On Being Cranky.

I am a baker, as you may know. I've known lots of bakers in my time, and my experience has been that when bakers get older, they get crankier, a "crusty baker" if you will. I always joked with Sarah that I was going to go this route, neither of us thinking I ever would, since I am pretty happy-go-lucky and I like to goof around. You know where this is going, especially if you read my last post.

Let me clear that up; I was exaggerating a bit. I did almost hit one of my co-workers with a plastic spatula, but it was not thrown in anger. The sink is in the back room, and if I have a soft or light object that needs to be washed, I will step in the back room, lob it into the sink, and turn right back around again. That's what I did, but I didn't realize until it was too late that my co-worker was washing a mixing bowl at the time. I had too much forward momentum and I couldn't stop, and the spatula ended up in her bowl. I did apologize to her after, but she didn't seem fazed by it. My last post was just stupid, but I feel dishonest taking it down now.

Have I torpedoed stuff into the sink in anger? Yes I have. I am not proud of this and I am not making excuses for it. I get my temper from my dad, he had a hair trigger and could be quite destructive at times. He has grown out of it while I seem to be growing into mine. Not that long ago I hated to have people see me like that, but now it seems that I don't care how they see me, which is bad.

My problem is lack of sleep. I don't go to sleep when I should, and when I do go to sleep, I don't sleep well because I'm overweight and don't exercise. I use a CPAP, but I think it's only because I'm overweight. Right now I think I'm the heaviest I've ever been, but I'm not sure. I bought a scale today so I will have to check that out.

I've complained about this before, I hear you cry. Yes I have, and I haven't been doing anything about it. I have a new plan this time that I'm hoping will work, and I hope that I can drag Sarah with me, as both of us would feel a lot better if we lost weight. I have a friend from years ago on Facebook now, and he is also trying to lose weight (he was mentioning exercising and eating healthier in his status updates), and I was asking him about it. I actually asked him if he wanted to race, and he said he would (that's why I bought the scale). People do this all the time I guess, but I never tried it before. I can't really have a weight-losing competition with Sarah, because we tend to enable each other too much, so we both lose. I think it will be easier with my friend Chris, and maybe Sarah can get some benefits out of that, since I do the cooking (no benefits tonight though, I'm making some chicken smothered in a condensed chicken soup and cream cheese sauce, the sauce is awesome).

Meanwhile, I will try to be cheerier at work until I can sleep better. I need to get started before the holidays hit, because then my schedule goes crazy and I don't have enough time to sleep. only 148 shopping days till Christmas!!

You know what sucks sometimes?

When you're having a bad day at work, and you're surrounded by people so you can't throw stuff or curse loudly. Even worse is when you work with mostly Amish women, and you feel bad if you curse accidentally (on purpose). The absolute worst though, is if you DO throw something and almost hit someone, and you have to apologize. That sucks.

Apparently, making a nice chocolate chip cookie eludes me.

Yesterday I made a bunch of cookies for a dinner that my in-laws were doing for their church's homeless shelter (I'm not sure if that's exactly right, but the church provides a lot of food for this particular shelter). Sarah and I went to help out, which was the first time I've ever done anything like that. It felt good, except when we sat down to eat with them. I didn't mind sitting with them (they were all men), they were all very nice and we were chatting with some of them about what they did before they became homeless, and what they wanted to do in the future. The thing that made me uncomfortable was eating. I felt like I was taking food away from them, even though there was plenty of food there. I often have seconds when I eat (which you can tell by looking at me), but this time I didn't, for obvious reasons.

Sarah's parents were responsible for breakfast and dinner each day for an entire week. Sometimes they used the food that was there, and sometimes they made stuff at home and brought it with them. Last night was a bit of both. The kitchen/cafeteria was in the basement of a church that was built in the last few years. Apparently they had some Code problems, because the only thing that was hooked up in the kitchen was a 3 door refrigerator. There wasn't even a sink; luckily there was a bathroom in the basement, and we used the sink in there if we needed water (they took all the dirty dishes home to wash). There was a lot of equipment in the kitchen, and they are hoping to get it all installed and running by November, when the shelter gets more people for the winter (there were about 25 men there last night, they had up to 40 over the past week). I was actually wondering why Sarah's parents didn't ask us to help them before this. I have always wanted to help in a shelter on Thanksgiving, but I remember reading somewhere that everyone wants to do this, but no one wants to help the other 364 days of the year. So I guess this is a start for me.

We found out a little about what the men like and don't like (no diet anything, and no decaf!), so I think that I will get some giant cans of coffee to give to my in-laws for the shelter. I will ask to help them next time it is their turn, or if they are helping other parishioners. I don't do a lot of volunteer work (none, actually), and I feel bad about that. I suppose that I was afraid, but I see now that there is nothing to be afraid of.

