Three days in and it's just peachy

Yup, I made it. Sorry the news took forever. I should have Pony Express'd it.

I stopped there -- one of the PE stations somewhere along I-80 in Nebraska. My only touristy stop. I had driven for what seemed like a millenium and the nice lady in the place, upon hearing my destination, said, "Well, you're halfway through Nebraska now; you should be there by nightfall."

I thought, at that point, I had about three hours left, total. Instead I had that much more in Nebraska!

Anyway, I arrived safely around 6 p.m., predictably lost cell phone service and gained employment.

So far, it's really nice. The hours are long, but nothing like the Y and nowhere near as bad. (What could be? Seriously!)

There are four people in my position in the kitchen, and there's no chef so it's us and a recipe book. So far I am mostly assisting and washing dishes. Soon -- Thursday, I think -- the one guy who *reall* knows his stuff is leaving and it will be the rest of us. Of those, one guy started last week and the woman has been there all summer. She's had a rough time.

But so far, so good for me. I have made peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies, which I can do, and then today made two desserts: A "fruit pizza"," which is a HUGE sugar cookie slathered with a yogurt-cream cheese-sugar concoction and then decorated with strawberries, blueberries, grapes and raspberries (but not many of them because so many were moldy!) and a peach cobbler.

That one scared me. First of all, I am not even sure what a "cobbler" is. I thought it had something to do with shoes. Second, the recipe is all marked up with scribbles to "try this" and "don't do that." I don't know if I am supposed to follow it or not.

But I winged it, adding some oatmeal in place of flour because it was a suggestion someone penciled in. However, about five minutes before dinner, it was NOT looking good. Very dry and powdery. I figured even with ice cream on top if it, that's not right.

It didn't make me feel any better that more than one person said never mind it, no one had made a decent one yet and it wouldn't be the first flop.

Well. I tried. I did the Southern thing -- melted a ton of butter and dumped it all over it.

And you know what? It worked. It was quite a hit.