So I had an interesting conversation today with a man who sells preserves at the Farmer's Market. He willingly gave advice, recipes and good will. There need to be more people like him in this world.
But before our canning conversation, I spent the morning eating my belly full at a Volunteer Appreciation Brunch at Waimea Valley. Good food, amazing Hawaiian music and tangible energy and mana. And then with belly full I went to the Farmer's Market and proceeded to talk story with vendors, practically dancing through the aisle with joy at simply being alive on this glorious sunny day. I wish that I could shine like this all the time.
I left my fruit preserving conversation with some insight as to how to sell my goods at market's legally and safely: "do my thing and keep my head low." Short, practical advice to navigate not only through all the Department of Health red tape, but solid advice on how to be successful on this island as well.
So with a new 'head low' mantra, I'm taking all the limes (lemons?) found on the ground at my friend Kelsey's new house and making them into a curd. She says they're limes. On the tree they are green, but on the ground (where I found all of them) they are firm and yellow. Perhaps "Limons" is what we'll call them?
As as the preserving my ego thing... Remember that boy that I was trying to impress by making all that Basil Ice Cream? I don't think it worked. *Sad Sigh* I am perplexed. I wish I could turn on the sunshiney, bubbling over with happiness girl that I was at the market this morning like a light switch. But I can't. And for whatever reason, I end up feeling so self conscious around him that I end up not being myself- I end up saying and doing the stupidest things (like when I referred to August as April today. And then I proceeded to drop my 9-foot-long surfboard... almost on top of him. Dumb!) Can't be sure, but I feel like we're sliding very quickly into the friend zone. Is there any way to preserve what we had? I wish that was as easy as canning Lemon Curd.
So with a sad sigh of near but not-quite resignation, I'm going to slice open these limey lemons and create something lasting. And I'm going to keep my head low and keep doing my thing. Maybe it will pay off after all.
Limon Curd Adapted from Martha Stewart's Lemon Curd Recipe
Makes about 2 cups
1 cup sugar
Zest of 5 or 6 "Limons"
3 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
1 cup "Limon" juice
5 ounces unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
Directions
Place sugar and lemon zest in a mortar and grind with a pestle to combine and release the oils. Transfer sugar mixture to a medium heatproof bowl along with eggs and egg yolks; whisk to combine. Place over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk until sugar has dissolved. Add lemon juice and continue whisking until mixture is thick and reaches 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. The last 5 degrees are pivotal. That's when it really starts to thicken. Be patient and really wait for the full 160 degrees. Add butter and whisk until well combined. Strain lemon mixture through a fine mesh sieve set over prepared bowl. Cover lemon curd with plastic wrap, pressing plastic wrap directly onto surface. Transfer to refrigerator until completely chilled. Can and Preserve away :) Or just eat it with a spoon, shuddering again and again at the all-too-tart sweetness as it hits your tongue.
Clearly I am not one to write a trustworthy blog about how to impress a man enough to make him fall head-over-heels in love with me. Otherwise "perpetually single" would not be the box that I check on my taxes every year. But again and again, I let that little gasp of hope fight to the surface and fill me with the lovely vision of how wonderful relationships can be. I get a fuzzy recollection how it felt to be loved, and to give love from an endless place inside me. It's just been a damn long time since I've actually been in a committed relationship. But it's that little gasp of hope that makes me want to find that certain boy, to make that fuzzy feeling sharpen into focus. It makes me want to bake and impress.
So this Saturday is the planned "Spaghetti Party"- complete with 12 of Courtney & my closest friends, the lonely chicken Lolo and the two newest additions to the house, baby chicks Francey & Duck. And a boy worth trying to impress.
Courtney is creating the sauce, I'm in charge of dessert. Naturally.
