Day 23: Orange Gold

I'll freely admit it: I'm not a "natural" when it comes to cooking. When Don took that brave step of hiring me at the Dairy King those many years ago, he had a policy in place that everyone learnt to work both the front and the back of the house.

That policy changed after I took my turn in the kitchen and sliced my thumb open, burnt my arms and face, got hamburgers stuck in the grill, measured either too many or too few fries, forgot ingredients in burgers, locked myself in the freezer, dropped pails of batter, and in general made such a nuisance of myself that the regular kitchen staff begged Don to let me go back to the front.

Not much has changed at the TH. One of the things that escapes my capabilities is grating carrots: do you know that for each of our crazy-good carrot cakes we use six cups of carrots?

Grating carrots requires coordination, even when I do it with the food processor. Coordination is not one of even my hidden talents.

So when Linda said, "Karyn, I have way more carrots from my garden than I need - I'll give them to you," I had mixed feelings. On the one hand I was grateful for home-grown carrots; on the other, I pictured grating all those carrots and mentally tried to calculate what night I could budget for an hour less sleep and still remain on my feet the next day.

The next time my litle Jocelyn came to work, she came bearing gifts - her mother had not only grated the carrots for me, but she had measured them into two-cup bags ready to be frozen; all I have to do is grab three bags and the worst part of my carrot cake preparation is done!

I can see where Jocelyn gets her gift of checking out what needs to be done and where she can be the most helpful. Kindness runs in this family.