New Client!

New client this past week! The family is mostly vegetarian so I wrote up some ideas for additional main courses that might appeal to them. They chose the Tuscan Bean Soup and Manicotti for their main dishes, and granola, potato bread, and a fruit pie for the rest.

I have been enamored with peaches for the past two weeks. Each time I shop at Central Market they have had piles of the most gorgeous, rounded fruit right by the entrance, and I have usually succumbed. I ate two that were ambrosial, but then others in the same batch proved disappointing. I remembered this with dismay after selling the new client on a peach pie rather than the apple pie that she had initially suggested. I love to try things that appeal to me, but it's very different when you are making them for someone else --- after all it's not like you can just cut yourself a slice to see how it turned out. (Here is your pie - no, never mind the chunk that's missing, I just had to take a slice for quality control...)

I also had some anxiety over the soup, which is wonderful with pancetta and the long simmering that the beans, broth and rosemary do together, but which I was not so sure about with the Parmesan rind. The Parmesan rind is supposed to compensate for the loss of the pancetta in the vegetarian version of the soup, but I have to say that I found the results disappointing. Not that the soup was bad, but it was just different. Plus, the rind softens as it cooks and just looks really unappealing - I just removed it halfway through cooking because I couldn't stand looking at it any more. The soup developed a bit of heat that I didn't expect - perhaps the additional fat from the pancetta softens the hit of red pepper flakes in the regular version. I don't know, but I was definitely concerned given that the NC (new client) has two young children and I don't know what their spice tolerance is. I had also had a nice long conversation with her about how I try not to spice my cooking aggressively just because I too have a small child... Great! Of course I immediately had to call Jen in a panic so that she could reassure me that it was okay. (Woman rushed to hospital after experiencing panic attack caused by spicy food! News at eleven!)
Being the wonderful friend that she is, Jen came right over and managed to restore (some of) my equanimity.

Everything turned out fine. I delivered all the food to the NC's home by 6 pm, an she called the next day to let me know that everything was fine. (OK, she actually said that they loved everything.) So I felt better, a lot better.

I am going to try to post photos of what I make each time just to try and create a visual record for myself. (This way when I am struggling to think of what to make next, or what I made when, I can actually have a way to see it.)