I Evaded The Law, Risked My Reputation, And Skirted The Health Department For Four Years Working As A Secret Underground Chef

We were wildly successful—but the chaos, fear, and stress were eventually too much. As was my troubled business partner and all the people around me with drinking problems.

Hello sweaties (a call for perspiration pride - not a typo),

This week at AJPT, we have coming up:

• The winner(s) of our Controversial Book Club, so vote if you haven’t already!

• A very personal story (with personal photos) from a Substack MEGASTAR!

• Advice from a HOLLYWOOD star on your juicy current dilemmas! (Does anyone else besides me read advice columns for their messy questions and skip over the answers?) Note that that might be for the following week, because Corynne and I keep getting busy and failing to send her the questions.

And one assignment I need you to help me make: We are looking for a new AJPT Editor who can write about Beauty and Beauty Products in their own weird way that has nothing to do with what anyone else is saying about them. Lack of experience in this field is a plus. A willingness to try anything is the best. Being a “writer” already is not important, but I will look at suggestions of people who have done this before also and won’t discriminate. I will, however, discriminate if they use the words “tresses” or “mane” or “locks” instead of hair.

Do any of you or any of your friends want this role? Throw out your ideas in the comments or send them to me Jane@anotherJanePrattthing.com. I am more than open to all types of people and even other species for this. All genders, all ages, anyone recently laid off by our stupid government.

And to clarify, our wonderful Sara is not going away. She is just so good at what she does that she is incredibly busy and therefore has time constraints that make her unable to produce the posts she has been doing so thoughtfully here as our one and only ever inaugural AJPT Beauty Editor. Don't worry, we will be offering her every incentive we can to have her continue to contribute, and we will continue to read and support her everywhere else. She's a true beauty and I will miss having her here regularly, too.

Please enjoy today’s piece from Robin, below, whenever you feel like reading it. I'll be in the comments - talking mainly about the most gossipy parts, as usual - so join me there on my base level (or a higher one) any time.

Love,

Jane

PS Climbing near the top of the leaderboard of readers who have pulled in the highest numbers of new subscribers (Amanda still reigns supreme however) making their own AJPT all-access subscriptions free, is one reader named Anonymous. What kind of incredible person actually wants to do good like that and not get credit for it? When I have enough money to give to the wing of an art museum, I'm going to pretend that I'm giving it anonymously, but make sure it leaks out so that everyone knows it's me. Duh. You?

Me, prepping pies in the back of a brewery for our final event.

By Robin Wheeler

"I just want to say that I'm so lucky to be a part of the wizarding world of Robin Wheeler!" my DJ friend Darren hollered into the mic from the other side of the yard.

I was feeling anything but magical that evening in June, 2015, after spending nine hours slinging handmade sausages to customers, often in rain that left me up to my ankles in mud. Exhausted and grim, I surveyed the yard, where the last revelers reveled, reaching a level of high from free beer and a passed hash pen that would create the munchies necessary for me to stay open at least another hour or two.

My business partner, Ryan, the drunkest of the group, had slipped into the house to make out with a guest in the kitchen, leaving me to wrap up the night in the mud on my own.

The scene wasn't that different from my first job—12-hour-days, working alone under the hot Missouri sun, selling corn dogs and sodas at the Missouri State Fair and getting paid under the table.

While I loved cooking from an early age, I never aspired to make it a career. In my late twenties I enrolled in culinary school at a community college so I could learn enough about the business to work as a food writer in the booming food media industry of the early 2000s. Not only did I land a column in a local food monthly, I soon found myself saying yes when readers offered opportunities to teach cooking classes and cater events. It was a quiet little operation, cooking in the tiny galley kitchen in my 1920s bungalow, working under the radar of business licensing and health department checks. When my kid turned two, I slipped out of the career as easily as I slipped into it.

Five years passed. I was a stay-at-home mom, gradually working my way back into part-time freelance food and music writing when my kid started school. I was 40 and, even though people often asked, I had no desire to cook professionally again.

Then I met Ryan.

