bacon and overwhelm the oppressively dull thud of liver. The sugar adheres to the cooled bacon grease and spills all over in the process. The piles of bacon strips and brown sugar everywhere guarantee a complete mess tabletop and floor. Add to that chicken liver blood, slippery water chestnuts, slopped up gritted up toothpicks all over the place, the whole ranch-style house smelling like bacon, you think that's a good thing, actually, bacon grease film coating all surfaces, permeating every fiber, it seems and smells so, not a good thing and you are put off rumaki permanently. 

Until further notice.

And that is only one of the hors d'oeuvres  <-- a word spell properly the first go.

There will be four hot hors d'oeuvres and four cold.

I have help at the end, they just fall into place, Laura, and Janelle and her daughter, a sylph-like teen.

"Try one."

"What's in 'em?"

Janelle's daughter, beautiful girl, is sliding a tray of rumaki into one of the ovens at Spruce Street.

"Chicken liver." 

"Huh uh, I don't eat no liver." 

"EAT IT, I said."  

I was joking. I don't know her, didn't expect her to obey the white guy and immediately plop one into her mouth like that.  Her eyes widened

"Hey, they're good!" 

"Sugar. Tiny piece of liver. Total psych."

The rumaki are delicious. They turn vegetarians  carnivore. Truth. A nettlesome vegetarian I know, no longer a friend,  must remain nameless but his initials are Hugh Shields fancies himself some kind of philosophical Thoreau bugs the living piss out of all of us about the evils of consuming meat, creatures with faces and such, pigs smart as dogs and so on,  along with the goodness and righteousness and humanity of eating plants instead, except for milk and eggs which are "gifts" from  the animal kingdom bestowed upon mankind by dint of their, um, natural godly savage nobility or something quite lovely and profound. Ten straight years of that sanctimonious pontification, at least ten, and at length, a tray of these rumaki pass by, he reaches out, reapeatedly, and he's carnivore for the night, well, duh, nothing is absolute, you blinkered dummkopf. 

It took days of preparation. There were some two hundred people, I think. All black. The kitchen is fine, but front, the bar and the hall and the dance floor are too dark for me, and apparently for me alone. Way too dark. I do not understand why the place is so dark but the effect is that I can see nobody at all. I can see people's teeth and their eyes and I can recognize my friend's voices, and that is all, and it is not so very bad, and I am sorry to say that, and surely I stick out like an odd apparition. 

What a nice time, gracious people all around, nothing at all unseemly as you see happens when people drink. Nothing like that at all. It was a beautiful reception.  Most I spoke with assumed I was a professional caterer and asked for my card. The people who were told otherwise were astounded. Astounded that Valerie has such capable friends. 

But hours before that, right before Spruce Street I sensed I was getting into trouble with timing the end of cold sandwiches that must be done all at once. I called a friend, Laura Meskis, and I am happy now I recalled her name to relate this, I had trouble bringing it up. In fact, I cannot even find Spruce Street and even Street View now does not make sense at Spruce and Colfax where that place was. I recall the linebacker blocking my entry the first time I went there, undaunted by his illegal blocking and persistent in my insistence on the correctness of my being there I managed to utter the magic password:  "Valerie Mayz." 

All the black politicians went there to Spruce Street. At the time, Spruce Street served as caucus of sorts.  

Hours before presentation at Spruce Street, now my seventh or so visit there, I began to panic about running late.  Actually, I don't panic well at all. It doesn't express as panic. More like concern things are a bit off. It would be panic if could feel that in relation to parties and food preparation, but nothing like that is ever panic-worthy, not even a wedding.  So what if something fails, pffft. Let's say I was in the situation that would cause a regular sensate person to panic so I called a friend who immediately panicked, dropped what she was doing and raced to my house quite a distance in fact to finish a batch of sandwiches, and haul them to Spruce Street. A blessing. And although I might let her first name slip, I can never forget her willingness to drop everything, she has a family to see to constantly, her cheerfulness once there the whole time, and her helpfulness and the fun we had together rushing those sandwiches through. 

Laura did a pile of pita bread split into discs, painted with dressing to soften, rolled up with roasted chicken, Swiss cheese, avocado, lettuce for crunch, and sliced and pinned, maybe glued with cream cheese to avoid toothpicks. I think each pita makes a dozen, maybe six, I forget. Laura did nearly all those.  

Laura worked with me at the FRB. She knew about things that happened at the house. I think she just wanted to do something different and be part of an event. She is cousin to Joyce Meskis, owner of Tattered Book Cover, a fairly well-known bookstore in town. The two women are very much alike. 

She called me a year following my leaving the FRB to relate that she had left too shortly after I did. She wanted to catch up and tell me she started he own catering business with another woman. I had never heard her speak of having any interest of the sort.