Hey there! I’ve missed you all and have missed writing about life, food, travel, bakery updates, but the truth is I have just had NO time to sit down and write. It’s not like I am up and out and about all day everyday, but writing here takes mental energy that I usually have until about 2 pm and then it’s gone. My downtime is spent sleeping, eating, walking, and doing general life things like taking showers and cleaning the house which is currently in a disastrous state. With all of that being said, things are GOOD and we are very close to being able to open Mazál (that’s the name of the new place, btw, SURPRISE!) and I am so excited (and very nervous) to see how things go. We are hoping to open by next weekend, so this week will be a race to the finish of all the final touches, lots of practice with the oven and mixer, and just general cleaning. As I write this, it’s 10:50 am on Saturday morning and I have been up making bagels for a customer who orders large batches every week. I have been saying no to most orders, but this is a loyal customer who I don’t want to lose in the transition. As soon as I get this posted, I’ll head over to the shop to bake some bagels I made yesterday, make another test round of dough, bake some cookies and make a couple cakes. It should be fun! And if all goes well, there will be no tears 🙂 Luis will join me a little later…he is sleeping off a hangover from a little get together he had with childhood friends last night.
As a quick update on how things are going (although I would LOVE to sit down and write them in more organized, detailed posts, there likely won’t be time): Bakery updates: we have ordered pretty new lamps which will be delivered next week, I painted the whole shop and gave it a fresh new look (just white), but I feel very grateful my amazing Dad taught me how to paint and now I have it as a life skill- thanks Dad! And I didn’t make any oopsies! We have ALL of our equipment either in the shop or on it’s way (well 99%), we have a credit card reader!, we have hung shelves and the dish drying rack (actually, Luis did it and cursed the IKEA gods many times), we have wifi and a phone number (but no phone lol), we have new plants, our huge a$$ mixer works!, we released the website into the wild!, we registered the business name, we ordered business cards which will be delivered next week, …. and so on and so forth. I told Luis that I would love to write a “How to Open a Cafe in Madrid for Dummies” book with all of the information because there is JUST SO MUCH and I have received messages from people asking for help and I think it would be so cool to have it all in one place, but that will probably have to wait until I retire. On the fun/ life front: Luis and I ran the San Silvestre 10k on New Years Eve which is an awesome way to end the year! Almost 50,000 people ran! We have spent some time with friends (but honestly not much). Ok that’s all I have for you…haven’t had much time for fun, but opening the business has been fun too…although exhausting. Actually, a few nights ago, I couldn’t fall asleep because I COULD NOT stop thinking/worrying that I will be this busy for the rest of my life… hahah….
Anyway, I am here to share my 2019 in Review post, which is a post I’ve written for the last two years (2017 and 2018) and it’s a really fun way to look back on the year and see all of the great things that happened. It’s easy to focus on the hard or stressful times, but when you take time to remember, there is actually so much GOOD that happens. We are lucky, aren’t we?
2019 IN REVIEW
In January, I became a SPANISH CITIZEN after a long and somewhat stressful 3 year process! I will likely never have to deal with the fun that is standing in huge lines at Aluche to deal with visa things! Besides that, Luis and I went to London for the weekend and basically ate our way through the city. It was fun. That’s the trip when we had our first Brick Lane bagel.
In February, I wrote a lot of general life updates and wrote about my bagels being sold in Bite Me Café! I also just wrote posts about the weekend and all the fun I used to have in my former life 🙂
Oh, and someone ordered mini bagels and took this amazing photo and sent it to me!
In March, I wrote this recipe for easy vegetarian taco bowls, and almost a year later, we still eat this very often. I also wrote about running the 10k Bombero Race and then brucnh afterwards with friends and my brother.
In April, Luis and I went to the US for a quick trip! Here I wrote about our visit to Philadelphia and New York, and Luis ate a very American-style lunch from a diner, which he later described as “una bomba”. It was a philly cheesesteak on a soft pretzel! hahaha. Looking back on that post, it was a great trip!! I hope we can go this year when I have a little more stability. Also, I catered my first business meeting!
In May, my parents came to visit! And we took a family trip to Mallorca where it was sunny for half of the time, but we still managed to have a great trip. It was so nice to all be together, and when we were back in Madrid, it gave me a taste of what life would be like if my parents moved to Spain (and my brother moved BACK). Also May was the last month all of my best friends were still here. It was a sweet month with a lot of fun times. May was also the month I went to visit MercaMadrid, where all of Madrid’s food gets distributed from! It was huge and I had to wake up at 3 am to go!
June was a busy month! Luis and I went to Malaga for a few days, I finished up my school year (and presented my project that took almost a year to create- and got the highest grade you can get!), and then I flew to the US (and got stopped for an extra security check and the plane waited 45 minutes for me!), and then got ready for a trip to Chile!
Most of July was spent in Santiago, Chile. Looking back on it, it was a pretty neat experience, but I was not a happy camper while I was there. At the end of July, we went on a family road trip. It had it’s ups and downs.
The first part of August was spent on our road trip. And in the last part of August, I got busy trying the Impossible Whopper with my parents, went to Malaga with Luis for a week and it was so fun!, and then left for a week-long Northern Spain road trip with Luis. To start, we went to Islas Cies.
I turned 28 in September and wrote a little post about it. Luis and I also went to Munich, Germany for a wedding weekend, but while we were there, we visited Dachau, which was a meaningful experience. We spent a lot of time with friends, which I wrote about in a few posts like this one.
I wrote a lot of posts in October! Mostly about my weekends, food, etc. October was when we went to Geneva, Switzerland for the 200th anniversary party for Luis’ work. It was AWESOME and my only regret is not enjoying it even more, because we probably won’t be around for the 300th. Also, October was the calm before the storm!
November was a big month! I signed the contract for our new location and we got to work! That’s also when the stress started, but it’s good stress 🙂 Since November is when Thanksgiving is, I had Pie Week 2019 and made over 95 pies!!! It was incredible.
And in December, I wrote two lonely posts- a telling sign of how busy we were/are. I wrote a recap of Thanksgiving and Pie Week and a quick little update a few weeks ago.
And that brings us to right now- January 2020! Sometimes having a blog can be stressful because I pressure myself to write and update, even if it’s just for myself, but I LOVE looking back and being able to read and see what I was doing a while back. The craziest thing is that this blog goes back to December 2012 and with each month, there have been wonderful things. Life keeps getting better and better, and I feel very grateful for that!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, this post has taken a full hour to write and these cakes aren’t going to bake themselves so TTYL! XOXOX and Happy New Year!
And because I look forward to this video Google creates every year, I will share it here:
