The name of her company was Heirloom Recipes. She researched remembered foods and sought to recreate them for a fee.
For a decade now a mustard had eluded her. A retired farmer remembered his uncle's mustard and she tried every combination she could think of but he was never satisfied. For one thing he changed the description each time he saw her. The mustard went from sweet to salty, from mild to hot from bitter to bland. She didn't really mind. He paid her anyway.
A school principal dreamed of a pie served at a Grange in Idaho in his childhood. A berry pie with a soft, tender crust. She put blackberries in a pie shell and topped it with yellow cake batter. Perfect, he said, how did you know? Some things are easy.
A man who remembered a salt-cooked whole goat called her. Wrapped in leaves and cooked in the ground, he said. That will cost you, and I cannot guarantee, she answered.
She cooked the goat in a hole in the ground deep in the National Forest. Stuffed with prunes and whole lemons, coated in rock salt and wrapped in a fortune's worth of grape leaves and four wet gunny sacks. No aluminum foil allowed.
The customer had brought his friends to sample the goat. Some kind of arrack was being passed around. When she dug up the goat she could see it was horrible. It smelled bad looked bad and tasted bad. They ate with their fingers from a communal plate. Polite comments were made. Her customer did not look at her did not speak to her. She thought he had been shamed in front of all his friends. Fortunately he had paid up front.
She thought the last rear light had receded. She sat by the warmth of the camp fire and drank from a forgotten bottle. But one car remained. The female relatives of the unhappy customer stepped out of the car and approached her. An old woman smiled at her and nodded her head. She helped herself to goat and arrack. The customer's sister spoke English. She scraped the tender meat onto a plate.
``My mother says this goat is perfect. This is exactly as she remembers her mother cooking it in the old country. This is just as it tasted. Let us enjoy.''
They piled her plate with meat and prune and lemon and offered her arrack in a paper cup. It really didn't taste that bad, she thought, once you got used to it.