“It smells amazing in here!” the pizza delivery guy exclaimed yet again. As he did nearly every Thursday night. Or at least every Thursday night that we decided to order pizza for dinner.
Then he cast a quizzical look at the half-dozen cakes already cooling on the dining room table. Likewise in his usual Thursday night ritual fashion.
Truth be told, I always wondered what he was thinking. Whether he erroneously suspected that we ran an undercover bakery out of our home kitchen. (Also why we called Thursday “Cook’s Night Off” when I spent umpteen hours in the kitchen, much of it over a hot stovetop and/or with my head halfway into the cavernous oven. After which I barely managed to crawl upstairs to bed at 2 a.m. And, more often than not, I simultaneously shuddered to think what Thursday night would look like if it was not “Cook’s Night Off!”)
I never did satisfy the pizza delivery guy’s undisguised and gnawing curiosity. But I have elected to enlighten you, dear readers.
The cakes, cinnamon buns, challahs (you name it!) that grace my oven, countertop and table virtually every Thursday night year round, are a fairly well-kept secret. And I have intentionally kept it that way. Until now.
Obviously, some of that fare makes it to our Shabbos table. No smoking gun there.
But the vast majority, which admittedly varies from week to week, later is wrapped, labeled, and deposited by the front door. And it eventually makes it to a drop off point, from where it is picked up and distributed by a renowned chesed organization, Ezrat Achim, to families in our neighborhood who, r’l, have a seriously ill family member.
Hence the secrecy. (And the admission that this expose is written under a never-before-used pseudonym.)
I have been contributing to this wonderful organization for years, starting out as a volunteer, happily donating one attractive Bundt cake every few weeks when my turn on the roster came up. And over time graduating to my current (nearly) anonymous gift of up to seven cakes and challahs per week.
The woman who initially recruited me for this worthwhile project ran it as a round-robin enterprise, politely soliciting one cake per participant every few weeks. If there was a shortfall, she apparently prepared or financed it on her own, blissfully unbeknownst to the rest of us.
Then another friend took over the operation, and computerized it in the form of a Google spreadsheet. She subsequently requested sign-ins on a weekly basis, and the results were there in black and white for all to see.
Oh, and did I mention that she let leak that our small group was responsible for providing between ten and fifteen baked goods each and every week? And parenthetically that there were sometimes only three or four volunteers signed onto the list?
Let’s just say that I soon began covering the shortfall myself, and my group leader promptly stopped sending me the spreadsheets. And I countered by unearthing them anyway and continuing to fill the quota, most often without signing in.
Every week I would email her privately to ask her how many she wanted/needed. And her answer never varied, “Two, thanks.”
However, I deviously waited to see how many were ultimately accounted for and then sent enough to move the bottom line to somewhere between the required ten or fifteen, depending on my other obligations that particular week.
Then she could be counted on to send another email, poking fun at my ostensibly, “Poor math skills.” (I’ll have you know that I averaged 99.75% in math in high school!)
And so it went, week after week after week, for as long as I can remember. (Disclosure: That may arguably not in fact be all that long, considering the accelerated frequency of my middle-age-related senior moments.)
Until, when she was out of the country for a couple of months in the summer and running the ‘business’ in absentia, she opted to give us bein hazmanim off.
Now I will admit that although I felt some pangs of (possibly misplaced) conscience, I also experienced an equally guilty but undeniable sense of relief; I could theoretically get off the treadmill and breathe for a few weeks before stepping back on just in time for the truly hectic pace of the upcoming chagim.
My vacation has been decidedly short-lived however. With His typical ironic sense of humor, HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided that it was about time for my lovely niece to get engaged. Mazel Tov! And likewise that it was the opportune time for me to bake upwards of ten cakes for my wonderful sister’s daughter’s l’chaim celebration! (Which behooves us to call this newly-formed organization Ezrat Achayot!)
The vort is be’H next week, so we’ll see what surprises may be on my schedule for the coming days, considering the by far broader and longer guest list for that event.
And the following week is the first Shabbos of the new z’man, when I traditionally spend hours on end preparing cakes and desserts for the yeshiva’s first Shabbaton.
A quick glance at the calendar confirms what I had already suspected: My official ‘vacation’ is then over, and the cycle unceremoniously begins anew.
At least I don’t have to worry about getting out of practice in the meantime.
And something tells me that the pizza guy scenario will continue staging a weekly déjà vu appearance with no apparent let-up in sight.