I've decided that I am baking a double crusted Peach Cobbler and will be concocting some homemade Basil Ice Cream to pair with it. Simple yet fancy. Unique but familiar. It will be an intriguing flavor combination that will spark conversation and hopefully disappear to crumbs while everyone wishes they could have just one taste more. Really, that's my whole plan for impressing the boy. Make him realize how dimensional I am. Simple and pure hearted, yet capable of dressing up and stepping up to the occasion. Unique and strong in my own convictions and direction in life, yet relateable and reliable. Intriguing and charming, leaving him so that he can neither stop thinking about the cobbler and ice cream... or me.
In theory, it's perfect. Unfortunately, reality usually dictates that I trip over my words or worse, can't find any at all. And I'll inevitably end up spilling ice cream into my clean shirt. The familiar role of "Bumbling Idiot #1" that I tend to melt into the minute I am in the presence of someone I really want to impress. Cool and collected? Only in my scripted fantasies. But the cobbler and the ice cream? I don't think that those can fail me.
So tomorrow I'm buying Basil at the Farmer's Market, I'm putting on my new perfume and I'm hoping for something close to the scripted fantasy. Wish me luck.
Peach Cobbler
6-7 whole, ripe Peaches (about 5 cups sliced). Wash and slice, leaving skins on.
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
3 tablespoons Flour
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
Place peach slices in an ungreased 9x12 pan. Stir in brown sugar, flour and cinnamon with a fork. Stir around loosening juice from the peaches. The peach juice will mix with the dry ingredients and create a sweet sticky syrupy coat for the peach slices. Stir until all the peach slices are covered with the yummy syrupy.
For the Double Crust topping:
1 1/2 cups Flour
1 1/2 cups White Sugar
1 1/2 cups Oatmeal
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
2 dashes Nutmeg
2 beaten Eggs
1/4 cup salted Butter (1/2 stick)
Mix dry ingredients and then add the beaten eggs to make the topping very crumbly. Drop it onto the peaches and make sure all the peaches are covered. Melt the butter and drizzle over the topping.
Bake 40-45 minutes at 375 degrees until the peaches are bubbling out of cracks in the topping.
Serve warm, cold or anywhere in between.
Basil Ice Cream (inspired by Delmonico's in New Orleans)
2 cups fresh Basil. Rinse thoroughly to clean.
1/4 cup Simple Syrup (it's sugar water.. boil 1 cup water and add 1 cup sugar. Stir until dissolved. Now you have 1 1/2 cups Simple Syrup)
1/2 pint Heavy Whipping Cream
1 pint Half and Half
4 Eggs
2 cups White Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 teaspoon Salt
5 cups Milk
Blanch (essentially dunk) washed Basil in boiling water. Then dunk into an ice bath. Remove from ice bath and set on clean towels and blot dry. Combine Basil and Simple Syrup in the blender and pulverize. Set aside.
Beat together Eggs and Sugar until stiff. Slowly add Cream, Half and Half and then Milk. Be careful to mix gently to avoid forming butter chunks. Add Basil mixture and stir thoroughly but gently. Strain through thin colander to remove chunks of basil (or butter) and pour into ice cream machine. Gently add vanilla and salt. Follow the machine's instructions to freeze.
Serve small scoops of Basil Ice Cream with the warm Peach Cobbler. No dripping on shirts. Keep the conversation going. Eye contact. Maybe he'll put his arm around you again when no one is looking. Or maybe he'll even do that in plain sight of everyone. Let that gasp of hope grow.
So despite the recent blogs about canning escapades and dying pets, Courtney and I have been making progress on our quest of opening our mobile bakery.
I've talked to quite a few (surprisingly!) helpful folks at the Department of Health and finally connected with the commercial kitchen. Though start-up costs will be minimal compared to starting a store front, they are still something to be considered. We'll need a food handling permit ($50 and good for 2 years) and proof of commercial insurance (on my list of things to get a quote on) in order to rent space at the kitchen. The kitchen's rates are dependent on a lot of factors, including income. I have plans to pick up the application packet this week so that I can dig into all the variables and try to figure out what sort of kitchen space we'll need to rent. I'll also need to figure out if any prep work can be done at home or if it all needs to happen in the commercial kitchen. Then we need to test and time our recipes in order to prioritize and script our time to be as efficient as possible.