I also see that I veered from my blog title. I made bigger cookies than I usually do, because I baked off 2 different sized chocolate chip cookies and let Sarah pick which size to make. I baked these 2 cookies in the toaster oven, and they were beautiful. I had my regular oven preheating, so I scooped out the cc cookies and put them in. My regular oven seems to be much cooler than my toaster oven, because the cookies turned out to be a flat mess (the other 3 kinds I made were fine). Maybe it's just the oven, I don't know. But my cc cookies are always too flat, like an halibut.

I need to find synonyms for "apparently."

Yay! New Oven at Work!

We have a lot of space issues at work (meaning we don't have enough), and this also extends to our ovens. We have two Blodgett deck ovens, which for one thing, are way older than I am. They are also very erratic in the heat department, and since they are deck ovens, they have way too much bottom heat (you usually see them in pizza places). We have to turn the pans around halfway through baking time on pretty much everything, and some stuff can only be baked in certain spots, or it comes out like crap. With the deck ovens, we have space for 16 sheet pans. This may seem like a lot, but it really isn't. We have been asking for new ovens for years.

Finally, earlier this year, the managers told us that they were looking into a convection oven for us (the deli recently got one of their own, as they're making hot foods now, and we didn't always have the space for them to use our ovens when they wanted to). I had never used a convection oven before, and neither had any of my coworkers. So I was hesitant, but it was a new oven, so I was more than willing to try it out. One of my managers had a lot of experience with it (she used to work in a restaurant), and she told me that most of my stuff would probably not be able to be baked in it (I do the breads and other yeast-based items). It would be mainly for pies and cookies, but this way, I wouldn't have to rush to get out of the way when the next bakers came in, which is partly why we wanted new ovens anyway.

It took awhile before they pinned down if and when we were getting the oven, but it finally came in 2 months ago. It took so long because they were refurbishing it. Unfortunately, it was missing parts that we needed, so we had to wait until this week for it to be put in. I didn't totally understand that part. Another problem was that it was not replacing one of our ovens, it was going next to the other ones, which added to the space problems that I mentioned before. We had to rejigger the bakery a lot, which I'm still having problems with, but the oven is totally worth it.

The Stove Shop guys put it in on Thursday night, so I got to be the first person to use it. My basic understanding of convection is that it bakes in less heat and less time than regular ovens, because of the fans that blow the hot air through the oven. This also causes everything to bake evenly as well. The first thing I baked was tea biscuits and scones, which were apparently on too high a temp because they came out too dark. I tried them again the next day on a lower temp, but it was almost the same. I'm giving it one more shot on Monday, and if it's not right, they'll go back to the deck ovens.

I put puff pastry in there next, and after finding out that I have to put the items in the four corners of the pan to keep the parchment paper from blowing over and fusing to the pastry, they came out really nice.

The items I really wanted to try were the danishes, which are yeast based. They were perfect when they came out! They even have more body than they did in the deck ovens. I also made some of the frozen rolls in there, and I'm not sure if I will do that, because they got more top heat than bottom heat, so there was no support, and they eventually got squashed in the bag because of this. I put some yeast breads in there too, and they were absolutely beautiful. I've had trouble with the loaf breads being more than done on top, but not on the sides, so they collapse under their own weight like the frozen rolls did. But these were the same color on all sides, and they maintained their shape, and remained nice and soft on the inside.

My coworkers are having some trouble with the cookies. The pies are coming out really nice, but they're having a lot of problems getting the cookies to come out. Usually they ask me for advice since I've been in the business a lot longer than they have, but I was kind of stymied this time. I'm in the same boat, I have to try it every which way to see what works.

All in all, it's worth it to me, being cramped in the bakery in exchange for the new oven. I am afraid that they are still going to have to wait for me to get out of the convection oven now, because it's awesome!

Hey, wait a minute (I'm writing a book)

I have been wanting to do this for almost 20 years. I got the idea of writing a book about my grandfather (my dad's father), after he passed away in 1990, and I finally have started it. It's going to be a slow process, but I hope to finish it at some point, perhaps by next year. I think what kept me from doing it until now was the whole getting-it-published thing. Now, I can do that myself online, so that's my plan. I have given up on traditional publishing and I don't care if anyone outside of my family sees it.

I'm not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but that's because I don't write. I was hoping to practice a bit here, but it kind of fell by the wayside. I'm sure I will be endlessly revising this book. It has already morphed into a book about both of my grandparents, as I didn't think I would have enough material with just my grandfather. I'm sure that when I get into it it will be easier, but I'm still a little scared.

I have written the opening chapter, which was also a giant stumbling block, and I feel relieved that I figured out how to start it, which as you'll see, is at the end. I'm going to post it here, but it is an embryonic version, so please be forewarned. I would also love to hear any feedback you have, good or bad. I can always use the help.

I don't have a title for the book yet (I was considering "Southern Gentleman," but that won't work now since it's about both of my grandparents), and I probably won't have chapter titles either. It's pretty long, so you can leave now if you want to. Here goes.

