I am a real estate agent who caters to clients, as they say, “in entertainment.” This means that I move fussy, busy people from Hollywood to New York, and that my clients expect, even demand, me to be a cross between Ari Gold and Betty Crocker. It also means that I’m providing ancillary services on a ludicrously high level: I have FedExed leases to the set of an Oliver Stone movie, hung drapes for a client who was on the other coast doing Leno, and made homemade chicken soup for a panicked Broadway star with the sniffles.
I found the soup particularly challenging. Chocolate chip cookies are one of my standards, quick and easy enough to make while conducting a bidding war via bluetooth. Soup, on the other hand, takes hours, and is practically guaranteed to taste like dishwater if you don’t layer the flavors in. Adding some canned chicken broth speeds the process, but go too far, and you’re apt to erase the “homemade” essence that you’ve spent hours crafting.