Old Pastry Chefs Never Die, They Just Make Less Dough

Recession blues..........

Remember this post?

Well, after 8 months, the cafe is closing, along with the original one in Poulsbo. Part of it has to do with the recession, and I'm sure there's other reasons too. One being that my kick-ass co-worker, Jewlz, finally found a great job with an easier commute and more money. If anyone knows that it's hard to replace Jewlz, it's me. Her leaving had a lot to do with the decision to close the cafes. Around here in these parts, it's hard to find people like Jewlz and me.

So that's the end of the Village Baker Cafes, but there will still be wholesale bread and danishes coming out of the bakery. And the first of the year, they will be selling the bread and danishes right out of the bakery Tuesdays thru Saturdays. So they are scaling down by closing the cafes but not the bakery. Some of my pals get to keep their jobs, in fact most of them. The ones that are hitting the unemployment line are the ones that manned the cafe counters. It's all very sad to me, since I was involved with the cafe openings from the very beginning.

Since this is a tourist town, recessions really hit us hard. The rumor is that a lot of businesses here won't make it through the winter with the gloomy holiday season forecast.

Here in the Welch household, we are "canceling" Christmas. No gifts this year. We'll spend family time together and have a nice dinner, but that's it. No presents, no stockings, none of it. Our non-spending won't help the economy, but the economy isn't helping us either. Times are really tight for us right now. All I want for Christmas this year is to be less in debt. Besides the last thing I need, or any of us need is more "stuff". I don't have any room for any more stuff anyway. You should see my office.......

So I have this whole section of my garage full of pastry equipment. Should I keep it? Will I get back into pastry again, or what? I have no idea what will happen in the future; I don't know how long I'll be taking care of my mom.....it could be a couple of years or maybe 10-15.........I wish I had a crystal eclair to tell me.

For now I'll just take things as they come and try not to worry about what I can't control.

If you live in Seattle, you lucky people get to taste Jewlz talents at The Famous Northwest Catering Co.

They are lucky to have her! Mom and I will be going there for lunch soon, since they have a little cafe too.
She will kick ass as usual!! Not Mom, I mean Jewlz!

Speaking of kicking ass, someone needs to kick mine. I'm not real motivated lately to do any extra projects. So far I'm just keeping up with the status quo. I feel like I need to do more..........

Kick_butt

I'm sinking in guilt and feeling like I'm in over my head. Where to start? If I pay Calvin that dollar, I bet he'll tell me.

And here we are.............

After all that filming Mom and I did for the commercial, here is the very few seconds of us that didn't make it to the cutting room floor!

CAREFORCE

And......we're rolling.........

Well, Mom and I just got done filming our big TV debut this week. Us, on TV? Yes, amazingly. Turns out that the caregiving company that helped my mom out when she was really sick and whom I use for respite care when I can't make it over there, thought that we would be good candidates for a commercial they are producing for TV. No, we're not actors, we're actual CareForce clients!

It was an an exciting day for Mom, having all the crew come in; sound guy, lighting guy, makeup girl, producer, the people from CareForce and me. It took all day for the filming to happen; most of the time was spent moving furniture around, adjusting the lighting, lining up the shots, putting makeup on our faces, etc. The actual time spent taping was small compared to just getting everything good to go. Mom was a star.......her interview went well and she had fun watching the tech guys do their thing. They interviewed me too, but knowing my luck, I'll be on the cutting room floor.
Which is fine, actually. I see why celebrities have their own trailers on movie sets. Most of the time is spent doing other stuff than actually acting. We didn't get our own trailer, but we did get some free snacks and water. Mom and I will have to work on our CV to actually get a trailer.

Mommakeup

This is mom getting her makeup done. They made her look really nice for the shoot. They didn't do too much makeup for me since I had already done mine myself. The makeup lady just "de-shined" me so my face wouldn't glare into the camera. Oily skin? Um, yeah.

Pardon the crummy photos......there were lots of bright lights going on and all I had was my iPhone. Yeah, my husband is a video and photography pro, but none of his talent has rubbed off on me; much like my ability to make cakes hasn't rubbed off on him. Yes, I know, with our partnership, why aren't we making our own cake show? There's enough cake shows on TV now, doncha think? And they all piss me off. If you're a cake pro, then you know exactly what I'm talkin' 'bout, Willis.

Equipphoto

Here's some of the equipment and stuff that clogged up our house that day.

Mominterview

Here's mom being interviewed. She did such a good job and had a lot of fun. She still talks about it. Next, will be our debut on TV. When that happens I have no idea yet.....but they'll let us know......perhaps I can even post it on YouTube.

