If you guessed “None of the above,” you’re absolutely right!

So we meet at 7a (I’m a little late, as usual) and take a short drive to Mid-West Family Broadcasting’s office in Benton Harbor for breakfast and a marketing meeting until 9:30. It went well, I can’t remember the name of the 3rd guy, but he, Michael C. (very tall), Marketing Rep., and Joe D. (deep voice), VP/GM, were all great, we spent most of the time helping them understand the concept. Joe and Michael want me to email them with a description of each type of cuisine we’ll be serving at Tulips, which will be a cinch for me. Since they’re not in the office this week and I’m quite busy until Sunday night, I’ll get it to them hopefully by Monday.

Then we headed to Bridgeman to look at some cars at a Chevy/Pontiac/Ford dealership where Brandon’s dad works in sales. Tom and Brandon both want trucks, but Tom will be getting a minivan that’s rigged as a panel van (covered windows, cage/screen on the back window). Brandon’s truck will be fitted with a snow plow so he can do the plowing for the Panera/Tulips parking lot. At least during the winter months, the contract will pay for both vehicles, pretty neat deal. Tom knows the minivan is more practical, but feels his masculinity is threatened, so he wanted to get Truck Nuts to keep from feeling emasculated. These accessories are so odd, I will move on quickly without comment.

Next we drove to a restaurant along Red Arrow Highway to look at the grills we’ll be taking to the Round Barn Winery event today and tomorrow. The biggest grill looked perfect, tons of real estate, great grates, huge side table, and you hitch it up and pull it to your destination. Problem, it doesn’t get hot enough because of a multitude of issues: The burners are way too far away from the grates; the flame doesn’t go beyond its little shield; and since the grate is at the very top of the grill and there are no sides to the grill, any amount of wind cools down the grill. Great! So instead of serving hundreds of people grilled shrimp and burgers, but we’ll be serving them raw shrimp and steak tartare! There was a 2nd, much small grill (still bigger than anything I’ve seen in anyone’s backyard, but when you’re serving so many people, that’s not a big comfort) which was better shielded and had awesome heat. I thought the big grill was a waste of time, and Tom said there’s no way the small one could handle the capacity. John first came up with an idea to put sheet pans on top of the burners in the big one and put charcoal. It had 3 (very heavy) removable grates, so he thought we’d remove the middle one so we could keep adding briquettes to the sides from the middle. It was practially brilliant! We change the pans to metal screen we could buy at a hardware store and cut to fit. That seemed much better to me since sheet pans are made from almost pure aluminum, so they’re rather soft, and I was worried about them dealing with 8 hours of high heat without melting through. Plus the ashes would fall through the grating, so it would be self-cleaning.

Then we headed to Kalamazoo for lunch at Chin Chin (I’m going to call it Double Chin, haha ho ho hee hee), but they were closed, which was frustraing. Don’t I know it! Try driving into Chicago and finding your intended restaurant closed without explanation. At least the sign on the door said they’d be closed in this case.

We didn’t exactly starve though. Luckily, Sushiya was close, and we feasted. John let me do the ordering, and Brandon had his first sushi experience. Since we had nothing but shumai, gyoza, and rolls, it was pretty accessible. The place is pretty slick too, fancier in concept, menu, and decor than we want to do with Tulips, but it was instructive. They had a great beer on tap as well, Great Lakes Brewing Company’s IPA, quite delicious.

Finally we headed back to Port 412 to talk more about Tulips and the upcoming 4th of July weekend and to sample some desserts for Port 412, about 16 desserts to be exact, I can’t remember all of them. Most of them were so-so, a couple were pretty good, and there were a couple worth stocking. I think Tom decided on a caramel cheesecake and a quadruple-layer dark chocolate cake. I hung around for a little while longer since the restaurant was serving 95 cent Bell’s Oberon and 50 cent wings, and we continued to eat.

Have I mentioned I love my job?

Tom wants to go fishing, which is much better in my opinion. We may end up going to John’s cabin, which is I know not where yet, but whatever we’re doing, we’re certainly starting out early, 8a on Wednesday. If I’m getting up that early, it better be for fishing, or doing nothing but talking business, but definitely not for golf. I’ll get Brandon a putt-putt putter and some florescent orange balls if he wants to do that so badly. And I hear he does it badly since I’ve been told he loses bets to John on the golf course. Of course John has been all over the world, and my guess is he’s played on more than a few continents, so I wouldn’t mess with him.

John hasn’t really expressed an opinion yet.

I’m not quite sure what I’m doing on Thursday, but it will probably be something at Tulips, hopefully painting or laying tile or something like that.

Friday, I’m prepping for…

Saturday’s event at Round Barn Winery, which is one of our great local wineries (there seem to be a lot of them around here), when Tom and I will be serving food at their Red, Whites & BBQ Festival. Seeing as how it’s 4th of July weekend, it’s going to be nuts. Tom is not only a great and experienced chef, he’s been an enthusiastic mentor and a great guy to hang out with. That I get so much respect from a guy who’s been in the business for so long and done so much is very flattering for me, who often feels like a kid in a candy store.

Sunday (see Saturday, just fewer hours)

Who knows what Monday will bring? Right now, I feel like everyday is a gift. That I get paid to make delicious food is totally awesome.