Marla's Restaurant Blog

Back to the Georgia Department of Revenue

The Ga Dept of Revenue has a new way of submitting sales tax forms and payments.  The system took me an hour to wade through last week but I made it.  Then I looked and saw an error was showing up for my December Sales Tax and of course penalties and interest had accrued.  I had not received any notice by mail of this problem.    I pulled my paperwork this morning and found that indeed I had made an error, but had overpaid my sales tax by $24.00.  So I am packing up my paperwork and heading there on Monday.  I don't think this can be handled by phone....and so it goes.

Is is possible that since I overpaid my sales tax by $24.00 (an error), I do not receive my vendors compensation that was $104.00 which puts my account short?  Very possible.  We'll find out.

Payback is a b......

My husband started a company a year and a half ago with a partner.  I have sworn up and down since then that I will have nothing to do with their book keeping.  I have stood my ground all this time in a show of disdain for their disregard for what my accountant calls "usual and customary accounting practices". Our dining room table is covered up with paperwork that my incredibly brilliant husband doesn't know what to do with.  He sorts through it, moves it around, stacks it back up and throws away a single piece of paper every two weeks or so.

He and his partner, who lives on the west coast, each have a series of checks from the checkbook and they each write checks.  There is no running total.  There is no balancing of the checkbook each month.  They don't know whether they are coming or going.  It makes me crazy and my husband frustrated and angry.  I have told our mutual accountant to stop contacting me about what documents they need.  She continues to ignore that request. I have bitched to all my friends about how I had to teach myself some accounting skills when I opened Babette's and they should give it a try.  I have tried to hire a bookkeeper for them.  But still my husband moves the piles around and pulls his hair out.

I finally couldn't stand it anymore and yesterday I broke down and agreed to help.  I had to insist that my husband not go up to lake Hartwell and play with his buddies and instead plow through the papers with me.  We tracked down information for nineteen independent contractors.  He got on the phone with his partner and wrote down each check the partner had written.  I recreated his company in my accounting software and entered all the checks, balanced the checkbook, created a P&L. 

I had to keep reminding myself of the times he has cleaned Babette's parking lot, cleaned gutters, mopped up water from broken pipes, answered burglar alarms at 2:00 am and nailed plywood up against broken windows. 

It's done.

Day 3 in Nicaragua

I found the capitalization key on this keyboard.  Yesterday was a tour of the farm's school, worker's kitchen and housing and some more farm animals.  In the afternoon we finally picked coffee.  Between the 14 of us, we picked about a dollar's worth of coffee.  This morning was a three hour hike through the rain forest.  No rain today, but tons last night.  We were afraid our rooms  would flood.  Our rooms are solar heated and with all the rain, we haven't had a warm shower, much less a hot one.  But still kicking.

A weekend in matagalpa, nicaragua

i'm using a spanish keyboard and cannot find the capitalization function, so here goes.  i am visiting a coffee farm called Selva negra in the mountains of nicaragua with my coffee guy.  it's his family's farm.  i knew the product is organic.  i know the farm is sustainable, but that does not touch on the magnitude of the farm's life.  we took a tour of the farm today and witnessed the vegetable gardens, the compost, the wet milling of the coffee, the water being treated by lava rocks from the volcanoes and bacteria from humans and egg shell flour milled here of course which adjusts the acidity in the water, so it can be used on the plants without burning them.  and then there is the methane gas production for cooking and the hydro/electric building.  if the end of the world comes, this is where i am heading.  but i cannot continue, the internet connection is too slow and there's a line for this one computer .

Eating Werthers

Monday 5:30 pm I am sitting in my office at the restaurant, all dressed up in my chef whites, waiting to teach a cooking class to four people who bought the lesson as an auction item at a fund raiser.

I am eating Werthers Caramels and drinking a fresh pot of coffee.  Delicious!

This afternoon I bought new paring knives because I am teaching the "students" how to peel artichokes and you must have a very sharp paring knife.  I have a band-aid on my finger because I cut it while opening the boxes for the knives and placing them on the table.

Today I also bought brand new cutting boards because I kept meaning to buy new boards and I don't want anyone to think I don't always have sparkling cutting boards.

I came by earlier this morning to meet a builder.  I have been trying to get someone out to tighten down the dining room floors since last summer.  I have called 6 people and no one would come.  I have called begging to no avail.  This builder's child is a friend of my daughter so he made time for me and oh yes we went to the same school, (THE University of Virginia) so that helped too.  He brought a framing crew to put some supports under the 92 year old floor joists in the main dining room.

While he was here, I just so happened to mention a leak that I had showed him before.  He instructed  his guys to cut a small hole in the space where the leak was to check it out.  Six years of floor dirt, water, scum and crud came down on top of them.  The floor drain in the kitchen was never secured properly, so water had been seeping between the drain and the sub-floor filling up the space below.  His framers had to tear out the wood that was covering the space and clean out six years of rotted wood, and grease and who knows what from the floor drain.  It was worse than a grease trap smell.  I brought them back some bleach for cleaning.  Before I left, I peered down the side of the floor drain into the parking lot from inside my kitchen.

I left, telling them to shut the back door when they left.  I was over it.  Very over it.  I don't usually leave a crew I don't know on the premises without their boss, but since their boss was from UVA, I knew they had to be OK. 

I returned at 6:00pm and found that the mess had been cleaned up.  The dining room floors had been supported.  The repair on the drain had been made outside and inside.  New wood was in place where the rotten wood had been torn out.  The back door was shut tight and the light was turned off.  Nice touch!!!

Wahoo Wa!

Vacation

OK, I confess, I have slipped away for a vacation. I am writing this blog from under the neon lights of a Samuel Adams beer sign, in the bar of Boss Oysters in Apalachicola, Florida. I'm drinking a frozen concoction with tequila, and mango puree. I have left my husband and TEENAGE daughter at home and have traveled south with a buddy who also left her high maintenance family behind.

We have not been wild and crazy, we are just too old, but we have laughed till we cried and cried till we laughed.

This is my report (Menu Research and Development) of the oysters at Boss.

• On the half shell, raw - dynamite
• Steamed with butter - "Oh my God!" the best
• On the half shell, with asparagus and cheese - OK, didn't like the asparagus, mushy
• Oysters Rockefeller - good, but spinach with stringy
• Japonoise, with wasabi and "roe" - weird, too weird

I am storing up my energy, and brain power for next week when we start a menu change at Babette's for spring.  This menu takes a few weeks to put together each year because the weather warms quickly but the spring produce is slow to catch up.  Have to go, we ordered another round of drinks

Marla's schedule for this week

Must finish the database for the new system.

Must send out recipes that have been requested from guests - ten in all.

Must renew contract with the Concierge book and send out 80 copies of the menu page.  This is a master book that is located at the concierge desk in 70 hotels in Atlanta.

Must check on a Washington Post travel listing that had incorrect information about the restaurant.  I emailed the corrections but haven't seem them change yet.

Must update allergy chart for new menu.

Must develop a new dessert since the peaches have faded.

Must send out donated gift certificates for fundraisers.

Must send photographs to Morgan Chase Publishers which is writing a page about Babette's in an upcoming Atlanta book.

Must contact security company about double billing on the contact on the back door which took three trips to fix.

Must fit in being a wife and mom.