It was fun being "starlets" for the day and very interesting to see what goes on in a video production. Oh yeah, we'll be on in HD, too! I thank my lucky stars I didn't have a giant zit that day. An HD zit, that would be horrifying. Oh, I know, they get rid of all the yukky stuff in post production, that much I know from being married to a video guy. Hope they make me thinner in post too.

I figure when the commercials are aired, the total time on air will give Mom her 15 minutes of fame because she hasn't had it yet as far as I know. Glad to know I could help arrange that.

Baking? Yeah, I've actually been baking quite a bit on weekends to feed the fam. Problem is, the stuff I make doesn't last a day. Pan of brownies I made on Friday? Gone? Pear crisp I made yesterday? Gone. Two big loaves of bread I made, nearly gone. Tuna casserole I made for dinner tonight? I think that one will last awhile.

It's so nice not to bake professionally anymore, for the time being. Just baking "home size" items satisfies my baking jones for now. But my family eats commercially it seems. I can't keep up with 'em!

And they blame me for making them "fat". Hey, just doin' my job as nurturer/gatherer!

Cakes for the Memories

I was digging around in my computer files today and found a picture of this cake....it's one of the ones I'm most proud of:

Monopic

I don't know, it's one of those cakes that turned out better than I thought it would. At first the client wanted me to do a complete Monopoly board, but I said that for a quarter sheet cake, that wouldn't work. I said I would do an "abstract" of a Monopoly board. She didn't get what I meant but I assured her that she would like it. She did.

I have this unusual knack for being able to do things my way and making my clients agree to it. The only thing I'm good at selling is my own skill. And speaking of skill, I ran across this:

The Recipe for Skill

• 10 lb passion for your craft
• 6 lb drive to help you through the rough times
• 9 lbs pride in oneself and the team
• 7 lbs vision to look beyond normalcy (or insanity!)
• 2 lbs intelligence

Yield: A life full of joy and satisfaction.
This recipe is for volume skill; for a la carte, reduce ingredients to 70%

How is my mom?

Some ask. She's doing great. I continue to give her care every week and spend weekends here in lovely Port Townsend. The only thing that's a drag right now is the summer peak ferry traffic. So far I've been able to travel during the off-peak travel times, but it's only a matter of when I get stuck in a 3 hour line. I dread it. Stupid tourists. They are inconveniencing me. I wish there is some way we could get their money but make them stay home....I want to be able to park downtown again!

In the meantime, I'm in training for my next job:

mynextjob

If that guy can do it, well so can I.

The Three Bee-Yotches Bakery

3bitches

What do these women have in common? We're all pastry chefs, and now we're all married. Welcome to the club Marla!
That's me on the left, Marla, the bride, in the center, and the INFAMOUS Jewlz on the right. As women, we kick ass, but as pastry chefs we kick SERIOUS ass. We should open our own bakery. No we shouldn't. We're not that stupid; we like our life outside of baking as well or better than baking itself. WE HAVE LIVES and we intend to keep it that way. But we can't help fantasizing about owning our own place and having it be the rocking-est bakery ever.

Of course, it shall be called "Three Bitches Bakery". Our motto: "If you don't like it, go f*ck yourself". We don't take complaints, not that anyone would complain anyway, except vegans, but we'd kick their asses out the door before they could say "soy". We'd sell t-shirts:

Sconed

We'd have a clock on the wall:

It'stime

We'd probably offend a lot of people, but we wouldn't care because our stuff is so good, people would come in anyway.

Remember this is just a fantasy anyway, so we can say whatever we want. In a perfect world our customers would have the same sense of humor we do.

Seriously, put the three of us together, and you are talkin' serious bakery experience and talent. We care about our stuff, and we know how to do it right. That's right, we're talkin' love here. Love is the ingredient that goes missing in larger bakeries, so we'd keep it small and keep our hands in the dough instead of just raking it in. Ha ha! Did I say raking in the dough? Seriously, I know that doesn't happen in the bakery biz. It's just a fantasy.............sigh.

There is a fourth bee-yotch out there that DID open her own place, and I've had the honor of working with her. She rocks too. If she moved up here, we'd call it the Four Bitches Bakery and we'd get along famously. If you're in Texas,
make sure you check out Simply Cakes. You want a woman with experience and knows her way around cakes? That's Robin. Any bride with a brain will get her wedding cake there. Guaranteed satisfaction.....you've got my personal word on it.

Someday, perhaps, Marla, Jewlz, and I will have drunk too much wine and decided that opening a bakery is a good idea. I'll let you know when that day comes. Then the next day we'll have sobered up.

