Page 34 of Christmas at the Ranch
“Sure, but what’s left here”—she nods down at the rest of the food she’s holding on her tray—“is truly special. We just need to get people to be adventurous and try them. Which is where you come in.”
“Well, then, tell us what else you have there,” Bruce says. “Anything without meat?”
“Of course. We’ve got Yellow-Iced Snownuts. Name speaks for itself,” she says, while I hear Bruce murmur something along the lines of “mon dieu.” “The Ring of Fire donut,” she continues. “Obviously, that one’s spicy. A dill pickle fritter, because apple is just boring”—at this, my stomach swoops—“and I now serve donut breakfast sandwiches, too. Well, Iwillserve them if anyone ever orders one. Just need to get more out-of-towners in here and I’m sure it’ll happen. Like you, Emory. I’m sure you’d love to try a dill pickle fritter.” I suddenly wonder if she knows exactly who I am and I’m being punked.
“Where do you get your culinary inspiration from, Carrie?” I ask in an attempt to delay actually having to try the pickle fritter.
“My husband and I went to the Canadian NationalExhibition last fall,” she says. “Where all the great chefs try out their new flavors.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that’s not at all true, that the food at the CNE, a popular fall fair held in downtown Toronto every year, is known for being wild, weird, and not always palatable, the entire point being to come up with unique dishes and strange ingredient combinations—none of which would ever make it onto actual restaurant menus. For very good reason.
I smile and nod instead. “Wow,” I manage.
“Why don’t you get started on what you have here, and I’ll go get some donut breakfast sandwiches going.”
“Good lord, Carrie,” Bruce says, and I can tell he’s trying hard to control his facial expressions, which verge on horrified. “That sounds like it’s going to be a lot of food for just the two of us!”
“I’ll be rolling you out of here, Bruce,” she says over her shoulder.
When she’s gone, he stares at me, wide-eyed.
“Please don’t quit on me on your first day,” he says.
I laugh. “I promise,” I say. “Maybe when she comes back, we should order something simple—coffee?”
His eyes light up. “What a great idea. You’re a genius.”
When Carrie returns, he asks her about coffee.
“Sure, what would you like? Oat-Milk Olive-Oil Macchiato? Pistachio Cortado?”
“Do you still have just…plain coffee?” I ask, and she looks so crestfallen I regret it.
“What’s the point of reviewing just plain coffee?”
“No, absolutely, you’re right, Carrie,” Bruce says. “I have an idea. Bring us one of each of those coffees you mentioned but make them to go. Make everything to go if you don’t mind. Bring us some boxes for all this, please. We have so much material here, I think the best thing for us to do is take all this food back to the newspaper office so we can type glowing adjectivesaswe eat.”
“Oh, wonderful!” she exclaims.
We head to the register to pay, but Carrie won’t hear of it. She’s cramming boxes full of donuts, cookies, sandwiches, looking almost panicked that we might miss out on trying something. She comes around the counter and clutches at Bruce’s arm. “The review’s going to be positive, right?”
“Of course, Carrie,” Bruce says. “Not to worry. With this much to work with, you can bet we’ll have a lot to say—allof it good. I promise.”
I carry the boxes, and Bruce takes a bag. Once we’re out on the snowy street again, down the road a bit from Carrie’s, Bruce turns to me, his eyes still as big as the saucers at the café.
“That was not good,” he says. “It turns out you can’t do restaurant reviews in a small town unless you plan to go to places in secret. I should never have promised a positive review, where’s my journalistic integrity?”
“You did what you had to, Bruce,” I say, patting his shoulder.
He glances over his other shoulder as if he’s afraid Carrie will come out and pursue us, more of her strange baked goods on offer. But no one is following.
“Come on, let’s go,” he says, beginning to move down the sidewalk as quickly as he can with his boot cast. “Let’s get back to the office. I’ll get out myMerriam-Webster Thesaurusand we’ll get creative. We can use words like…‘edible.’ ‘Palatable.’ ‘Rare.’ ”
“Sounds good,” I say, happy that trying to figure out how to describe Carrie’s new baked goods in a favorable light is sure to distract me from my feelings about Tate and Mariella moving in together.
But when we reach the front door of the old Victorian that houses the newspaper office, he turns to me, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“You know, we can’t really think of all the creative adjectives we need to, erm, do this food justice if we don’t have some actual calories in our systems. And there’s a place in town I can guarantee has good food.”
