Working for Food

In the side-bar note about myself, I tell readers that my husband, Chris, and I were high school sweethearts, married at age 18. We lived in a small trailer on the family farm because, well, it was cheap and we were poor. Back then Chris worked in construction and I worked retail while going to college. For the first few years of our marriage I was a professional student jumping from program to program trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up.  At age 21, I gave birth to our oldest daughter, Shania, and two years later I began working on my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. During those first two years of motherhood, a close friend of Chris's grandmother offered me a part-time job. Mary and Max Scott operated Wildbriar Inn in Edom, Texas. Wildbriar was a county inn that was built out of the Scott's love for food, cooking, and hospitality. They had traveled the world before retiring to the country and the picturesque inn was a smattering of memories from their travels. It was a grand, two-story, country-French style manor housing 6 uniquely designed guest bedrooms, each with a private bath. Each guest room had been furnished and decorated reminiscent of one of the many inns visited during their travels abroad. Additionally, the house had a large Gathering Room for guests to read, relax, or mingle, an adjoining dining room and breakfast room, easily seating 30-40 people when the glass French doors were opened, and a large kitchen with double sinks, stoves, ovens and dishwashers. The back wing of the house was their personal living area with a huge laundry and dry goods pantry with a second refrigerator and upright freezer which was called The Buttery. The Snug was offset from the Gathering Room. It was the only room in the guest part they allowed smoking and it contained a television.  The Inn was a hobby for them, which they sold a couple of years ago for full retirement, and mostly an environment appropriately priced, furnished and designed catering to a well-to-do adult population. They needed no advertisement aside from word-of-mouth and provided a single, tri-fold color brochure, containing basic accommodations and a few photographs, which stated on the back "We do, on occasion, accept nice children".

As you can see from my detailed description, I have vivid memories of Wildbriar. My love for Wildbriar and the Scott's developed from my love for Mary's cooking, the place itself, and their love for me and my family. They treated us all like we belonged to them. My five or six year "career" working their consisted of helping Mary and Max serve their guests the evening meal. She always had a menu which included a homemade soup, choice of green or fruit salad, entree with choice of meat, usually beef and chicken, and a variety of freshly cooked vegetables, served family style. The meal ended with coffee and your choice from the dessert cart, homemade of course. Wildbriar also hosted garden parties, holiday parties, girls weekends, receptions, weddings, honeymooners, and visitors to the famous Canton, Texas First Monday Trade Days, just to name a few. I made $6 an hour, usually working 3 or 4 hours in the evening and then returning on Saturday or Sunday morning to clean and change linens after guests checked out.  So in a weekend, if I worked Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday morning, I could earn about $70. That's not a lot of money now, but to a college wife, without a full-time job and a toddler old at home, it bought gas, some groceries, and maybe a text book, if I threw in recycled aluminum can money.

So, you are probably asking yourself by now, why would someone continue to serve food and clean rooms for $6 an hour???  Well, it was, and still is,  more than waitresses made an hour but the reality is, I was working for food!! Max always took my order for green or fruit salad and beef or chicken and Mary always made sure to prepare extra veggies and bread.  After the serving was over and all the stemware was washed, dried, and either put away or reset on the tables for the next evening, we sat down and ate our dinner. Then anything else left over, bread, soup, pie, veggies, whatever, she packed up in plastic ware for Chris. Even after I got my nursing degree and started working at the hospital, I would go work at Wildbriar if they needed help on my nights off. I learned a lot about cooking from my mom and from my husband's Granny, but I also learned a lot of great stuff and kitchen tricks by working at Wildbriar. Have you ever heard that you can't cook frozen chicken breasts because they won't get done in the center?  Well, I can tell you, that is a lie! She pulled cookie sheets of her Broccoli Chicken out of the freezer, put it straight into a preheated oven (Hot enough that I melted my mascara coated eyelashes together a couple of times!) and they always came out deliciously done right to the center. Before Wildbriar I didn't know how to set a proper table but I learned how to do it there. Glasses on the right, bread plate on the left, knife blade toward the plate. Serve ladies before men. Serve from the right, pick up from the left. All, while wearing my apron.

Now 15 years or so later, I have passed on some of my Wildbriar lessons to my girls, Shania, 14, and Katy, 8. When you ask one of them to set the table they will automatically get out place mats and cloth napkins. Both are not a hassle really. I buy fairly cheap ones for everyday and you can wash a whole weeks worth of them in one washer load and I even iron them, for which I have been reprimanded and asked by dinner guests, "Is this to use or just to look pretty?" I tell them, "I wouldn't put it there if I didn't want you to use it."  A nicely placed table with cloth napkins adds a nice touch to any weeknight meal or Sunday dinner. It brings to the table a sense of hospitality and tells your family your care enough about the meal to tie it up with a bow. Just a couple of weeks ago I had partially prepared dinner and left instructions for Chris and the girls to finish up while I was working late. Chris told me later that he asked Katy to set the table while he was cleaning up, before I got home. She obediently responded, and in his meticulous dishwasher loading ritual, he failed to notice that she had retrieved The Joy of Cooking, turned to the front section with pictures of table settings, and was in the process of setting a proper table. She certainly knows the value of working for food!

Aprons 101

To initiate my blog "Aprons in the Kitchen" I think it appropriate to educate readers about aprons and their place in history. According to Wikipedia an apron is an outer protective garment that covers primarily the front of the body and is worn as an outer protective covering. Until the 1960's, aprons were common in the home for domestic housework and cooking to protect women's delicate clothing from wear and tear. However, cheaper, mass-manufactured clothing and automatic washing machines made aprons less common world-wide but particularly in the United States. Donning aprons, by both men and women, has seen a resurgence in the last few years. The Wall Street Journal published an article in 2005 claiming the apron was "enjoying a renaissance as a retro-chic fashion accessory" in the U.S. Just type "aprons" on any web search engine and you can easily search and buy the style of your liking without leaving home. Or, if you are like me and enjoy browsing antique shops, country stores, and garage sales, you can find your treasure in some body's trash for just a few dollars. To create a vintage, cozy feel or to rekindle your memories of grandmother's house, install a simple pegged hat rack in your kitchen and nonchalantly adorn it with some vintage or hand-made aprons.  Don't be afraid to wear one, especially when you entertain family or friends and smile cheerfully when you tie one on your volunteer pot-washer!