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I had heard rumors about the galley staff
throughout the school year and, after our first cruise
barbecue on Sunday, I suspected they were true. That
night, in a letter home, this is (more or less) how I
described it:
“Laura,
serving the tri-tip next to me, is on a tear. (Gosh), the
galley staff is good. Not just good, amazing. They love
everyone. They experience physical pleasure from making
people happy. Standing here next to her while she shoots
the (breeze) with everyone for thirty minutes before taking
a breath, I am truly inspired. Cadets love her. Staff
loves her. I love her.”
It was
with that motivation that I decided to check out what was
happening in the galley this morning, after breakfast.
As it
happens, Chari was pounding six loaves worth of dough into
submission on a steel counter. She told me it is one of her
favorite activities, a good way to relieve aggression. I
was surprised that there was much aggression to be relived,
though I also knew, from a recent night of cards, that she
had a good poker face (we each won a game). The dough in
question was being prepared to become rye bread for lunch.
The soft kind with no seeds.
[Chari pounds Mom's dough]
The
dough in question also belonged to Mom. Someone once said
to me that best way to describe Mom to somebody is by making
a short list of the most important people at the California
Maritime Academy—she’s at the top of the page. Alumni make
a point of stopping by campus to say hi to her. She is
mentioned at almost every meal. After spending a little time
with her, it isn’t hard to see why.
Like all
of the galley staff, Mom also works on campus during the
school year. She is our baker. When I visited this
morning, she was thinking about what to make for tonight’s
dessert. Desserts--there is no singular with Mom. “Well,
what do you like to make the most?” I asked her. I had been
wondering for a while, actually. “I like whatever the kids
like. When you make people happy, you are happy.” She meant
it too. Then her eyes shifted and she eyed me up. “You
look skinny, what do you like?” I am not skinny, but
as this is one of several points not worth arguing with Mom
over, I told her that I had been enjoying her pies: apple,
cherry, peach.
This is
Mom’s twentieth or so cruise. “I like it because you get to
know the kids,” is what I supposed she might say about it.
Her six rye loaves were assembled in a circle on the
stainless steel. “I don’t know why, but they rise better
this way,” she explained. And then: “I like cruise because
you get to know the kids.” Some of them walk by the
desserts throughout the day, she told me, trying to avoid
the desserts, but by dinner they usually give in. Mom pays
particular attention to individual cadets’ favorite desserts
for the purposes of their birthday gift (although, she said,
she must be discrete on this point because tradition also
demands that a discovered birthday be met with a pail of
water from one’s shipmates). In fact, she seemed familiar
with the specifics of each officer’s sweet tooth. “The
captain likes white chocolate and the chief mate is fond of
carrot cake, but mostly just on Sunday.” Right.
[Mom's
pies]
When I
came back in the afternoon, an hour or so before dinner, Mom
was lifting a tray of cookies into her convection oven.
There were seven rows of five and she seemed to have a
system for handling her huge trays. “It’s hard when the sea
is rough,” she said, though she hadn’t been burned in those
choppy first days of the cruise. I looked at the counter
and cooling next to a bag of yeast were peach, cherry, and
apple pies. She had actually made me the pies!
More precisely, she was
preparing two hundred ten cookies, seven pies, and two huge trays of
coffee cake, cherry and peach, in addition to the inevitable
leftovers from yesterday. It looked like some brownies,
biscotti, and more cookies, yet.
[Smiley prepares his birds]
Smiley,
a ten cruise veteran himself, brought out some cheddar
cheese for Mom’s biscuits. Earlier, he was showing off to
me the 160 pounds of turkey (sixteen birds) that he planned
to serve for tonight’s Thanksgiving-style dinner. “That’s
the good stuff,” he assured me, and, oh God, did I believe
him. Something about being in the heat of the galley near
serving time made the smell even more incredible. It was
4:40 and dessert had just finished baking. The mood was
getting intense (“hot stuff coming through,” every few
minutes), and the plan was to cook the biscuits right before
dinner started at five.
Mom
walked over to her Hobart mixer and started the biscuits
right away. Tonight, we would be using “the shortcut
method:”
Mom’s
Cheesy Biscuit Shortcut (serves 281)
20 lbs
Bisquick
5 lbs
grated cheddar cheese (save some to sprinkle in later)
20 cups
water
4
handfuls of garlic powder.
-Place a
black garbage bag over the mixer (it will be filled to capacity)
and stir ingredients until the dough is sticky. Roll
out the dough so that it sits 1-inch high. Get Jimmy
to cut out biscuits with a round cookie cutter, making sure
that he uses flour, but not too much flour. I said not
too much flour, Jimmy.
Put the biscuits close together on a tray (this is the
secret to keeping them fluffy) and—“No talking, Jimmy,
dinner starts in ten minutes”—place them in the oven until
they look done. Should be about ten minutes. Brush with
melted butter and garlic powder.
[Mom
rolls out biscuit dough]
A few
minutes later at the serving area, there were cadets who
were
already on dessert. They were about to start watch
duty and time was short. “Hold on, the biscuits are almost done,” Mom
tells them. She returns with a plate of hot ones and tongs
them to the three cadets. “Thanks Mom.”
[Mom and Sham]
[Nora and Smiley]
[Jimmy, Mom, Mark, Chari]
[Sham, Laura, Wayne]
[Mom's signature garnish is
three cherries: "father, son, and holy spirit"]
-JSF
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