Mise-en-place. It’s French for put in place.  And it’s the Golden Rule for running a restaurant.  It defines when things happen, how they happen, and precisely where.  At 4 am Saturday morning, I turn on the proofing ovens.  At 4:01 I lay the croissants out on trays.  At 4:07 I put water on to boil.  At 4:10 the croissants, sticky buns, and morning buns are moved to the proofing ovens.  At 4:12 boiling water is poured into two mugs and added to the ovens for humidity.  At 4:15 I begin measuring dough into 3.4 ounce rounds for the hamburger buns.  At 4:28 I weigh the flour, yeast, salt and water, add them to the poolish, and begin making the hearth bread.

Mise-en-place dictates Sap Bush Saturdays from the moment I roll out of bed, to the moment we flip off the switch at the end of the night.  It specifies that the fresh greens go on the north west corner of the kitchen Island, and each of the salad toppings is lined up progressively to the south.  That’s Bob’s side.  Eggs, cream and butter are set up on the opposite side of the kitchen, with two dishes for pre-cracking eggs, and two glass measuring cups with two forks for whisking.  Mise-en-place specifies that, upon the preparation of each order, all tools and foods are returned to their stations.

Mise-en-place (mise for short) is how we coax order from chaos.  For us, it is both a practical and a spiritual practice:  A way to enable the kitchen and cafe to run smoothly, a way for our family to rise above the panic and restore calm following the shit shows that inevitably rise up with dropped orders, flooding sinks, blown circuits, customer complaints and backed-up toilets (which have a propensity to happen all at the same time).   For us, the mise doesn’t just run our cafe.  It dictates every day of the week, from the time we allow ourselves in the woods, to the homeschooling hours, the naps,  the weekly meal plan, the errands and the afternoon cafe prep work.

But I’ve lost my mise.   I lost it on Friday the 13th, the morning we announced the cafe would be closed for the foreseeable future.  The yellow pad I use to establish my weekly mise still sits on my desk.  I still attempt to scribble notes and routines on it, but no order has yet to emerge from the chaos.  

On Monday Morning I rise and try again.  The food delivery truck is scheduled to arrive this morning.  This is our first delivery since Covid hit, and it is the only scheduled event we’ve been able to keep on our calendar.  

But I’ve dreaded the truck’s arrival.  Very few restaurant supplies are on it.  It’s mostly groceries.  In an effort to apply our resources toward helping with social distancing, I’ve begun recruiting neighbors’ and customers’ grocery orders.  On the fly, we’ve set up a customer pick-up station that can be accessed at all hours.  Customers have been using the system to acquire their eggs and meat.  Today, the rest of their groceries are on that truck.

But I have no experience as a grocer. 

And I especially have no experience as a grocer in a plague. 

The only thing I know to do is write a mise.  But a mise is an iterative, evolving process. It’s forever repeated, but forever getting tweaked.  The one we use for cafe operations has been in development for years. 

This is all new.  I don’t actually know what the hell I’m doing here.  I’ve reviewed procedures for handling food and packaging.  But I don’t know precisely where to put the bleach spray, where to put the disinfectant wipes, how to move and process the boxes. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage bringing customers through with efficiency and adequate space.  I repeat the rough mise I wrote for myself this morning:  receive the order, disinfect the plastics, leave the cardboard in the garage, pack the orders.  It’s not a lot to go on.

And as the pallets are lowered to the ground, I can’t help but ask myself:

Why the hell did I choose to do this?

“I trust you.”  Corbie’s words echo in my mind as the driver taps his clipboard with his pen, waiting for me to sign off.   

“My wife and I aren’t leaving this mountain,” was what Kenny down the road said.  “I’d rather trust you and make do with whatever I get.”

“We’re not getting our food from anyone else but you and Barbers farm,” was the email that came in from Pat.  “We trust you.”

Shit.

With trust comes the weight of responsibility, and I’m just scared to death I’m going to screw something up.  

But then I realize something else.  This isn’t blind trust.  This is trust built on relationships.  Social distancing may be the order of the day, but these relationships are decades old.  The people who are trusting me have known me since I was a kid riding my bike down to this same building to buy stamps from the post office next door.  These are the people who have been buying chickens since I learned to eviscerate them, who’ve been ordering breakfast at my cafe counter for the past four years.  This is loving trust, built on experience.  I don’t have to execute this perfectly.  I have to execute it safely.

We send the kids up to the farm to do the chores, and Mom and Dad come down to help us.  We throw back a pot of coffee and review our strategy. Then we stand up and jump to work.  Dad mixes up bleach disinfecting solution, Bob and I go out to the garage to start spraying down packages.  Mom waits inside the door for us to hand her wiped down jugs of milk, bottles of heavy cream, apricots and bricks of butter.  

Efficiency isn’t the order of the day.  It takes us six hours to prepare six grocery orders.  But as each customer arrives to retrieve their things after I’ve set them in the detached garage, I have the delicious pleasure of waving my arms from the main building, sending air kisses and hugs, and feeling the same joyous thoughts I feel when I send out a plate of eggs in the cafe:  Today, I get to feed them.

I go home, take a nap (that was on the mise,so it couldn’t be avoided), then sit down at my computer to upload the new products we’re sourcing for people.  By dinner our online self-serve meat store is starting to look like a general store.  Kenny’s grocery order for next week pings in, and I start revising my mise for the next delivery.    

This is no longer about shutting down.  It’s about opening up and learning to do a new type of job.  Maybe it will be permanent.  Maybe it will just be for a few months.  But until we learn to do it well, I’ll give thanks for the people we get to do it for…For their trust, for their forgiveness and tolerance as we muddle forward, for the fact that the bonds of our relationships are far more elastic than the boundaries of social distancing.