In order to sell our goods, we'll need a temporary food establishment permit, around $25 that will need to be renewed about 3-4 times per year (the rules on how long this one is good for are kind of complicated... but all in all we should budget $100/ year to be prepared).
I've been sent a packet of FDA paperwork that tells me how to properly label my packaged goodies for retail sale. That's a ways down the road, but nice to have the info in advance.
The health department also gave me the GREAT news that I am legally allowed to use my own backyard produce when cooking/ baking goods that I plan on selling. Though I don't pull in a ton of surplus produce now, perhaps in the future I will. I'm really excited about this possibility!
Finally, I am delving into some detective work. I need to figure out how to make my Lilikoi Butter and Lemon Curd shelf stable so that the food lab where I am required to send samples to will give me a green light to sell my canned goods. Without this green light everything will need to be sold as perishable and on ice... making it difficult for people to ship to friends on the mainland as gifts, a huge market I want to make sure we reach. My initial research is showing me I'm gonna have to learn more about Potassium Sorbate and Citric Acid. I don't like the idea of adding anything artificial-sounding to my butters and curds at all... but am playing the game with the health department to assure that I don't get shut down, or (worse) sued.
So the papers are piling up and the number crunching has begun. I'm getting very excited to start putting together a business plan and dive into this.
So where do Blueberry Muffins fit into all this research? At first glance they don't. But all this research is being done so that I can share these tasty little guys with the local farmer's market crowd, and practice makes perfect, right? Plus I needed to do some baking to distract my thoughts from missing chickens and cute boys.
So with that rational in mind, I picked up some mangos and blueberries at the store last night. I mixed my dry ingredients before bed so that I wouldn't procrastinate and put off baking in the morning. A great strategy because I don't function well at all in the wee hours and gravitate toward the toaster or the microwave if I don't have a breakfast plan.
This morning I finished baking the muffins. I ask you- is there anything more heavenly than steaming, hot, hearty muffins loaded with oats, bran and fresh fruit fruit served alongside a freshly laid and fried egg? I added a pot of fresh brewed Chai tea, sweetened with a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk just to push it over the edge. Decedent yet simple. I wanted to stretch eating this breakfast through the whole day, it was that good!
My muffin recipe is a combo of my mom's age-old Blueberry Muffin recipe that I grew up on, and inspiration from Brooklyn's creative Blue Sky Bakery. The only place I've ever eaten muffins that I can say rival my moms. Quite serious. My sister used to live about a mile from little hole-in-the-wall gem in Park Slope. Despite her moving to Queens over a year ago, a trip to the muffin shop remains a highlight of anyone's trip to NYC to visit her. Blackberry Peach muffins anyone? What about Pumpkin Apple Walnut muffins? I tried to find a website for them to give them the publicity they rightly deserve... but I couldn't find one (whaa?). However, if you're ever in Brooklyn, trust me that this place deserves at least one visit!
I used fresh mangos for the center of these yummy muffins, but usually use whatever fruit I can find fresh. I've experimented with apples, nectarines, raspberries and more. You honestly can't screw these up :)
Can I share a muffin baking tip that doesn't get shared enough?: Don't overmix your muffins.
Most muffin recipes say "mix quickly until batter is just wet." (or some variance on that phrase). It's no joke. You don't want to overmix muffins. They end up tough and dense rather than light and spongy with a crispy top. No one likes a muffin they have to gnaw on.
The following recipe makes 1 1/2 dozen muffins or 1 dozen monster muffins. I usually make the normal size if they're for me and the monster size if I bake them with someone else in mind (usually I am begging forgiveness or trying to impress someone) :)
Mom's Famous Blueberry Muffins, with a Mango Twist
2 cups of flour 3/4 cup sugar 1 tablespoon baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1 cup bran 1 cup oats
Mix these dry ingredients together and form a well (or a hole) at the center of the bowl.
