Bon Appetit

Somewhere in the mid 1980s, two other couples were coming to our house for dinner for a “home cooked” New Year’s Eve. I was a fairly good cook, the friend I knew best was a good cook, but the third woman, who I didn’t know that well was a great cook. She had even studied culinary arts in Paris!

We figured, we could probably make a great dinner for a lot less than it would cost in a crowded restaurant.

We had collaborated on the menu, bought all the ingredients and I even decorated the table, something I hardly ever did.

The kids were spending the night with my in laws. They had an adventure of their own when my Mother-in-law decided to pop corn on the stove top. She neglected to put the top on the pot and the pop corn popped right out all over the place. The kids had so much fun it became a standard New Year’s Eve activity. They spent several New Year’s Eves with them.

Back at my dinner party, the men took places around the table, and we brought the food in and set it in the center of the table. No one moved. I asked what was wrong? One guy said, “It looks too pretty to eat!” Finally somebody took a portion of food and then everybody put food on their plates.

Dinner was delicious! Dessert was even better! We had outdone ourselves, but we had a ball. The guys were in charge of the cleanup, so while they put away the extra food and got the dishes rinsed and in the machine and we had the coffee brewing, the three of us women started talking.

“You know,” said the first, “We could do this as a business!”

I looked at her like she was crazy. “Oh no! Way too much and I would worry all the time about someone hating the food.” We spoke and spoke and spoke about it and came up with an unusual idea. We did start a business. We decided to cater appetizers and desserts. Everything to be done in miniature. The expert among us gave us all an assignment. We would list all the appetizers, and desserts we loved and knew how to make, while she would find food sources at wholesale prices and ways to advertise that we could afford. We thought of a name, and so Quiche Me Quick! was born. We did a million test runs on all recipes we had, we each learned how to create everything and then we adjusted the amounts for miniatures. We had little menus printed up with prices, we handed them out at different organization meetings, everything from PTA to Civic Association Meetings. We advertised in the local Penny Saver.

Slowly orders started to come in. The first few weekends it was exhilarating. Then it became too big to deal with. We had to have a limit on how many people we could cater to. A party of 20 was much easier than a party of 100. We caught on. Once again, I was sampling and eating and within a few months I noticed I was once again gaining weight. I turned the taste testing over to hubby and kids. Most of the things were too sophisticated for the kids though. At one of our events, a reporter for a well known magazine sampled our cuisine and decided to write a story about us. “Three Long Island Housewives turn food time into good time!”

We were flying high. Sometimes people would ask one of us, “Do you know how to make XXXXX? We would always answer yes,and then go and research what it was. Most of the time, our professional would know what to do, but sometimes things were very ethnic and we had no source of information to make it. Sometimes you would make a batch of pastries that came our looking awful, you would be up until the wee hours of the morning redoing them, wasting a lot of ingredients and cutting way into the profits.

The magazine published the story. The Board of Health contacted each of us shortly after. Our crime was that we were successful, and then told we couldn’t cook in our own kitchens and needed a commercial kitchen to continue. In addition we needed insurance in case anyone came down with a food borne illness, also we needed to incorporate and file a myriad of forms. All we wanted to do was make a little money and have fun. It was over before it got started. A few months after the last party we catered, someone stole our name. We didn’t have it protected by whatever needed to be done. I found some frozen items in the supermarket, Quiche Me Quick, easy appetizers prepared in minutes. I don’t think it lasted too long. After a month or so, I never saw the product again.

So my short lived catering career was over. I’m glad, it was fun, but exhausting and it ate, ( pun intended) into my weekends.