Sandwich, Soup and Salad Days

Part 2 of "Cafeteria Lady"

In one way I wanted the head chef job. The money would have freed me from being at the mercy of my ex-husband's sporadic child support payments. I would go on salary and have benefits, sick days and all of that good stuff.
On the other hand, my kids were just too young. Bad enough that they had to travel between two households, they needed to have stability. I was the primary parent and could not have a job with unpredictable hours. Not to mention that Martha and the coven were getting under my skin.
I would go along for a few days and things would be alright, but then out of the blue, they would take a downward turn. One famous episode was when Martha was roaming in the commissary area when she saw the bowls of fresh fruit that we kept out all day for the staff to snack on.
"Why do we have bananas?", she asked. Not as much curious, as suspicious.
"Well, um, people enjoy them.", I said. Then, thinking that I would show her how resourceful I was and that I never wasted anything I kept going.
"We never throw anything away", I proudly stated. "I always make banana bread out of the overripe ones".
Oooohh. I went too far with that one.
"We do not need to waste time baking banana bread. No more. Bananas are a useless fruit!"
And so it was. Bananas were banned from then on.

The bread for sandwiches was another issue. Sandwiches had to be mainly filling with very little bread. Also, we were not allowed to bake bread so we had to purchase it. We were told that Eli's bread from New York was what we should be buying. I had to do an interstate search to find a purveyor who would bring it to us out in Connecticut. In those days, it wasn't easy but I finally found one. Trouble was that they wouldn't deal with us. Apparently when Sally was the chef, they never got paid. I remember piles of invoices all over the place in the kitchen then, so it made sense. I worked my charm on them and made promises of C.O.D. for a month until we earned their trust. My life was dependent on that bread!
One day though, when the atmosphere was a bit heavy because of a rough shoot, the bread was not going to save my ass. The ratio of filling to bread was not right. Too little chicken salad between the slices. I was called out to the dining room. Martha was standing on the other side of the counter. She was not happy and she let me know it. The room was quiet, so all could hear. I saw the bobbing heads of the coven behind her in affirmation. The last thing I remember was being told that the sandwiches were "insipid". I was completely humiliated.
That afternoon I sat out on my stoop at home and started to cry. I had reached my limit. This was a very challenging job on a good day, but it was just too much, too early in my career. I thought about quitting.

Shortly after the insipid sandwich day, I had an idea.  What if I could hire my own boss? What if I recommended someone that I liked that was dependable and talented? If I had to step down at least I wouldn't have to deal with another Sally or worse.
So I called my friend Dave. We had also met at the Elms. He was skinny and tall, newlywed with a pregnant wife, funny as hell and just lovable. He was currently working at another restaurant but he had freelanced at Martha's occasionally so he knew the drill. A job like this would be a great move for him. When you have a wife, you can be the head chef and still have your children cared for. I had no such luxury.
And so it was that Dave ended up getting hired. My life for the next few years was filled with laughter and camaraderie.

To be honest, it did sting a little to give up the title. When MSO went public everyone was invited into the city for a big party, given stock shares and amazing goody bags. That is everyone who was on staff. I and a small handful of freelancers roamed around the empty hallways of the studio only to watch our coworkers and Martha ring the opening bell at the stock exchange on the tv monitors that hung from the ceilings everywhere.
Dave was great to work with. He was respectful to me and never ever pulled rank. He had classic training from the CIA which was much better than mine so he had a good handle on service. Together Dave, Francisco our Brazilian dishwasher/prep cook and I put out a lot of food over the years. Everyone loved Dave, well almost everyone. Unfortunately the one person who was not quite on board was Martha.
Dave was not polished in the way that she liked. Well mannered and polite, but sometimes his food was heavy on the garlic or portions were too big. He stayed away from JB's abbodonza type meals but somehow Martha never seemed to totally buy into him.
This was hurtful to him. Nobody ever tried harder to make people happy than Dave. I felt protective of him and did everything I could to keep things on track. It was such a relief to have him there that my job became a pleasure. The days when it wasn't such a pleasure I had someone who I could bitch about it with and laugh at the foolishness.
Every Friday the two of us would sit together and make a menu for the following week. We were given a schedule of shoot days, VIP's who may be there and any off premise catering at Turkey Hill.
Lunches sent to Turkey Hill were some of the most angst-ridden meals that either of us had to deal with.
Though the show was primarily all done at the studio, there were occasional segments filmed at Martha's home in Westport on Turkey Hill Rd. A crew would be there from call time on and we were expected to cook and pack lunch that would be picked up by a PA in a company van and brought over. It would be set up there and when the crew got a break they would eat. Later we would be brought back all of the nice, dirty containers and whatnot.
Craft services Martha style was not your average craft service. Martha hated chafing dishes, so anything warm was a challenge to serve. Especially since lunch was always served outside, even on chilly November days. We were still within the confines of "soup, salad, sandwich and maybe cookies" but being that it was off-premise we couldn't control portions or presentation. At the studio we could monitor how much food was put out at one time. At Turkey Hill we had no control. If we ran out of food we were in the shits, if we had too much we were also in the shits because it looked like we were wasteful and spent too much money (and people could get fat).