1 cup milk 1/3 cup oil 1 well beaten large egg 2 cups blueberries 1-2 mashed bananas
Mix the wet ingredients together first, then add all at once to the dry mix's well. Mix quickly, just until the dry ingredients are wet.
1 mango (or 1 cup of fruit of your choice), peeled and sliced very thin.
Set aside.
Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray or oil. Then using a spoon, scoop about 1 tablespoon of batter into each of the muffin cups. Making sure the bottom of each cup is covered with batter, spoon about 1 to 1/2 teaspoons of fresh mango on top of the batter. Then cover the mango with another tablespoon or so of muffin batter to completely hide the mango. For monster size muffins you may want to add 2 tablespoons of batter on top of the mango.
Covering the mango with muffin batter.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Muffins are done when the batter doesn't stick to a knife inserted into them... or when the muffins are getting a nice golden honey brown on their tops. Cool for at least 10 minutes in the tins. Run a knife around them before removing them to prevent the mango center from separating the muffin and carefully keep the muffin in one piece as you gently lift them out.
Muffins are amazing hot and piping from the oven... but they taste delish cold too!
So enjoy the muffins, I certainly will. And then the research and detective work resumes.
I feel like I'm having that moment in 3rd Grade that I never had. I remember kids in class crying, inconsolable because their dog had died. I remember not understanding why they were so upset... after all, it was only a dog. I had a cat as a kid, but being allergic to it, I rarely played with it or petted it. And it lived to be pretty old. I wasn't around when it died.
So now, 20 years later, I'm having that 3rd Grade moment. I feel like I want to cry my eyes out, but feel that it's silly to be so attached to, of all things, a chicken. And then I feel guilt. Guilt that comes with being glad it wasn't my favorite chicken, the spunky yet calm and cuddle-loving Lolo. And then, finitely, I am overwhelmingly sad that Lolo is now alone.
Sleeping in my hands at just a few days old.
I raised both birds from the day after the hatched. The two have been inseparable for the past 8 months. When they were tiny babies together they would fall asleep in my hands, on my lap, in my arms. When they got big enough to start flapping around, they would wreck havoc together, running around the house, pooping EVERYWHERE (that lasted about a day before they got the boot to the yard). When they were almost full grown there was a day that one of them flew onto my head and fell asleep there while I sat holding the other. And they both used to escape together. Down the street a few times. Into the trees on the street below a few times. Worried for their safety, I continually built the fence around the yard higher... until one day it was clear that though they were perfectly capable of escaping, they simply didn't want to anymore.
They started sleeping side-by-side on the porch railing, ignoring the nearby chicken coop. My little chicken soldiers standing watch over the house. Every night at dusk they would take flight and fly over the fence into the open yard, then hop up the front stairs (completely capable of hoping down the front stairs instead to the street below) and fly up to the railing to perch. Every morning at dawn I would wake up to the flutter of feathers as they flew back into the fenced yard below the porch.
But last night when I got home I only had one soldier standing guard.
I searched the yard in the dark. Nothing. I searched the nearby churchyard where they've escaped before. Empty. And then I searched the street. I found feathers and and smear. No body, but a squish of dark brown feathers, the same color as feisty Laka.
Sick at heart I went to bed. And I dreamed of chickens. I dreamt at one point that Laka showed up at the house with a huge gaping hole in her back and I was urgently trying to find a vet. But over and over, I dreamt that Lolo was sad and lonely. I dreamt she wouldn't leave my side. I actually dreamt she was sleeping in the bed with me, like a small baby who needs to be held. And I woke up to the empty sound of one pair of wings flying into the yard below.
I don't know enough about chickens to know if she'll notice her sister is gone. I don't know if she'll be lonely or just confused. I just don't know what to do.
Part of me wants to rush out and get two more hatchlings to raise so that there is a family for Lolo. But I also know that I'll need to keep those babies in a box in the house for at least a month until they're big enough to be on their own. A month is a long time for a human to be lonely. Let alone a chicken.
