The Great Peach Experiment 1, Erin Downing [books to read romance .TXT] 📗

Herb distracted by doing card tricks while we went past, but it didn’t work. He didn’t miss a thing. Poor Herbie.

Random Q: Have you ever thrown a pie in someone’s face? I’ve had to whip a lot of cream for pies lately, and I keep wondering what it would feel like to pie someone or get pied. I think it would feel kind of good—cold, smushy, and sweet. It’s been hot, and the truck is always like a thousand degrees hotter than the world around it, so ANYTHING cold sounds pretty good to me.

Love,

Lucy

14

  MUSIC FESTIVAL FINDS & FRIENDS

“This is it!” Freddy cheered early Saturday morning, as he whipped cream for the top of the turtle pies. “I can feel it. This is going to be the weekend we turn things around.”

“Our pies do look pretty good,” Lucy said. She stood next to the countertop filled with baked treats—apple crumb pie, Aunt Lucinda’s peach pie, creamy turtle pie, and blueberry lattice pie. “This is the best batch yet.”

Freddy agreed that their pies looked great. He also knew they tasted great. He had taken it upon himself to spoon out a little sample from each bowl of pie filling before it got wrapped up inside its crust that morning. Freddy felt this was a noble gesture and another important contribution to the family business. Someone had to taste the pies before they sold them to customers, and he was as good a candidate for that job as anyone. (Better than Herb, that was for sure. Herb actually cried when their dad threatened to make him eat more pie. Big wimp.)

When all their pies were prepared and tucked into the truck’s coolers and cabinets for safe transport, the Peaches made their way to the giant, dusty vendor lot set up on the outskirts of the Midwest’s Premier Blues Music Festival. As soon as they arrived, Freddy quickly scanned the other food trucks getting ready for a weekend of big business.

From where he stood, Freddy could see signs boasting hot dogs, cotton candy, Thai ice cream (which he would need to investigate further), barbecue, smoothies and salads, gyros, sushi (he wondered how they kept that fresh inside a metal truck on a hot day), Korean barbecue, Philly cheesesteaks, and the “World’s Largest Sandwiches” (Freddy was certain this claim could not be true, since he had seen photos of the World’s Largest Sandwich and it would not fit on any of the trucks in this lot). The air smelled like hot oil and french fries, and giant generators cooked up suffocating heat and unpleasant noises all around them.

Freddy loved everything about it: the people, the heat, the smells, the noise, the dirt, the hustle and bustle. It was exciting!

After helping his family get set up for their day of service and writing out their current menu on the chalkboard, Freddy wandered around getting to know a few of their food truck neighbors. Jim the cheesesteak guy was from Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he had recently become a vegetarian—which Freddy found fascinating for a guy who sold meat shavings on a roll. The Thai ice cream couple were apparently a bestselling vendor at the Minnesota State Fair—Freddy convinced them to do a product swap so he could try their delicious ice cream, which they made by pouring some ice-cream-batter-type stuff on a super-cold surface before scraping it into curly, creamy, frozen tubes. A burger truck—operated by a skinny lady named Aretha, who lived in Madison—sold big, stuffed burgers that made Freddy’s mouth water. The food selection was incredible, unlike anything he had ever seen before.

But nothing—not even all that yummy food—could beat the people-watching. Every time Freddy got a break from working the counter in his family’s truck, he wandered around the festival grounds sketching rough illustrations of some of the people he saw. The beards and mustaches on some of the guys were varied and interesting enough to fill dozens of pages in his sketchbook.

Freddy dared his brother to sneak up behind the very hairy guy they’d nicknamed the Yeti, touch his beard, and sneak away before the fellow noticed him. Freddy could tell Herb was tempted—he never liked to let dares go unanswered—but he took a pass and double-dared Freddy to do the same thing. Freddy got close but backed away at the last second. There were probably things living inside the Yeti’s beard—possibly even a family of mice, and Freddy wasn’t willing to risk it.

With so much to see, and so many hungry people swarming the food truck lot, the day passed quickly. Shortly after three o’clock, Dad declared, “We are sold out!”

“Everything?” Lucy asked, incredulous.

“We even sold three batches of Herb’s Cinnaballs to that guy with an Abe Lincoln beard,” Dad said.

“Victory!” Herb cried, raising his fist high and proud. “Herb’s Cinnaballs for the win!”

“Nice,” Lucy said, a huge smile on her face.

“Nice indeed,” Dad agreed. He pulled his wide-brimmed hat off his head and mopped his brow with an orange bandanna.

Freddy was relieved that they’d finally had a good day of sales. He so badly wanted the Great Peach Experiment to be successful, and he loved seeing his family celebrate together. Tomorrow, he was sure, would be even better. They were on an upswing; he could feel it. Money was rolling in! “For tomorrow, I think we should make double the number of pies we sold today,” he said eagerly. “In just four hours we sold every slice today—and it’s still early. I think we could easily sell twice as many tomorrow. With the right number of pies, we could make some serious moola.”

Dad nodded his agreement. “If we’re going to do that, we’ll have to divide and conquer on some of tonight’s tasks. We need to stock up on supplies and ingredients, clean out the truck, and mix up a whole lot of fresh dough.”

Freddy piped up. “Herb and I can work together to clean the truck and empty the tank.” The gray