Reuben randomly stumbled upon his late great-grandmother's cookbook for the 1st time, right after he had just got done doing laundry. He was cleaning & organizing the house because his therapist suggested that he clean, organize & declutter his house as a way to relieve his depression symptoms. He was depressed because his cat, Skipper, ran away.
Reuben didn't know that his great-grandmother was an author & had a cookbook published, in addition to an anthology of children's short stories. He's not really a fan of fiction & children's literature, but he really loves the cookbook. He was wondering where she got all those good cooking skills from. He basically unlocked the code for all of her delicious recipes.
When Reuben was 17 years old, & his great-grandmother was still alive, he would always try to ask her for the ingredients & the recipes to her good cooking. She would always put her index finger over her lips & tell him, "Shhhh! It's a secret." & then wink at him immediately after. Playing head games with him. He would beg & beg & beg her to teach him how to cook & show him her secret recipes. The woman had cooking skills like NO OTHER! Because there will NEVER be another!
Reuben's great-grandmother's dishes were always cooked to perfection. He was always blown away at her creativity. His favorite dishes of hers were egg stew, banana nut brownies, pasta gumbo, overnight chocolate almond butter oatmeal, lamb Shepherd's pie, & her signature PPPP smoothie, which consisted of pears, pina colada, plums & pomegranate arils. He also loves her pound cakes, especially the avocado pound cake. He always wanted to try the nopal cactus & honey banana nut bread that the family talked about, but he never got to try it. He FINALLY saw the recipe in the cookbook! He was so happy!
The 1st recipe, that he tried to make, WAS that nopal cactus & honey banana nut bread. He tried as best as he could, to follow the recipe to a T! Hoping to make NO errors. He thought to himself, "Wow! Incredible! Fantabulous! Why didn't great-grandma open up a restaurant? I bet she would outdo Martha Stewart & Rachel Ray on a TV show! I bet she would've been ahead of George Foreman, Yan Can Cook AND Chef Kevin Belton! What if she was better than Leah Chase?" He said, "The best cooks are right in your ancestry & right in your home. Not on TV, in a restaurant, or in a cookbook!"
He was astounded by the fact that his great-grandmother had a secret cookbook. He even tried to reason with himself that it was just another woman with her same name. He was both in shock & in denial. Sure enough, that HAD TO BE HER cookbook that she wrote & published because those are the EXACT SAME recipes that she perfected in her kitchen. He figured that he lied to himself about authors, restaurant owners & TV stars being such mediocre cooks. He thought up the idea to experiment with opening up a food truck business, using his great-grandmother EXACT same cookbook recipes & see where it goes. If it was a success, then he would expand it to a restaurant.
Once he got his license, he named the food truck, "Reuben's Fantabulous Hand-me-downs". Customers were skeptical at first, because of the name. That man sold out within less than 2 hours! He didn't think it would be a success. It actually turned out to be successful enough to become a regional restaurant chain. The chain had the same company name as the food truck. Customers were acting like begging, starving dogs for that food. It was good enough that it should've put Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Chili's, Applebee's, etc. out of business!
People even put up a Change.org petition to shut down all major restaurant chains & make "Reuben's Fantabulous Hand-me-downs" worldwide famous. Reuben didn't want the fame, but he got it. He even created his own signature Reuben sandwich. He had a sandwich selection on the menu that he named after the 12 tribes of Israel. Those were even a hit! The success of his business was so good that his cat, Skipper, even came back around & rejoined the family with Reuben's new wife & kids.
THE END