I still feel silly as I write this. And I still feel like crying. It's only a freaking chicken. But its only also the first pet I've ever raised and taken care of myself.
So the 3rd grader in me will cry big wet tears and the adult in me will try to be rational. But both will miss the lost chicken and worry about the one that is still alive.
It's 10:39 pm. Pressure Canner attempt # 4 (I think?). We started this project around noon (I think?) All I have to say is thank God for cold beer and leftover Indian food to get us through this ordeal.
So in theory, this post is supposed to be this fabulous story of how amazing Courtney & Shannon are. What Goddesses in the kitchen. What an amazing delectable tomato base we concoct, like fabled Mead to please the masses.
Shall we discuss reality? Take notes, don't repeat our mistakes. And come and join us for our big Spaghetti dinner we're planning. We might even throw in some Bloody Marys for kicks.
So here's the true dish on making this devilish sauce:
First- don't wear a white shirt you really like when cooking red tomatoes. And don't wear an apron smeared with pancake batter from this morning's breakfast if someone is photographing you cooking. You may notice Shannon seems to be wearing 3 outfits during this ordeal. You're right. She is.
40 pounds of tomatoes taking up the whole counter.
Second- Don't freak out when seeing 40 pounds of tomatoes on your kitchen counter. You don't need to go buy more canning jars or raid certain friend's stashes of HUGE half gallon jars, certain that you'll translate 40 pounds of tomatoes into 40 jars of sauce. 40 pounds actually ends up being more like 30 pounds by the time you weed out the bruised ones and bring a handful to a BBQ the night before canning. 30 pounds reduces to less than 12 pint jars (a standard case you'd buy at the store). In our case, we reduced down to 11 pint jars of semi-thin sauce.
Third- Hiding behind inanimate objects (towels, cookbooks, door frames, etc) is a perfectly rational thing to do every time you nudge the damn canner to make sure its working. You never know when its gonna blow its top and cover you and your entire kitchen with scalding sauce. Luckily we had no explosions, but we had to start the freaking thing over multiple times.
Fourth- A jump-around-the-kitchen happy dance is not only acceptable but completely necessary after trying for hours (seriously, hours) to make the f*ing thing work. In Courtney's thoughtful words of triumph- "That's right bitches!"
Fifth- Read the directions on your canner. And then dump the directions and read this post to actually figure out how the hell to use it.
So.... wanna make some Devil's Sauce?
Devil's Sauce (makes 11 pints of thin sauce if you don't screw up too much, probably 9 or 10 pints of thicker sauce.)
You'll need:
40 pounds of fresh, firm tomatoes
6 tablespoons of lemon juice
Prior to touching the food, wash all your jars, jar tops and utensils and set them to dry. Bring a pot of water to a boil and dip the jar tops and just-washed screw ring lids to scald them/sanitize them, then lay them out to dry. Finally, find a cute outfit that isn't white and a clean apron.
Slicing in a dirty apron.
So first you need to wash your tomatoes and slice them up. We fed the bruised ones to the chickens. Like probably 5 pounds of them.
Once you've got your tomatoes sliced, start layering them into the bottom of a huge sauce pot (we used the canning pot). As the layer comes to a boil squash the heck out of it with a potato smasher and then add a new layer of slices. Continue until all the tomatoes are in the sauce pot, smashed and boiling.
Winding Grandpa's food mill.
Then use grandpa's handy antique food mill. You can probably find one of these at a gourmet kitchen store. Or use the one that's been used for decades in the fam. We put 3 ladles of tomato smash into the food mill and processed it until all that remained were seeds and skins. Scrap the remains into a chicken feed bucket (or compost bucket) and pour the tomato-soup consistency sauce into a large bowl or two. Continue until all sauce has been put through the mill.
Sprouting seeds. Not worms. Promise.
