This post has absolutely nothing to do with granola and peaches except that I am eating a bowl of granola and peaches and warm milk for breakfast as I type. The warm milk point is not by choice…it’s just that here in Spain, boxed milk is the common way to purchase milk (and it’s the milk I prefer), but if you live with someone who finished 99.7% of the cold carton of milk and didn’t put another carton in the fridge, then your breakfast ends up being with warm milk. I won’t mention any names though. I know I could wait a bit while the milk cools down, but my hunger style goes from ‘I’m not hungry, I will just have coffee’ to ‘I am going to die if I don’t eat RIGHT NOW’ in a split second.
The granola is from work because we have a new fancy schmancy brunch menu and we offer a yogurt/granola/fruit bowl and I made a lot of granola and whatdoyaknow-nobody wants granola! So we have a lot to get through, but it won’t go bad anytime soon.
This weekend was good- but it was very, very draining…physically, mentally, emotionally….in every way possible. We were very busy, which is great! But I worked over 12 hours both Saturday and Sunday, and about 10 hours on Friday and was just completely wiped last night. One thing I know for sure: I could never be a doctor and work these hours. It cracked me up last night when Luis and I put on our shoes to “go out and do something fun” and we walked around the block and came back less than 15 minutes later. We were just too tired…I felt like a walking zombie, but sometimes I feel anxious/ down by the fact that this business is taking over my entire life. I had dinner with a friend and some of her friends on Wednesday night and it was really fun! and one of them asked what we all did over the past weekend and I snorted/laughed….weekend? I haven’t done anything on a weekend since at least last December. I think I have forgotten what it is like to do fun things on a weekend and to have time to look forward to. Sure, I have Monday’s and Tuesday’s “off”, but since they are during the week, they are usually filled with work and catching up on behind-the-scenes things (placing orders, responding to emails, updating our order documents, making a plan for the upcoming week).
So anyway, this weekend was a lot. We made almost 300 bagels (by hand) each day and since it’s already very warm in Spain and our refrigerators are old af, they can’t quite stay as cold as they need to be to make perfect bagels (this tends to happen when we overload the refrigerator). Can you imagine my panic when I open the bagel fermentation boxes at 6:30 in the morning to see that up to half of the bagels are “exploding” (meaning that they have over-fermented and have more than tripled in size)? This is something that hasn’t happened since probably January/February when we were still learning the ropes (hell, we are still learning the ropes now), but this was a big weekend for us and to have this happen now was…not good. I mean, everything was fine and we do figure it out in the end, but I put a hell of a lot of pressure on myself for things to be perfect and we are continuously doing better and learning and getting better, but…it’s hard. (Forbes: when you write your Billionaires 30 Under 30 article, please do not include any of this!!). Luis cracked up when I told him that last night I was googling “how to make bagels”. The thing is…we KNOW how to do things and we know how to make a great product, but we are dealing with less-than ideal equipment. So what is the solution…buy new HUGE refrigerators? Move to a more appropriate space? Make less bagels and when we run out, we run out? For now, I think the last is the best option and it will actually have to be what we do because our beloved delivery driver, Juan Pablo, found another job so from here on out, we likely won’t need to make QUITE so many bagels on any given day.
Juan Pablo in action! A customer snapped this photo from their balcony.
In other news, we are now able to ship throughout Spain and the bagels arrived to our test location BEAUTIFULLY last week! I was very happy to hear that. We are also planning to start making some pies and cobblers for the summer season, and some red, white and blue bagels for 4th of July!
In other NON-bagel related news: the state on alarm is officially over. What that means? I have no idea. We still “have to wear masks everywhere”. I won’t tell you my opinion on having to wear a mask outside but it rhymes with hullfit. I think we can also travel? So now we can go to the beach, etc. And I think all businesses can open, but at reduced capacity. Luis and I are planning our summer vacations-looking forward to plopping my bottom on the beach in Malaga and not moving.
This photo is from 3 years ago this week (in Malaga). I look younger and tanner.
I plan to eat, drink, laugh, and be merry and tan. Then I plan to go to the US and complain about the humidity and purchase a baby pool to sit in while I drink a mojito in the backyard and get mauled by mosquitos. Sounds like a good time! Luis is going to take me to the airport at 8 am tomorrow to purchase my flight ticket because I have a voucher to use that can a)either be used in person at the AA office or can b) be mailed in (can take over a month to arrive and I have 27 days to use it). So…that leaves me with going in person and lucky for me, the customer service hours are from 7 IN THE MORNING to 9.30 IN THE MORNING. This is not the Spain I know….
Alright, time to take my morning nap and then get to the good ol’ to-do list.
