I Wish I Had a Me

In college I started a catering business.  It happened kind of by accident.  The summer I lived in Carlisle I worked in the catering office of the college.  Since the Washington Redskins had their summer training camp at Dickinson all their meals were considered special and ran through my office.  Then a professor’s wife who was my friend asked if I could help her cater another Professors daughter’s wedding and do all the cooking with her.  By in the early eighties there were just not a lot of good food choices in Central Pennsylvania and the bride was not interested in having steamship round of beef.

Once I got out of college and had a real job in Washington DC I thought I might as well keep catering since it was easy money.  Feeding people and throwing parties was always one of my favorite activities.  Since it was my side business I did not have a commercial kitchen or any major overhead, thus my prices were dramatically lower than the big time Washington caterers.

Over time I developed a nice group of clients who were mainly middle-aged women who loved to have parties but did not want to do all the work themselves, or quite frankly none of the work themselves.  Typically I would get a call from one of them asking if I could do their party, they might have a theme, they would give me the number of people of coming and the date then really leave everything else up to me.

I would get to decide on the menu and just show up with the food, the drinks, the staff and the equipment.  My client would be a lady of leisure the day of her party and get to act more of a guest.  At the end of the evening, we would clean up and haul everything out and her house would look as if no one had been there, except for the leftover food that would fill her refrigerator.  Before I left she would write me a check and we were done.

I am now the age of those women.  I look back on how easy it was for my clients.  I would kill to have a young, great caterer who was cheep as dirt, who brought doctors and lawyers as wait staff, who I trusted to take care of everything, make interesting and yummy food and leave the house spotless.

Of course I know wonderful caterers now, but they are real businesses.  Having them do my parties is easy, but I pay for it.  I also still like to cook some things myself and that does not always suit caterers.  Sometimes I would just like some experienced help.   When I was a kid I would work my parent’s friend’s parties serving cheese puffs or rumaki.  Kids don’t seem to do these jobs now.  Hell I can remember teenage boys bartending at our house, too young to drink legally, but certainly capable of pouring a Scotch and soda.  I guess now you might get arrested for letting children bartend.  If only I could find a younger me so I could be the older me that is tired of doing all the work.