On the Back Burner (5 page)

Molly watched Amanda’s eyes go wide with surprise. Whoever was on the other end was doing a lot of talking. Amanda just kept listening and looking more and more amazed. “How many kids?” she asked at one point. “Wow!”

Molly couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Amanda mouthed her reply:
big job!
She listened some more and then finally spoke. “I’m pretty sure we can help you. But I couldn’t take a job this large without consulting with my business partners first!”

Way to go, Manda!
Molly silently cheered. Last month Amanda had agreed to have Dish cater a big Christmas party for one of their teachers, Brenda Barlow, before she had even asked the rest of the Chef Girls. They’d made her promise not to do that again—and she’d remembered. This was a big step for Amanda, who was trying to be less impulsive and selfish, and to think more about others.

“All right,” Amanda continued talking. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Thanks for thinking of Dish.”

“What was that?” Molly wanted to know the moment Amanda hung up the phone. “What was that person saying? You should have seen your face. It was halfway between shock and disbelief.”

Amanda sat down, her eyes sparkling excitedly. “We’ve just been offered a job and it’s huge. I mean
huge!
The woman, Mrs. Kramer, is a friend of Ms. Barlow. She was at the Christmas party. She was so impressed with us that she wants us to make some food for her.”

“What’s so huge about that?” Molly asked. “That’s what we do all the time.”

“No, listen,” Amanda said. “This woman has seven kids!”

“Seven kids!” Molly gasped.

“Mrs. Kramers sister lives in Kansas City and she’s expecting a baby next month. She wants to go be with her sister for five days after the new baby is born, so she’s leaving her seven kids with their father, but he’s not a very good cook.” Amanda giggled. “She told me that one time he tried to make spaghetti for the whole family and forgot that he put the pasta in the boiling water, and he boiled it for almost an hour! She said it was a big pot of mush.”

“Gross!” Molly exclaimed. “I guess that’s where we come in.

“Exactly,” Amanda agreed. “She wants us to cook eight dinners a night for all five nights she’s away.”

“Can we handle that?” Molly wondered.

“I don’t know,” Amanda said. “We’d better have an emergency meeting with everyone to figure out if we can take this job. I said I’d get back to her by tomorrow. Let’s send an e-mail to everyone right now.”

They went to the computer in the den and logged on to the Internet, both of them wiggling into the same chair. Checking their Buddy List, they saw that all the Chef Girls happened to be online. “Excellent!” Amanda said as she began to type.

 

To:
happyface, qtpie490, BrooklynNatasha

From:
mooretimes2

Re:
BIGGEST JOB EVER!!!

Amanda hit SEND and opened up the Chef Girls’ Chat Room window. Peichi was already there.

The next day, Molly, Amanda, and Peichi walked home from school together. They took their usual route along the stone wall that bordered Prospect Park, the huge park that sat at the very top of the sloping hill above Park Terrace.

“How did you do on the social studies test?” Amanda asked Peichi. “I think I did okay. I studied hard for it.”

Peichi sighed. “I meant to study last night after we got off the Internet, but before I logged off I did a search for Chinese New Year and came up with a ton of sites.”

“Did you read every one of them?” Molly asked, laughing.

“Almost,” Peichi admitted.

The twins waved good-bye to Peichi as they turned down Taft Street and headed toward their house. “Do you get the feeling Peichi isn’t doing so well in school all of a sudden?” Amanda asked.

“I know what you mean,” Molly replied. “It’s like she’s so excited about Chinese New Year that she cant think of anything else.”

When the twins got home, Amanda called Mrs. Kramer to let her know that Dish was available for the cooking job.

“Oh, that’s fabulous!” Mrs. Kramer exclaimed. “I’m so relieved! You girls are lifesavers! My sisters baby isn’t due until February twenty-third, so there’s still plenty of time, but I just feel so much better about going away now that you girls are signed up! Now, I just want to talk to you a little bit about the menu.”

“Okay,” said Amanda, grabbing a pen and a piece of paper.

“Three of my kids are very, very picky. Basically, all they’ll eat is pasta! So it would be great if you would make a pasta dish every night.”

“Pasta every night,” Amanda repeated as she wrote it down. “That’s pretty easy.”

“Of course, that’s in addition to the regular dish you’ll be making for everyone else,” Mrs. Kramer continued. “My husband refuses to even touch pasta anymore, he’s so sick of it! But then again, sometimes the other kids decide they want pasta, too, once they see it. And sometimes the pasta kids want the regular meal. So you’d better make regular meals for eight people, and then enough pasta for four people.”

“For every night?” Amanda asked.

“Yes, that way there will be enough flexibility for everyone to pick what they want. And I know the leftovers will be eaten right up!” said Mrs. Kramer quickly. “But they won’t eat pasta with tomato sauce every night. So it needs to be simple, but varied. You know?”