Once you've got all that strained sauce, pour it all back into the sauce pot and boil away. Oh, and the little white things that float to the surface? After fretting and Googling and debating whether 'extra protein' was an option, we realized that they were not in fact worms that had escaped our attention when slicing tomatoes, but seeds that have been über-pulverized in the food mill and were actually squeezing out a piece of tomato plant. Like a seed sprouting. Kinda cool in retrospect. Kinda freakout in the moment.
Keep boiling and reducing the sauce. For hours. Like hours and hours. Like, don't leave your house all afternoon hours.
What does one do while reducing tomato sauce?
Shannon watered the yard, planted some seeds in the garden, caught up with friends on the phone, ate Indian food, ate ice cream, balanced her checkbook, ate ice cream again, cleaned her room, paced the house repeatedly and finally sat down and watched like four episodes of Arrested Development on Hulu (heck yes!) and drank beer.
Courtney studied for the MCAT, studied for her upcoming Calculus final, picked up a friend from the airport, ate Indian food, did laundry, paced the kitchen, studied some more and drank beer.
Yay. Sunday afternoon stuck in the house. A big flag-waving yay.
Courtney adding the lemon juice.
So finally around 9pm we decided our sauce was thick enough because we were both tired of making tomato sauce. With more patience I'd have probably cooked it another hour. Turn off the heat and add 2 tablespoons lemon juice per quart of reduced sauce. We were at 3 quarts of sauce so we added 6 tablespoons.
Being careful to cleanly ladle sauce into the jars and leave 1/2" space between the sauce and the jar's rim, we filled 11 jars. Make sure there is no dribble on the jar. Wipe the jars clean if there is.
Two of our sad little jars, post swim.
Our 11 happy little pints prior to going for a dunk.
Our canner's instructions say that the canning pot can hold 10 pint jars. At a time. Lies. We could fit 9 jars, max. We alternated some jars upside down to squeeze more in. Bad idea. This just resulted in nearly half the sauce magically evaporating from about four of the jars and tinting the canning water orange-y red. And magically evaporating is no exaggeration. We were seriously baffled that inches of sauce could vanish from the upside down jars, yet no chunks of sauce floated in the canning water. We can offer no explanation for the phenomenon, but can sincerely recommend you not try to can anything upside down.
This is where the whole 'reading the instructions' part comes into play. Shannon's an instruction skimmer (or ignorer), so luckily Courtney is a bit more disciplined. She made Shannon unpack the canning setup and repack it because it was a bit counter intuitive (to Shannon's canning intuition that is). Then Courtney repacked it yet again. Then we proceed to make a ridiculous amount of 'mistakes' despite actually reading the instructions.
Here are a few things 'not' to do based on our attempts: 1- Don't put the pressure regulator piece on right away. Save yourself our lost 45 minutes and bring it to a steady boil/ stream of steam before putting on the pressure regulator.
Actual amount of water needed.
2- Don't cover the cans with water. Our canner only required 3 quarts of water (like 2-3 inches). Rationally (to me at least) this makes absolutely no sense. But I guess all that water makes it impossible for the canner to build up pressure so you end up with boiling water pouring out of random crevices on the canner and you end up hiding behind inanimate objects and nudging the canner. A lot. Then you start over. Again. 3- Don't can jars upside down. Magic can happen. Not good magic.
Wobbling in action.
Be sure at this point to open another beer. You deserve it.
So finally, 4 tries in we actually get the bloody thing to work. "That's right bitches." We dance around the kitchen when the pressure gauge pops up. We dance again when the pressure regulator starts to wobble (technical term, yes). And then we let it do its thing for 15 minutes.
Timer buzzes. Heat turned off. Waiting time again.
Courtney studies. Shannon blogs.
About 15 minutes later the pressure gauge should drop back into the pot, signaling that the pressure has dissipated and it is safe to open the canning pot. This is super serious business. Don't attempt to open the pot prior to the gauge dropping. It would be like the pot getting "The Bends". And it would explode its brain all over your kitchen. Potentially putting a nice little hole in your ceiling. Don't do it.
So once the pot is safe to open, carefully lift out the jars, wipe them dry, label them and go to bed. It's been about 12 hours. Bloody hell.