Inside humor

Those of us in the know, will realize the hilariousness of this wine label as it pertains to my life. A gift from Jewlz for my birthday......how did she FIND it????

Vortex, bottled

And I found this on my stepson's truck the other day....I want one!

pirate baking

Cupcake and crossbones! That should be on the back of my truck. Pirate baker!! Argh!
He told me it came from a website called Johnny Cupcakes.

I actually baked something the other day. Well sort of......does microwaving count as baking? My stepson was jonesing for my diet ice cream and I made these as a diversion. Stay away from my diet ice cream! If I am to lose weight, and I've lost 11 lbs so far, I MUST have my diet ice cream!
These brownies rock, and it's hard to believe they are so easy to make and in only 6 minutes no less!

Annie's KILLER Microwave Brownies

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp vanilla
Beat above til light, then add:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
Blend in. Then add:
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder (sifted)
Stir til all incorporated, and spread mixture into and 8x8 glass or microwave safe dish that's been greased.
Bake in microwave no more than 6 minutes, giving the dish a quarter turn every 2 minutes (if your microwave
doesn't spin on its own.) Microwave times will vary given the wattage of your microwave. These brownies are amazingly good!

Recession Baking

If I were stupid enough to open my own bakery (especially now), here's a sign I might just want to use in the front
window.......

Smells

Cake or death?

I found this lovely little Eddie Izzard bit on one of my favorite sites, Cake Wrecks. I think the next time I have a customer to deal with, I'll ask, "Cake or death?" Either way, I win.

Cake or Death?

Hood Canal Bitch

Currently, my life is being made miserable by the Hood Canal Bridge.....or, rather, the absence of it. I'm not the only one, I know. We, out here on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State depend on that frickin' bridge to get us to civilization (aka Seattle). There's a lot of us who commute to areas that are on the other side of that bridge, and not having it there is a major major BITCH.

See, it's like this:

Map

The red line represents the route if I happened to own my own airplane and could fly to my destination. Unfortunately I  don't have a plane. Well I used to have my own plane, but sold it after numerous employers would not submit to my demands for my own personal runway. See I told you there was no benefits in the culinary industry.

The purple line represents how far I have to drive around all that water to get to my destination. On a good day it's 4 1/2-5 hours with no traffic. But of course there's traffic, 'cause everybody else has to drive around too. Before the bridge work happened, the state and counties were pretty good about preparing for the 6 week closure by having transit operations work together, getting extra buses, scheduling them to meet up with one another, and implementing a water shuttle to take passengers across the Hood Canal. The water shuttle? Good idea!

Map2

The green line represents my twice weekly route. I park at a park and ride on one side, take a bus to the passenger ferry shuttle thingy, take a 10 minute ride across the canal, then take another bus to the other park and ride where I have my other car, then drive my car to the Edmonds/Kingston Ferry, wait for that, then there's a 20 minute ride, then drive my car off and proceed to drive 45 more minutes to my Mom's house. Sound like a bitch? It is. But it's the best route for me, and a lot of other people.

Now the water shuttle works fine as long as there's no stormy weather or wind to jeopardize its trips. But c'mon, this is Washington, where rain is the norm! The water shuttle gets canceled once the water starts to get a little choppy, because they are worried about docking and getting people on and off the boat. Today was one of those days....where the shuttle was canceled most of the afternoon. This screws up a lot of people, especially since they don't really have a backup plan when the shuttle can't run. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be worse, and I have to travel again. I don't want to go through what I went through last week, but I may have to. I can't cancel my trip 'cause Mom needs me and my brother is coming into town too, so I think another long trek is in the cards. This whole thing just sucks.

If it weren't for Mom I wouldn't really have to travel off the Peninsula at all during the bridge closure. I could stay up here in cozy little Port Townsend and not miss the tourists who aren't coming. But Mom comes first, so travel I must. They told me in elementary school by the time the Year 2000 came, we'd have flying cars. Where's my &*$%&#@!!! flying car!!!!!???

Bloggity blah blah blah

I know I haven't blogged in a while but there hasn't been much to report.....especially about pastry since I'm not currently working as a pastry chef. Caring for my mom has been my chief job, and it's exhausting in it's own brain torturing way.

I did take my Mom to see the tulips in the Skagit Valley and they were awe inspiring......

Tulipspink

Pinktulips

Can you believe I got these pics with my iPhone? It's not a bad little camera for being on a phone. It was a perfect warm spring day when we went.....we got lucky.

