Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

The evening was to have cut a top contact – over a relaxed business gathering, until the dinner blew up. The entrée - “veal hearts”  was prepared from one of those create-this-recipe-if-you-dare cookbooks. Yikes!

You could say, I chose veal hearts mainly because its full page color caption seemed to shout that any deal was possible soon after my garnished plates hit a well set table. Since my cooking skills are fair-to-middlin' - and the recipe seemed simple enough… it was a sure shoe-in. But here’s what happened.

The directions stated to simply sauté veal cutlets with mildly spiced red sauce for an extended time …. Then stuff the whole mess into a heart shaped papers you cut out…. Finally, fold paper edges together to lock in sauces and drop the veal hearts gently into boiling oil after guests arrive. They were to puff up – look great – and dinner was to be a done deal. Then it happened.  

The part this upper-cut-cookbook left out was how paper hearts were to be cut from porous cooking paper. Ok … it mentioned cooking paper. It just didn’t add that tiny holes came in cooking paper to allow in air. This was actually a key detail once veal hearts  expanded artistically - I might add - in boiling oil. Are you seeing the picture here? 

Due to one small oversight, I cut well shaped hearts from typing paper – without another thought.

My business guests arrived in perfect timing. As a final step to the ultimate dinner meeting, I dropped the hearts filled with veal and sauce into a large pot of boiling oil. Once puffed up from heated oil these hearts were supposedly to resemble those cool helium balloons you buy at party stores. We never got to that stage though ... and what happened next was anything but cool.

While guests sipped wine and munched on miniature crab cakes – I hit the kitchen for the last step in my day long enterprise – and that’s when the veal entree hit back!

Minutes after I dropped 6 typing paper hearts into the pot - they began to explode and blast off from the oil. It was as if I’d packed ammunition into the barrel of a canon – aimed toward my white walls and ceiling - and lit the wick. People began to call polite concerns into the kitchen with each thunderous pop  - and in panic I assured them all was well under control. Not for long....

Within minutes ... the red splotches had shot from every heart in the pot - and had turned the entire kitchen into a war zone.

We went out for dinner … laughed for an hour ...  and replaced what had been a strong business proposal ... with stories of surviving disasters. The deal came later in the week - but that night I learned firsthand, the business benefits of a good laugh together.

Have you survived any funny stories where you work? Tell us what happened and how you made it through….