The PA was usually a "dude". Someone who might have gone to film school and somehow stumbled into this job, usually smoked a fair amount of weed and basically wore a headset during a shoot and could drive a van. We would get a call that he was on his way and we would start packing. We had Cambro containers specifically for these days. Sometimes we'd lug them out to find that the Dude never washed them out after the last shoot and they would stink of rotten food. Once we took care of that we'd wrap our trays of sandwiches, our bowls of salad (sauce on the side), the fruit, perhaps potato salad or fresh sliced tomatoes and basil...something seasonally appropriate. We would send baskets of cookies, sometimes in individual wax paper wrappers. They had their own coolers with beverages there but we often sent iced tea too. We had a specific recipe given to us that was from Martha's housekeepers at home. Members of the coven were on shoots there as well, so the evil eye was upon us. It always got back to us, reviews good or bad. If one stupid little thing was not just so- it could ruin our day. God help us if we ever got a phone call from the set that something was missing or that they ran out of it.

At the studio I learned how greedy people can be when when it comes to an open buffet of free food. My crew and I would watch people load up their plates. They would be lined up at the door and make their way, amicably chatting with each other and serving themselves from the platters we put out. No chafing dishes, ever! The mounds on their plates got bigger and bigger. When you have a limited amount of food to serve, this is a very stressful situation. We were between a rock and a hard place because we could not run out of food but we could not have too much.
We would try little tricks like putting less out on the platters, not piling it too high. Making the portions smaller, cutting meat or chicken slices thinner and fanning them out more. Lots of greens underneath them to look fuller.
The worst case scenario would be if the staff got to lunch first and went nuts and we still had to feed the crew. They were the ones that we were never supposed to let go hungry. They had a firm 30 minutes to break for lunch. If the staff filled their plates, made extra ones that they would save for later, come back for seconds- we'd start to sweat. The fact was that we really liked the crew too. They were men and women who were low maintenance, nice people who really appreciated what we did for them. Since I was permitted to bake cookies on shoot days, it was my challenge to limit them to the staff to be sure that the crew got their fair share.
Often food from the set was brought over for us to put out with the meal. Sometimes it would be something that Martha or a guest chef made along with the extra food that was used in the demo. People would jump on this stuff! The coven would make a bee-line straight for the truffle pasta that Lidia had just made. Sometimes though, that food would sit...for a long time. It would sit underneath the stage lights while it was photographed. It would sit while the producers would discuss whether or not they had all the shots that they needed. It would sit while Martha would leave the set for a phone call and everyone had to wait. In other words, the coven was more than welcome to have that lovely plate of chicken that was in that temperature we refer to as the danger zone.
At the end of the week the production side would send over all of the food that they didn't need from the walk-in. Fridays were relaxed as they were rarely shoot days, Martha wasn't there and we would just cook everything we had and put it out. I christened it "leftover Friday". It was my favorite day- we got to be creative and play. People learned to love it, they never knew what they were going to get.
Usually a couple of times during the warmer weather we were instructed to hold barbecues for the staff. Everybody loved barbecues! Everybody except us.
The commissary led straight to a stairway that went to the rear of the property. There were Adirondack chairs where people could sit in the sun or the shade of the lush trees. Nearby was a garden fenced in with various herbs and vegetables growing. It really was lovely.
First we had to drag out all of the grills. We set them up in the asphalt area so the picnic-ers wouldn't have to tolerate the smoke. That was only for us cooks to get in our eyes and make us sweat with the heat of live coals. We set up tables and covered them gingham cloths and all the fixin's to go with the grilled food, plates of salads, cookies and fresh fruit (no bananas!). These days were meant to treat the staff, as a reward for those tough shoot days and Martha had left town for the week.
For the most part, everyone appreciated the barbecues. Even though it was extra work for us and we did not enjoy the reward of relaxing too, such is the life of the cook. It would have been more tolerable if the coven still had not criticized everything. Whether is was being subjected to using plastic utensils, or the cut of the damn watermelon. We did our job, afterward cleaning up behind them, including the seeds of that fruit, spit out on the ground.
Martha had some Brazilian male landscapers and female housekeepers that had been with her for many, many years who worked at the studio. Neicy and Edina were sisters, Neicy having moved into working with the set designers and flowers, Edina on housekeeping and laundry detail including Martha's tv wardrobe. Their brother was known as "Tucca" who mainly did gardening and fixit stuff, he was gruff and kept to himself. The other set of brothers were Fernando and Paolo. They did the odd gardening, custodial and miscellaneous jobs. Fernando was nice but on the lazy side, Paolo was not nice and completely on the lazy side. Occasionally if Francisco had to call out, one of them would be assigned to "help" in the commissary during service. If it was Paolo, he would come in at the very last moment possible, grunting as he reluctantly had to wash the dishes. Fernando, though slow was more pleasant but we had to get on him about his sanitation habits. There was one day when Dave saw him running his fingers through his lush, black hair as he looked at his reflection in the paper towel dispenser. As Fernando started to reach for some food to begin plating, Dave stopped him.
"Fernando! Wash your hands!"
"Why, Dave?". Fernando was completely perplexed.
"Because you just touched your hair! You can't handle food without washing your hands." Dave explained.
"But Dave, my hair is clean!"

