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

if we do win the Ohio Food Truck Festival, what do you think about us splitting the winnings four ways? Even Steven—twenty-five hundred bucks a piece. So we can each decide what we want to do with our share.”

Dad scratched his head and considered the question. “That seems fair.”

“Then we’d better start doing some serious business planning,” Freddy said. “Because we’re gonna win.”

From the Sketchbook of Freddy Peach:

HOW TO SPEND A MILLION DOLLARS

With a million bucks, I would buy a giant yacht and sail around the world with my family and friends. I’d even be okay with a houseboat that’s just anchored somewhere breezy, like Kure Beach, in this amazing green-blue ocean water. Actually, I’d be happy spending my million on exactly THIS, the adventure Dad took us on this week!

25

  OPERATION HERBIE PEACH!

The first morning of the Food Truck Festival dawned clear and perfectly warm. The sky over Delaware, Ohio’s old-fashioned main street was bright blue, the exact color of Herb’s lucky marble (one of 227 marbles in his entire collection). The pink-and-yellow clouds stretching across the sky looked like gentle twists of cotton candy.

Less than an hour into the festival, Herb was already having a blast. He had been given a very important job for the weekend: he was now the official Peach Pie Truck mascot! For the next few days, his job was to wander up and down Delaware’s main street—which looked like the movie set of a small town!—drawing attention to himself and his family’s pie while dressed as a giant peach. Though the inflatable costume was hot, and it made his neck itch, Herb felt proud to be such an important part of the family business.

“You’re cute and you’re friendly,” Freddy had explained when he presented the idea. “Who can say no to an adorable little kid dressed like peach?”

Though he didn’t particularly like being called little, Herb quickly agreed to this plan. He was happy to do anything that would help his family succeed. Lucy did some investigating on Dad’s phone and found a year-round Halloween shop in Columbus that was able to special-order a kid-sized inflatable peach costume.

Herb loved all the attention he got while he was dressed as a peach. Usually, he did not like when adults called him cute. But this was different. His head stuck out of a big, round, bright orange peach—and he knew he looked both silly and, yes, undoubtedly cute. “Well, aren’t you just a peach?” one lady said, pulling out her cell phone to snap a picture of him. “Which truck are you from, sweetie?”

“We make world-famous pies at the Peach Pie Truck!” Herb said, just like Freddy had coached him to do. Then, in a lower voice, he whispered, “Make sure you ask for an order of Herb’s Cinnaballs on the side…. They’re the yummiest.”

Herb pranced up and down the sidewalks, smiling and waving and pointing people in the direction of the Peach Pie Truck. He held up a sign he’d made the night before, announcing their pie flavors (turtle pie was Herb’s personal favorite, because it sounded more like a pet than pie):

Great Aunt Lucinda’s Peach Pie

Apple Crumb Pie

Turtle Pie

World’s Best Key Lime Pie

Key lime was a risky new addition to their menu. None of them had made this type of pie before, but the Peaches decided to include it in their festival menu after they went to a restaurant in Kure Beach whose sign boasted the “World’s Best Key Lime Pie.”

“I doubt that claim is true,” Freddy had scoffed when he saw the sign. “They obviously haven’t tried any of our pies yet.” But after tasting it, each of them agreed that it was, quite possibly, one of the yummiest things any of them had ever eaten. Even Herb, and he had started to actively hate pie. So before leaving North Carolina, the Peach family stopped to have lunch at that restaurant, and Freddy sweet-talked the chef into giving their family a lesson on how to make his “world’s best” pie.

The filling was made using a fairly simple recipe. But even better, the pie called for a graham-cracker crust, which was made by angrily smashing graham crackers into tiny bits, then blending them with butter and pounding the whole mess into the bottom of a pan. This crust was so much easier to make than regular piecrusts, with all that fancy rolling and flopping and blind baking. Finally, Herb had found one type of crust even he could help make!

Heading into the festival, the Peaches had also made a few other changes. In order to have more space to spread out and bake lots of pies, Dad had rented space in something called a commissary kitchen. Herb learned that this was a special type of building that food trucks and catering companies could use when they needed extra space. Apparently, most food trucks used commissary kitchens for food prep—these giant, shared kitchens made cooking a whole lot easier—but Dad had decided to work most of the summer out of their tiny food truck to keep costs low.

But now, for the first time all summer, the Peaches had a big, shiny kitchen to spread out in, and this allowed them to make more pies than Herb had ever seen in his life. In the two days leading up to the festival, they baked up a storm. Herb was finally allowed to help, and Freddy even let him use crust scraps make a few dozen orders of Herb’s Cinnaballs to sell during the festival! By the time the competition started, the Peaches had dozens of gorgeous pies ready to sell.

In addition, Freddy had made a few adjustments to their business plan, hoping to help boost profits. That, Herb knew, meant they would make a lot more money without spending very much more money. They would still charge five dollars for a slice of pie, but customers could now add a scoop of ice cream for an