Once you're gotten over your hatred of the cooking tomato sauce process and come to understand and embrace the $10 jar of tomato sauce from Whole Foods, you're probably ready to host a Spaghetti party. I'm not there yet. But when I am, I will detail how to add olive oil, herbs, garlic, onions, and other garden-fresh goodness to the sauce base for a pasta sauce and will rave about what Goddesses in the Kitchen Courtney and I are. "Mead" and all that B.S. I'll tell you all about how I made an awesome tomato soup with it and paired it with an artisan grilled cheese sandwich. About how we made amazing, life-changing Bloody Marys. But now? I'm off to bed.
Precursor to the Spaghetti Dinner made the day after canning. Ah-mazing. Sauce was doctored up with a splash of red wine, olive oil, red onion, garlic, salt, pepper and a drop of honey. Topped with fresh garden basil and sheep's milk feta. Served with a side of Kale with garden fresh lemon squeezed over top. Well done, Courtney!
It's Thursday night at 9:45pm. I'm sitting in bed with a bowl of melting vanilla ice cream and homemade peach cobbler. I wasn't hungry, but the cobbler was like an ex-lover calling my name seductively from the kitchen. So now I am indulging. And like the ex-lover, it feels oh-so-good now, but will surely only make me feel bad about myself in the morning. This pattern is probably not healthy...
Welcome to the story of ButterSugarFlourLuck. The story of two single gals trying to figuring out what comes first- the Boyfriend or the Bakery? My roommate Courtney and I have hatched a grand plan of starting a booth at our local farmers market, showcasing my baked sweets, her hearty breads and a good dose of local do-gooding for the sustainability community while secretly hoping to attract similarly do-gooding men who are intoxicated by our baking and entrepreneurial ingenuity.
Shall we back up to how it all began?
Day One:
Shannon (wine glass sloshing in circles punctuated by a long sigh after returning home from an anticlimactic coffee date): Dating freaking sucks! Why can't I find a man who thinks I am amazing that isn't weird. And who I find attractive and who actually has ambition. Who is not boring? And who makes me loose my breath and I become a bumbling idiot because I go completely out of my mind when I am near him, but he feels the same so he is a bumbling idiot too... and we'll both be breathlessly bumbling idiots together? Oi. Vey. (followed by a big glug of wine and a very long sigh.)
Courtney (wine glass half drained)- Where do we even begin to find men like that on this island? (pausing to drink...) You know what? We should start a bakery. We should channel our angsty "I'm single" energy into things we do well (baking), pay our bills doing something we both love (baking), get to hang out at Farmers Markets all the time, and feed our friends. Oh, and we should visit some Bee Farms. Maybe we'll find boyfriends there.
Shannon (wine nearly gone): Bee farms... I think you're onto something...
Fast forward one month...
Shannon spends hours (at work) researching A) Where are local commercial kitchens for rent? B) How to legally sell produce from my backyard, C) What does having a booth at the market actually entail?, and D) Where might there be a plethura of single, smart, nature-loving boys who have their shit together on this island? (the last one was done while flipping through the latest issue of the Honolulu Weekly. Written notes were not taken on that piece of research.)
Courtney spends hours A) Making lists of potential recipes and lists of farms to procure produce from, B) Studying for the MCATs (she's a freakin' smart girl), C) Studying for her Calculus final (see? smart.), D) Working a hookup to get 40 pounds of tomatoes from a farmer friend for canning, and E) Reading recipes of what the hell to do with 40 pounds of canned tomatoes.
...and we both spend way too much time baking, cooking, and pondering if the crush de jour is as twitterpated about us as we are them.
So begins the saga of ButterSugarFlourLuck. The tomato canning begins this weekend. The researching and list making will continue. The peach cobbler will be eaten and undoubtedly be replaced by something just as indulgent. The commercial kitchen manager needs to hurry up and call Shannon back. The plan has been put in motion and there is work to be done.
