Often when I wake on a summer morning my first thought is of how much I still love my beautiful home and my very short commute to work. It’s 2009 and we’ve been running Ariel’s for over 12 years now. Richard and I are frequently exhausted, but we would not trade our life for anyone’s. I go down one flight of stairs from our bedrooms to the restaurant and make very good dark roast coffee in our commercial coffee maker. It takes five minutes, which is about as long as I can wait for coffee in the morning. I take a cup of coffee, check to see that my 5 AM fish delivery was put on ice in the kitchen sink, then head outside to circle the property and see what’s blooming in the gardens today.

I have a black thumb, to say the least, so we’ve been lucky to have two wonderfully talented women to take care of the perennials and plant new annuals each spring and summer. We’ve never been short of table flowers from May through early October, even in Vermont’s uncertain climate. This year, for the first time, Richard and I have been caring for the garden ourselves, hoping to save money. The recession has been tough for everyone, and we’ve had to make a few compromises. We’re willing to work even harder and do more of the detail work ourselves, as long as we can keep up the quality that we are known for. Also, for the first time, we’ve replaced the annual flowers with vegetables. A victory garden for hard economic times. It’s been fun so far, but it’s early in the season, so we’ll see how it goes! We’ve always had plenty of herbs and edible flowers: nasturtiums and tangerine marigolds add color to appetizers; sage flowers and lemon thyme blossoms accompany entrees; lavender, lemon balm, and mint go into and onto the desserts.

Next I check reservations for that evening. A good day is when there are plenty of reservations but not enough to overwhelm me, and some of our favorite customers are coming in. Tonight looks great. Layton has the evening’s first reservation. A Vermont Symphony clarinetist, he comes every week, driving about an hour each way, and enjoys dining alone. When I have time I do a chef’s tasting for him and Richard matches wines. I’ll try to work out a good one for him tonight. He loves pork belly, crab, lobster, foie gras, lamb, chocolate. This will be fun.

Also on the books tonight – the Merrels. One of our favorite couples; they’ve supported us since before we opened the About Thyme Cafe. They were our first investors in the cafe, other than my parents. When the bank hesitated to give us a mortgage on this house, they cosigned for us. We’ve since paid them back, refinanced and released them as cosigners, but we know we could not have done this without them. They’re good friends and loyal customers. Oh, and yes, we’ve got the Jacksons coming in tonight! Mr. and Mrs. Jackson have been coming in since we opened, but I almost lost them the first time he called.

I answered the phone and a gentle, cultured voice asked, “may I have a reservation for two at 7:15 tomorrow night?”

I made the mistake of saying “I’m afraid we’re booked at 7:15 but we can accommodate you at 7:00 or 7:30”.

“Thank you” he replied, “but we’ll try again another day”. Before I could say a word he hung up. I was astonished. And, I admit, a bit annoyed.

He did call back and booked for 7:15 another night. Richard and I have since grown to love the Jacksons. They are creatures of habit, and it’s very restful knowing exactly what makes a guest happy and being able to give it to them.

When they have a reservation, they enter the restaurant between 7:17 and 7:19 PM. They are seated at one of their two favorite tables (no flowers; he’s allergic). Richard gives them menus, a basket of bread, and a bottle of red wine. They sit holding hands, talking quietly, sharing the bread and wine until 7:45, when they like their order to be taken.

In the early days they would each have a salad, then an entree -usually the same one, almost always chicken or lamb- then they would share a chocolate dessert. As we have all gotten older, the dessert has fallen by the wayside. Mr. Jackson said his doctor told him that either the wine or the dessert had to go, and it wasn’t even a contest!

After a while, they began to order different entrees. She would often have fish; he would occasionally have duck if it was on the menu. I like to think that they began to trust my cooking, and sometimes they’d take a risk on something new. But the timing never varies. At first they would come twice a week. Eventually it went down to once a week. If they don’t call, we begin to worry about them. When we close during the week in the wintertime, we fear that they’re not eating well, not getting out enough. But they always come back, and they never change. A little more fragile, perhaps, but just as sharp and funny as ever.

By this time it’s after 8AM and Noah, our eight-year-old, is up and needs breakfast. Noah is a genuine restaurant child. He was born in December of 2000, when his sister Ariel was seven. We had been running Ariel’s and living upstairs for four years. When Ariel was born, I worked up to the day my water broke, but with Noah I was in my mid-forties, so I allowed myself to stop working in my eighth month. At the end of our busy season, in late October, we closed the restaurant temporarily so I could rest, Noah was born on December 14. We reopened on January 5. That was the only year I can remember not working on New Year’s Eve.

From the age of three weeks Noah was always in the restaurant. He slept in a portable crib in the foyer during service until he was about four months old. Then he wanted to be part of the action. He was bright and curious from the start. Richard would carry him in a sling while waiting on customers. I had him in a backpack while doing prep in the kitchen. This may be why he’s always been so verbal and outgoing. Ariel, on the other hand, was less interested in the comings and goings of strangers in the restaurant. She often sat on the couch in the waiting area reading, or stayed upstairs playing video games or creating fantasy board games. She has always been a voracious reader, very creative, and a little bit dreamy. When we felt that she was ready, she would babysit Noah upstairs during restaurant service.

Noah started to help out in the restaurant as soon as we allowed him to. At four, he was greeting people, showing them to their seats, and handing them menus. At five, he would take orders, drawing pictures of food on a waiter’s pad since he couldn’t yet read or write. He always got the orders right, and the guests adored their tiny waiter.

