Part 2 of a 9-part series
So I called the number in the classified ad and spoke with a woman
named Karen. Karen was the personal secretary for the Lady of the House
and she was also the right person I needed to speak with about the job. I
told her a bit about my background and experience and she told me a little
about the job: There were, basically just two people to feed lunch and
dinner usually 5 days a week (but sometimes more). There were also
business lunches to prepare from time to time for meetings at the Husband’s
office (a separate building on the property) and occasionally business dinners,
dinner or lunch parties, family gatherings or other special events. Karen
mentioned, several times, what a nice working environment it was, what a
beautiful quasi commercial kitchen they had “with every piece of equipment
imaginable”.
She mentioned a salary range “depending
on experience and other factors” which sounded acceptable so I set up a time a
few days later for an interview.
Showing up a little early for my job
interview I was quite impressed as I drove up the long, winding, private road
toward the main house. Along the road I could make out numerous
out-buildings; a 6-car garage, a horse barn, a work shop and several more further
along. There were several romping horses visible as I drove past a pond
full of ducks and acres and acres of manicured grounds.
The main house itself was gorgeous.
A huge 200-year old farm house was at the center of what looked, from my
vantage point on the driveway, like dozens of very sympathetic and very well
executed additions. I guessed the house to be 10,000 square feet in size
and absolutely flawlessly modernized and maintained.
As I approached the large front door it
was opened by a young woman who greeted me coolly and introduced herself
as Karen. She gave me a quick tour of a few of the first floor rooms
as we headed towards the kitchen and I was saw that every room was well
furnished with an extraordinary collection of magnificent antiques.
One piece, a small, unusually-shaped, table made from tiger maple caught
my eye and I made a comment about it.
Karen had been somewhat aloof up
until then but seemed surprised that I had an interest in the antiques.
She warmed a bit saying, “You have a good eye. How interesting.
That table is quite unique and has been written up in several antique
magazines”. “It’s priceless”, she added as an afterthought.
We proceeded on past a tall bank of
windows which looked out onto their back yard where she pointed out the two
guest houses out past the pool and tennis courts. As we passed through a
swinging door Karen stepped aside and let me go ahead of her.
It was the kitchen and it was impressive, as promised.
The focal point of the large room was a
huge center island, probably 12 feet long and 5 feet across. About ¾ of the
counter top for the island was an enormous slab of polished pink and gray
granite and the rest was solid cherry wood. Above the island hung a
large, oval, wrought iron rack on which was hanging 30 or 40 gorgeous copper
and copper-clad pots and pans which twinkled and gleamed brightly. The
rest of the kitchen had white Corian countertops over brilliantly polished
cherry wood cabinets and there was a 6-burner commercial gas range, as well as
a double set of doors for the two built-in Sub-Zero refrigerators.
“Nice” I said in approval as we slid
tall bar stool-type chairs up to the island were we were apparently going to
sit and talk.
Karen began the interview by having me
tell her about my family, my recent work, what kinds of food I liked to make
and such. I answered, succinctly and positively. Giving an up-beat
and professional accounting of myself (at least I’d hoped I had), doing my best
to toot my own horn.
She spoke more about The Family (there
was no question that she was capitalizing the words) telling me that both the
husband and wife had been interred in concentration camps by the Nazis during
the Second World War. Mentioning their great suffering and losses during
the war, she went on to describe their arrival in the USA with nothing and
their eventual attainment of their wealth through years of hard work. The
Husband ran his own commodities investment business from a building just down
their private road, trading via satellite on the Chicago Markets daily.
He had a number of employees working for him there.
There was also a household staff
consisting of a full-time maid, head grounds keeper, mechanic, a driver and, of
course, the cook. There were also numerous other miscellaneous gardeners,
pool men, handy men, maintenance guys, stable guys working on the property at
any given time. It was Karen’s job as a sort of Chief of Staff, to
oversee all the house help and the Wife of The Family oversaw her.
“You know”, she said, “The Family has
never had a real professional chef cooking for the them. Just had
housewife-type cooks. As a matter of fact”, she went on, almost to herself,
“they’ve never had a male cook. I wonder what they’d think of that?”
I asked Karen if she liked
working there. She said she’d been with them for seven years and had
always found The Family to be good employers, generous and hard-working
themselves (not the type to just sit with their feet up and boss others
around). She went on to say that The Family had definite ways that they
wanted things to be done, but that there was nothing outrageously weird.
She said “It’s a good job”. She had not actually answered my
question but I hoped that it was an innocent oversight, and that she was not
being evasive.
I asked her a little about the family’s
(I mean The Family’s)
eating habits. She said they knew much about and enjoyed good food and
wine (they had an extensive climate-controlled wine cellar in the basement).
They often traveled to Europe and would bring back interesting food
stuffs with them. They also went into NY City regularly, several times a
month on business or just for shopping and would bring back whatever goodies
caught their eyes. In counterpoint to this, she said that they were both
conscious of being overweight and tried to keep it in check. The Husband
had had heart surgery and was trying to lose 20 lbs. He was currently on
the Scarsdale Diet, but it didn’t really effect the cook too much. The
Wife, she said, always counted calories but wasn’t actually dieting.
She asked about my hobbies. I
told her I did some wood working and drawing but recently I had gotten into
learning about computers. PC computers were still pretty new and not in
general usage and while I was sure that The Husband had some kind of computers
in his trading office I had noticed that Karen had but an IBM
Selectric typewriter on her desk.
“Ooh, computers”, she remarked, “I
really don’t know anything about them. What kind of things can you do
with one?”
I was definitely no geek but I told her
about word processing and how much easier it was than typing. I told here
about spread sheets and how useful they were for bookkeeping chores. I
said there were animated games which could be played. Admittedly, these
were all extremely crude, and often cumbersome applications (running in DOS,
switching out 5.25” floppies because there were no hard drives and looking at
it all on a little amber screen) but at the time it was pretty cutting
edge. She seemed fascinated by it all and I had an idea.
I had just recently gotten a program
called Diet Analyzer. With it you could enter the amounts for ingredients
for a menu item and it would calculate dozens of different dietary values for
the dish. With it you could put together the dietary impact for a whole
meal including calorie counts, vitamin amounts etc. and relate it all to the
recommended daily allowance guidelines published by the US Government.
And it was all available to print out to my little 9-pin dot matrix
printer.
As I began to tell her all about Diet
Analyzer, I could see her face light up, hear the wheels turning in her head.
Heck, I could almost smell smoke!
“Does that sound like something that
The Family might be interested in; the ability to easily calculate meal
calories and the like?” I asked. I could see in her eyes that this was
really exciting for her and knew her answer before she said…
“Oh yes, I think that might be just the
kind of thing they would be interested in. How fun!”
She had made her decision about giving
me the job but it wasn’t all up to her. She said that I needed to do an
audition for The Family, where I would come cook them a dinner. That was
fine with me. We set up a tentative date about two weeks down the road.
Karen asked me to come up with two or three complete menus as
suggestions and to submit them to her. She would discuss them with The
Family, pick one and that’s the one I’d prepare for them. She said that
they would reimburse me for the cost of the ingredients.
With that, the interview was over.
Well, almost. On our way out, just as I was going through the
door, Karen asked, “Do you know what would really impress The
Family?”
“What?”
“That Diet Analyzer thing. I you
could bring a copy of the analysis for the menu you are doing for your
audition, I think they’d be fascinated. Would you do that?”
I agreed.
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