*****

It was 8:30 Wednesday morning, and I was still in bed. Wednesday was my only day off from my job, which was at my family’s bakery. When I say my family’s bakery, I mean just that: it was my parents, my sister, and myself and that was it. We had other employees at one time, but they had to be let go, because standalone bakeries were becoming obsolete in the early 1990s. My parents had recently sold the second bakery they had bought five years earlier. That bakery proved to be a financial disaster.

That Wednesday was also my day off from driving my sister and her friends to school. My grandfather Vance was living with us then, and he drove them that day. He was in the hospital the previous fall for almost three months. He came to live with us after he was released in December, which is partly why I dropped out of college. I was to take care of him in the morning, then go to work in the bakery in the afternoon. I would sit with him some nights and watch television until he went to bed.

At first he had trouble doing anything for himself, but gradually he became stronger. I helped him with his morning ablutions and made him breakfast and lunch. After a few months, he was able to go out, so I mostly took him grocery shopping. I think I took care of him in this way for six to eight months before he was able to do everything for himself, including driving, which was pretty good for an eighty-year-old man. Out of all the things we had to do for him when he was recuperating, I think he missed driving most of all.

I heard my grandfather come in on that Wednesday morning. I was still in bed, but awake. I was feeling lazy that day and I didn’t want to get up. I heard him walking from room to room downstairs, and I heard him scolding one of the cats. I don’t think he actually hated the cats we had at the time (there were four of them), but they always seemed to be in his way or shedding on his things. He used to say to them, “Get outta here!” the same way I hear my dad, Vance’s son, do now when I talk to him on the phone.

It was quiet for a few moments, and then I heard a loud thump. Having four cats, this was not an unusual sound, so I stayed in bed for a few more minutes. I realized that I didn’t hear my grandfather scolding the cats, so I reluctantly got out of bed to investigate. I had on a pair of shorts, but I didn’t bother putting any other clothes on, because I planned on going right back upstairs to bed after I found out what happened.

It was not the cats that made the loud thump. I saw my grandfather’s legs on the floor as I came off the stair landing. He had fallen on the kitchen floor, and he must have been trying to steady himself with one of the kitchen chairs, because he pulled it down on top of him. His nitroglycerin pills were scattered all over the floor. I can only assume that he felt what was coming and tried to stop it, but he was too late. I was starting to panic at this point, and I called out to him, but I received no response. What made me panic even more was the sharp, raspy, and loud intake of breath that came after I called his name. I could see that he wasn’t breathing aside from this, and I was frightened and I didn’t know how to help him. I did have the presence of mind to dial 911, and I called my dad at the bakery right after that. In the first of many regrets I have about that day, I left my grandfather on the floor in the kitchen and went upstairs to put a shirt on. I am still amazed that despite my terror at my grandfather’s situation, I was selfish enough to do this.

When I came back downstairs, I noticed that the fedora that he was wearing was still slightly on his head. I gently removed it and put it aside. Soon after that, the first police officer arrived, less than five minutes after I called 911. I explained the situation to him, and he tried resuscitating him. A second police officer arrived within minutes of the first, quickly followed by an ambulance crew. They brought a stretcher in and cut through his clothes to try to revive him. He was wearing a dress shirt, along with a vest and a sport coat, which is what he normally wore. He used to tend his garden in a dress shirt and pants in the summertime.

The ambulance crew decided that they needed to take him to the hospital, so they put him on the stretcher and took him outside, which is when I saw my dad pull up in his truck. I don’t know how he didn’t get pulled over, because he made the trip home from work in half the time it usually took. He got on the ambulance with my grandfather and went with him to the hospital. The police also left, and then I was alone.

I thought that my grandfather would be fine; that my dad would call in an hour or two and tell me that Vance was okay, that he just had a minor setback. I was in a bit of a daze, but I decided to hang onto these thoughts and do something normal. It was breakfast time, so I decided to make some pancakes for myself. I had the batter all made up when the phone rang. It was a lady from the hospital. I don’t remember what her name was or in what capacity she worked for the hospital, but I did know from the fake tone of her voice that my grandfather had passed away, which she confirmed for me seconds later. I know she was just doing her job, that she probably had to make dozens of these calls every week, but I wanted to jump through the phone and punch her in her face. I didn’t want her talking about my grandfather like that.

I started to cry when she told me that my dad wanted me to come and pick him up at the hospital. To me, this meant that the world was not going to stop now that Vance was gone, which made me feel worse than I did. I attempted to compose myself so I could go and pick up my dad. He was waiting outside where the lady said he would be, and his eyes were red and puffy. I had only seen him cry twice in my life. He told me that he went in to see my grandfather after they pronounced him dead.

I drove back to our house, which seemed very empty. I saw the pancake batter on the counter, so I made the pancakes for my dad and I. I didn’t know what else to do.