Mission completed!!!

As promised, I am reporting on the catering gig. The result was flawless, with a call from my step mother last night giving me a glowing review, and promising more business. Getting there was a whole other story. As I said the other day, I had done a dry run and deemed the results good. Well, Tuesday morning was chaos. I woke up early to pad my production time, and thank God for that. The first two dozen biscuits were sad, pathetic, place adjective here. It seems that in my nervousness, I rolled the hell out of the dough and produced what appeared more like biscuit cookies. I cried as I took them out and examined them. I was frustrated, and sans coffee. Luckily, I was able to correct my mistake, and continue on to make 101 appropriately thick biscuits. Success. Next came assembly. As I cut and opened the biscuits, assembling them ten at a time, I used a basting brush to "paint" melted butter onto each side. Of course, in addition to taste, this provided much needed moisture since the goods would not be consumed until the following morning. Two large pieces of thick sliced ham, were then placed on to 98 of the biscuits. Wait...98? Didn't you promise 101 ham biscuits? Yes and yes. Sigh..... luckily, when I had the ham sliced at the deli, greedy little me requested a dozen sandwich thickness slices as well. So, I stacked those slices together and cut them to create the illusion of being the same. After all, the same meat was used for the others, and approximately the same thickness was achieved. As I packaged my wares in fancy little boxes (with cute name tags with the name of my operation on them) I began to think about delivery. They were due at 2:00. Of course my car broke down on Saturday, and the mechanic was coming to give last rites later Tues afternoon. (which in itself is another rant for another time) So at 12:30, I began trying to reach my best friend and "delivery guy" He has a no phone policy at the beach, and left me sweating until his 1:20 arrival. Personally I think he enjoyed it, as he loves picking on me like the sister he never had. At 1:50, Tuesday afternoon, the dropoff was complete. The lady who was actually in charge of coordinating the breakfast opened the boxes, and was pleased. Those are scratch! She proclaimed. She really thought I was going to use store bought biscuits and just pass the dish off as homemade. She also marveled at the size of the ham portion, smiling with anticipation.I was delighted that I had clearly exceeded her expectations. As I collected my check, I visited my stepmother's office. She has a great picture of my late father from back when he was still in good health. I clutched that check in my hand, hopefully the first of many, and silently thanked my Daddy for all he'd done and taught me. With tears in my eyes, we left and the first official job by my new venture was over.
Later that night, I was able to unwind by meeting my family, in from Atlanta, at the beach for some crabbing and fishing. Yup, despite the cookie biscuit fiasco earlier, Tuesday has to be honestly one of the best days of my life. I learned that I can do what I set my mind to, and fairly well at that. I just have to calm down a bit. I also learned to shirk my cheap ass ways and have ALL the ham for the next project cut uniformly and revel in the delight of a thick ham sammy should there be leftovers, or just not tempt fate and plan on eating turkey.
Last night, we had a celebratory dinner complete with steak, baked potatoes, and corn. I was so stirred up Tuesday, I had no time to immortalize the very first paid product I'd ever done, but I did take pics of dinner last night because it was so good, and really a celebration of my first solo success.It is featured in the margin. I know the potato does not look like a baker, but I am a skin girl married to Captain Starch so we split the potato for practicality and so he can hog all the chives.