Other than that, it's just been traveling back and forth between Redmond and Port Townsend, which has been made more difficult by the closure of the Hood Canal Bridge. My normal 2 hour commute has turned into 4 hours (on a good day). Last Tuesday the wind was so bad, the water ferry that takes people across the Hood Canal was out of service because the water was so choppy that it could not dock. So I took a 3 hour bus ride all the way around to Port Gamble, got my car, drove to the Kingston Ferry, took that, then got off and drove to Mom's. Total travel time? 8 hours. Yep.
I'll be so glad when the bridgework is done and that damn thing re-opens. This has been such a hassle. It's like living on an island out here in Port Townsend. Taking out the bridge is like severing an artery......a major life giving artery.
We're hoping the tourist based businesses here in town can ride it out, because tourism, obviously, is down.

Enough whining. No wait, I have plenty more whining to do. It's my blog, I can cry if I want to.

There is one ray of hope actually. I'm finally losing some weight. 7.5 lbs so far. No miracle diet.....I'm just counting calories with the help of my iPhone......yep, there's an app for that. It's called, "Lose It" if anyone wants to know.....and it's freakin' free! I think being away from the bakery is helping too.....I'm not eating all those little trimmings and scraps that happen in the pastry kitchen, or any kitchen for that matter.

Ok, back to whining. My mom is doing fairly well physically, basically because I'm there to make sure she takes her medicine and eats and gets up and around occasionally. She fails to thrive on her own and will neglect herself to the point where she does get sick and ends up in the hospital. So really, at this point it is my job to babysit her, run errands, cook, take her out, refill her medicine boxes, etc. She takes so many meds it's almost rocket science to fill her boxes....there's no way she could do it herself. She no longer drives (good thing) and really has no interest in much of anything. She's unable to really carry on any kind of conversation so long periods of time go by where not much is said other than commenting on the weather. She sleeps a lot.

Her lack of cognition and short term memory loss can be frustrating. She asks me what day it is several times in the day, and it's not like it's even important......to her, every day is the same......why worry WHAT day it is? It's going to be the same boring routine day......after day......after day.......after day.........

This routine is rotting my brain. I need to bring some books along with me, since I know I'm not going to get stimulating conversation while I'm there. I've been watching too much TV......and almost getting addicted to the soaps. But not quite. I won't let myself watch enough of the episode to fully understand what's going on, so that keeps me at arm's length. "All My Children" keeps trying to pull me in though.......Susan Lucci doesn't freakin' age I swear!

There are some funny things that crack me up about soaps. I love how every "room" on every set is so lavishly decorated. No clutter.....as if the maid is there 24/7. Even if children are supposedly present in the household, there's no toys for the actors to trip over and the kids don't have much in the way of roles except to say, "Daddy, when is Mommy coming home?" And he'll say, "Soon, son,(even though I actually had her kidnapped) now go up to your room". No tantrums. The kid exits the set and is supposedly happily playing out of the parent's way so they can focus on their own stupid problems. And also, every room has a wet bar. As the actors are discussing their problems, there's always a decanter of hard liquor around. Never a bottle of Johnnie Walker.......it's always decanted. This, I'm sure is because the soap doesn't want to pay the product placement royalty.....or whatever you call it. I also love that they wake up in the morning as fresh as a daisy, or looking perfect after a rowdy nooner. I think I've been watching the soaps with my mom just to have a good laugh. They shouldn't even be called soap operas anymore. They don't advertise much soap.....mostly it's prescription drugs, like Singulair, Astepro, Vesicare, Caduet.......that, along with the prodigious drinking going on in the soaps themselves, they should be called "Drug and Alcohol" Operas..........

See I told you I've been watching too much TV. Another thing I've discovered is that Oprah is a hack and gives way too much air tiime to woo-woo ideas and woo-woo people. She is Queen Woo as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and I still suck at "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy". Actually those Jeopardy questions are hard......I feel like such a pea brain after that show.

Ok, enough TV.......but you know this blog reflects my life as it currently is. I wish I could share some exciting pastry stories or show some pics of cakes I've done.....but......alas.......the life of a caregiver isn't nearly exciting as life at the bakery. Jewlz keeps me apprised of what is going on at the bakery, and it's definitely a soap opera there; I love hearing "the latest", so I still feel semi involved. I stop by a lot. There will be a couple of cakes I have to do for a fundraiser on June 7th, so if they're picture-worthy, I'll post them.

My final rant:

Evoo

What the hell? Any regular reader of this blog knows how much I respect and love Rachael Ray....ummmm...NOT.
EVOO? I know that's her little "term" but now it's really on bottles of extra virgin olive oil. Just think how many bottles will sell because "EVOO" is on it. "Look honey! I've been trying to find EVOO for ages ever since I started watching Rachael Ray, and now the stores actually sell it! Wow, let's buy TWO!"

See I told you my brain is rotting.