We had three separate garbage containers in our kitchen. One, was for trash, the second was for recycling and the third was for the chickens. We were to put certain items into a lined trash can that would be delivered to Martha's famous Arucana chickens at Turkey Hill. By the way, those chickens lay the most gorgeous eggs. They are light green and brown look like they were designed for a magazine. The chickens would get things like corn-cobs or pineapple skins ("Chickens love pineapple", Martha once exclaimed as she dropped the rinds into the chicken garbage can). When we would get busy it was easy to throw something paper into the chicken garbage by mistake. "Fucking chickens!", was often heard at these moments.
When the garbage went out the bags would be tied, garbage and recycling would go to the appropriate dumpster and the bag for the chickens would be left under the outdoor stairwell in a locked area. It was the Brazilian's job to bring it over to Turkey Hill.
We started noticing the smell first. Then the vermin.
While Paolo and Fernando would happily help themselves to lunch, they wanted nothing to do with the chicken garbage. It was a constant battle to get the food over there. It often ended up being Francisco, our kitchen assistant who would load it up in his truck and bring it over there. Francisco also had a landscaping business on the side. Martha became his client so this chicken food delivery business worked out very well for him in the long run.
Dave and I often felt that we were the only ones who saw how lazy these guys were. They really got away with doing as little as possible. One day, when we had some down time after service we saw Paolo through the window. He was raking leaves, very slowly (Tucca was using the blower, otherwise he would never expend all of that energy). He would do a sweep, sweep on one side, switch hands and do another sweep, sweep. Dave and I were making fun of his technique when we saw him lean the rake on a car. He walked over to a tree. Dave and I looked at each other, he's not..he wouldn't...
Yes, Paolo was relieving himself behind a tree.
We mentioned this to our supervisor of the Facilities Department. "You guys..." she said and shook her head at us. Yes, we were known for joking around but this was fact and not fiction.
"No, really! Paolo peed on a tree out in the parking lot!". But it all fell on deaf ears. It was like the "Twilight Zone" episode where the one passenger in the airplane saw the monster on the wing but nobody else could see it. In this case though, the monster was peeing on the wing.

Time is the only way to gain perspective. As much as we bitched to one another about everything, we were very, very lucky. We worked in a beautiful place, the hours were fantastic compared to working in a restaurant. Sure, the coven tortured us. Martha was not easy at times, but she was brilliant and could also be generous. It turned out to be a wonderful place for those early years when my kids were young. Once Dave took over, I could leave at 3:00 and meet my son at the school bus stop. Bananas or no, those truly were my salad days.