Fry Another Day

“Zoe! You’re putting whipped cream on them,” Uncle Saul argued. “How sweet do they need to be?”

“For most people, pretty darn sweet.”

He shrugged. I put a little sugar on the berries and then had Ollie gently toss them in the sweet mixture.

“People eat their food too sweet nowadays,” Uncle Saul said. “We shouldn’t help them.”

I laughed at the idea that we were in any way promoting healthy eating. “We serve deep-fried biscuit bowls. I don’t think a little extra sugar is going to matter. Besides, you know when people eat out, they want things they don’t eat at home. Maybe they’re counting calories all week except for this one special meal.”

“Okay. You win. And I know what you mean. Do I eat too much butter when I go out? Yes, ma’am. I eat a lot of cream I wouldn’t eat at home, too. I get your point.”

The cameraman took back his camera as he returned the big spoon to Uncle Saul.

“It’s easy, right?” Uncle Saul asked him.

“Yeah—when someone else puts it all together.”

I wiped my sweaty forehead with a cool, damp towel. It wasn’t bad enough that the kitchen was hot. I was also wearing a huge, heavy hat.

Chef Art was smiling at me from the open doorway. I didn’t take the hat off.

“It’s seven thirty,” I told my team. “Time to start the biscuits.”

By eight A.M., we had two trays of biscuit bowls ready to go out the door. We decided to send Ollie out with Delia again. That combination had worked well for us. “Why am I going?” Ollie asked.

“Because you look hot, and this way you’ll know when Delia starts ru

He glanced over me in a cursory kind of way. “You look hot, too, Zoe. You go.”

“She needs to be here making biscuits.” Uncle Saul’s eyes were on the camera that was recording our disagreement.

“But Delia could make biscuits,” Ollie reminded him. “Zoe taught her how. Or I could make biscuits. Delia and Zoe could go out together.”

“No.” I finished the disagreement. “You and Delia are going. Get out of here.”

Ollie wasn’t happy with that verdict. “Fine. I’ll go out looking like a big freak in a red bikini for everyone to see on national television.”

Delia lightly slapped his hard butt. “Hey, I’m going out there, too. Believe me, you’ll get as many people interested in biscuit bowls with that body as I will.”

“We’ll probably sell quite a few biscuit bowls as they walk through the crowd,” I said after they were gone.

Uncle Saul nodded. “Like we did in Charlotte. We need to get more biscuits ready.”

While I made new batches of biscuits and put them in the little oven, Uncle Saul fried them up into biscuit bowls. We made two trays—one sweet and one savory—for Ollie to pick up on his return trip. The hard part was staying ahead. It was very different than selling my biscuit bowls back home.

Ollie was back even sooner than we’d expected. “That crowd is like a bunch of wolves. We barely got into it before we were selling left and right.” He picked up the new trays, dropped off the empties, and was gone again.

“At this rate, we’ll reach that two-hundred mark before nine.” Uncle Saul was ladling his thick gumbo into biscuit bowls.

“So will everyone else,” I said. “If we want to beat Our Daily Bread, we better sell until the sales stop or we run out of food.”

We barely had the two new trays finished when Ollie came back.

“Is the Our Daily Bread team out?” Uncle Saul asked him.

“Oh, they’re out. All of them, I think. They had to get that bread ready mighty darn early.”

“All of them?” I asked him.

“No.” Ollie picked up the new trays. “Reverend Jablonski is standing in one place while the others are around him singing hymns. It’s like watching people throw money into a hat for a guitarist on the street. But they aren’t wearing bikinis. Does that mean their sales don’t count?”

“I don’t know. It will definitely take away from their standing. We might finally beat them.”

“Miguel,” I called out, knowing he was standing by the open door. “Will you go take a look and see what everyone’s doing?”

“Sure.”

I wasn’t sure why I cared. All I should focus on was getting our food to Delia. I suppose I was curious.

“Our Daily Bread is selling bagels for a quarter,” Miguel said when he returned. “I guess they’re going for bulk sales.”

“That’s a lot of bagels.” Uncle Saul whistled but didn’t look up from ladling gumbo.

“What about everyone else?”

“Shut Up and Eat seems to be doing okay with Bobbie’s daughter out there. Dante is doing some kind of street dancing and selling pot stickers stuck in a clay holder of some kind. Grinch’s is selling cupcakes with the Birmingham logo on them.” Miguel gri

“Is everyone else in bikinis?” Uncle Saul wondered.

“Only Ollie and Delia, and Bobbie and her daughter,” Miguel reported.

I smiled at that. “Thanks for spying. I guess we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.”

“I think it’s working,” Uncle Saul said. “How close are we to the two-hundred mark?”

“Four trays. We could beat Our Daily Bread. I know it’s a good crowd out there, but selling bagels for a quarter each is going to take a while.”

Chef Art called a halt to the cameraman being inside the Biscuit Bowl, thank goodness.

“Good luck,” the cameraman called out as he was leaving.

“You all are on track to win this one, Zoe,” Chef Art said. “Let’s do it.”

“I’m glad they’re gone.” Uncle Saul took a tray of biscuits out of the oven. “And this bikini is uncomfortable. How do women wear them?”

I laughed. “You should try high heels.”

“No, thanks.”

Ollie came back again in less than fifteen minutes. It was light outside now, and he said the crowds were thi

He was gone before Uncle Saul, Miguel, and I burst out laughing.

“They might have to move out of the crowd and hit the downtown traffic,” I said. “I was hoping we could sell them all right away.”

“We’ll do better than Our Daily Bread,” Uncle Saul said.

“I hope so. They’re the ones to beat.”

Ollie came back for the last two trays that made our two hundred dollars in sales. “Can we stop now?”

“Keep going until we run out of food,” I said. “I’ll go report that we made our goal.”

“We’re not going to go too much further,” Uncle Saul remarked. “I’ve only got enough gumbo for a few more bowls, and there’s only about that much left in berries and whipped cream.”

“Okay. Let’s do what we’ve got.” I took the last tray of biscuits out of the little oven and set them aside. “I’m going over to make sure they know that we won the challenge.”

Ollie came back for the last tray as I was leaving. I’d covered my bikini again and removed my chef’s hat. I walked quickly from the food truck to the cool-down tent, holding the money close to me.

But I was too late. Sales had been very good for everyone. Shut Up and Eat had finished at the same time as Stick It Here. One of the assistants marked down when I got there. Grinch’s Ganache came in after me.

I hoped the “tag” would help us out, and the fact that we’d worn our bikinis. I went back to the Biscuit Bowl to find out what the decision would be.

I explained to everyone about where we were with the challenge. Ollie threw down his chef’s hat and stepped on it before stalking off. Delia went after him.

Uncle Saul and I started cleaning up. It was too hot to wear the cover-up with the bikini. I took it off and worked.

“Zoe, you look mighty fine in that bikini.” Uncle Saul nodded to Miguel. “Don’t she?”