With the kids around all the time, and our dog Bailey and cat Everett constantly getting into the dining room despite our best efforts to keep them out, we have become more and more like a small restaurant in the European countryside. Ariel’s Restaurant is not just our job; it’s our lifestyle, and that of our children as well. Now that Ariel is a teenager, she has begun to realize the benefits of being a restaurant kid. She doesn’t enjoy waiting on tables as her brother does, but she doesn’t mind doing dishes. She makes money, has no transportation problems, and I think she’s beginning to feel a part of the restaurant for the first time.

After Noah has had breakfast and we’ve gone over the day’s plans for him (visit a friend, play rehearsal, day camp, lying around?), I look at my menu for tonight and check on my prep. I usually make several lists throughout the day. We’re a twenty-minute drive from the nearest shopping, so if we need product, I make a list for the supermarket, the co-op, the farm stand. I make an order list to call in for the seafood delivery the next day. Next up is a list of meat, produce, and dairy we need, along with the local farmers to call. I’ll contact them this afternoon to place my orders. My next list is a list of all of today’s prep. Depending on how busy we were the night before and how many reservations we have for tonight, I might have anywhere from four to nine hours of prep to do before we open to the public. I don’t mind the prep; it’s actually the most satisfying thing I do professionally. Prep is where the real cooking happens: the sauces, meat and fish butchering and seasoning, starches, vegetable accompaniments. I’m also one of the rare breed of chefs who loves making breads, desserts, and pastries as well as savory items. Prep is a quiet time devoted to doing what I love. I tune the radio to VPR and listen all day, from Morning Edition to All Things Considered, only turning it off when we start our service at 5:30. I’m fast and organized, but my prep list still has the power to make me nervous. I can’t say how many times I’ve told Richard, “There’s no way I can finish this,” but I always do. A busy prep day may look like this:

soda bread, sourdough bread, balsamic vinaigrette, Caesar dressing, grate cheese, croutons, goat cheese soufflés, crab cakes, grapefruit supremes, soup, break down 6 ducks: remove breasts, confit legs, render fat, roast bones for stock, cut and trim 8 lamb racks, blue cheese scalloped potatoes, potato puree, gnocchi, mushroom sauce, green peppercorn sauce, asparagus, clean and stem spinach, risotto base, cut halibut filet, blanch and shell 8 lobsters, rhubarb strawberry crisp, lemon curd, almond tuiles, buttermilk sorbet, espresso ice cream, herb garnishes, cheese tuiles.

By nine AM, I need to get going. I start with bread dough, and if I’m making ice cream, I need to mix it and put it in the fridge to chill. I like to make desserts as early as possible, since they take more concentration and I tend to work best early in the day. I push through the prep until I can’t think anymore and need a break. If it’s a crazy hot day, I try to make time to jump in the lake and swim a lap or two. If it’s over 85 degrees, I know I have to get in the water, or I won’t make it through service without getting heat sick. By three in the afternoon, I’m pushing intravenous iced coffee, which usually works to get me through the mid-afternoon energy slump. At four o’clock, I’d better be winding down prep, as I have to set up the kitchen for service and think about “family meal”.

Ever since we started Ariel’s, we’ve insisted that the entire staff sit down and eat a meal together. In the early days, we’d usually wait until after service so we could have a nice dinner and a glass of wine. As I’ve gotten older, all I want to do after service is go upstairs, put my feet up and watch Iron Chef America or some other mindless TV. I’ve started making sure that family meal is ready at five p.m. It’s often difficult to stop everything and sit down with Richard and the rest of the staff but it’s very important. This is the time that I explain any new menu items, the provenance of the fish, meat and produce on the menu, the ingredients in the more complicated sauces. We also talk about possible allergens, special dietary needs of the night’s guests, regulars who may be coming in for dinner, and which of their quirks we’ll need to accommodate.

After family meal, we start service. Most nights our first guests are seated at 5:30; our last arrive by 8:00. We’re not New York City or Boston; no one wants to come out to the middle of nowhere at 9:30 to dine, thank goodness. The four hours or so of dinner service are usually a blur of activity. Time goes quickly, and if it’s a good night, it feels like a dance, smooth and easy until everyone is served and the last dessert has left the kitchen. A good night is one without major burns, loss of blood or fingertips, wrenched backs. A good night has a rhythm like music, sometimes a slow ballad, sometimes heavy-duty rock and roll. If I need to pick up my pace, I often hum to myself, usually Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik. It seems to have the rhythm I need, and I’ve been humming that same piece for decades.

Meanwhile, Richard is greeting our guests, seating them, and taking cocktail orders from the waitstaff. He goes out to the tables to recommend wines from a list that he has painstakingly put together to go with my food, and which he updates constantly. Richard is the secret weapon of Ariel’s. People often come for the food, but they come back for Richard’s warm attention, carefully crafted cocktails, and brilliant wine pairings.

I don’t generally like to come out of the kitchen to talk to the customers during service; it interrupts the flow. If there’s a regular or a friend in the dining room, I try to come out to chat after service. There’s no door to the kitchen, so anyone who wants to stop by to say hello can do so. I usually enjoy seeing people, especially if they tell me that I’ve made them happy. I can cook and talk at the same time, unless I’m working on five tables at once. At the end of the night, I slog through the kitchen cleanup (even after 30 years I haven’t figured out how to get out of this chore) and drag my weary butt upstairs. On a good night, I’m still buzzing with positive energy and dropping with exhaustion in equal measure. After all this time, I’m still looking forward to doing it all again tomorrow.