Ryan, touring a farm and learning about local beef, chicken, and egg production.

He was a musician in my city. I liked his band, and he liked my writing. In January, 2013, we started working together from our favorite coffeehouse and forged a close friendship.. I wrote, and he developed a business plan for an app that would make it easy for gardeners to swap their produce with cooks who wanted to source more food locally. He knew about my culinary background.

"Robin!" He came to me one day in late May, bouncing with excitement. "I have so many beets coming up for you!"

Having told him I was done cooking, I was all set to tell him, exactly and graphically, what he could do with his abundance of beets. But instead, I gave him instructions for making simple refrigerated beet pickles. Beet curry is fantastic. And beet hummus is pretty and delicious.

“I couldn't emotionally deal with my partner getting blackout drunk at the end of most dinners.”

Maybe I'll take some beets and make pickles for you, I said.

"Or we could use them in dishes for an underground dinner," he said.

In 2013, "underground dinners" were the hot thing in big cities. Even in St. Louis we had an excellent chef hosting dinners without a business license or a dedicated space, and he was selling out every event.

Ryan and I devised our first dinner over a long weekday brunch. With no money to invest, I would source as much from his garden as I could. We'd keep it vegan because meat is expensive. He shared a house with a couple of guys, and it had a large backyard with his massive garden.

Jars with my cute business logo, designed by Darren Snow

His next door neighbors were close friends and were on board with rolling back the chain link fence between their properties to make room for more guests at $55 a pop. Instead of renting tables, which would cost money and force us to sell tickets to fewer people, I hit the thrift stores and purchased discarded heirloom quilts. It's not cheap—it's vintage picnic style!

Ryan hired an acoustic trio to play during the dinner, and talked a local brewery into donating a keg to our cause. I made friends with a distillery owner who fixed us with vodka, gin, and clear white whiskey (a.k.a. moonshine).

From the beginning of June until the Saturday between our October birthdays, Ryan grew and harvested, and I cooked, experimented, and preserved. When a portion of his yard was full of daikon radishes with greens up to our knees, we stood in them late one night, googling to find out if the greens were toxic. They weren't, so I turned them into kimchi. Nothing would be wasted. I canned, pickled, smoked, fermented, froze, churned into sorbet—anything to get the abundance to October.

And that's how it started, with two yards filled with people eating beet curry, tomato basil sorbet, and drinking cantaloupe-infused moonshine cocktails while the band played.

Me, halfway through the sausage party, between thunderstorms.

I stayed hidden in Ryan's kitchen, sure I was flubbing every dish, sending out every course late, and going apoplectic when a miscommunication with Ryan caused a lack of—oh, this is rich—beets.

After my tantrum, he went outside and returned with two stalks of kale as tall as him.

"Throw 'em on the smoker and tell everyone they're smoky kale crisps with a mustard dipping sauce," I told him, even though I had no clue if they'd turn crisp or work as kindling to set fire to the whole yard. I was so far in the weeds that I hoped a little for the latter.

Somehow, it all worked. Or so people told me as they passed through the kitchen to the restroom. I didn't venture outside until the dessert course—butternut squash shortcakes with green tomatoes stewed in locally-made sorghum molasses, topped with candied jalapeños.

"You've got to come outside," Ryan said. "The guy from the distillery's passing out shots of his proprietary bourbon for a toast. Come on!" Outside, just past dusk with twinkle lights strung over the two yards and the band strumming, the distiller, clad in bib overalls, walked among the quilts spread over what was left of the garden, pouring from a bottle. I peeked around the corner like I hadn't been invited to the party.

Someone in the crowd of 60 spotted me and yelled, "A toast to the chef!" Glasses were raised and cheers were yelled as Ryan put a shot of the bourbon in my hand. When it was all said and done, I'd put out six courses of food, served buffet-style and on compostable dishes, to sixty people.

The last guests, along with Ryan and I, lingered late into the night, finishing the keg around the fire pit. Ryan and I leaned into each other—I was too exhausted to move, and he was too drunk to stay upright.