Should I just keep calling these posts Monday Morning Coffee Chat?  That’s what they are, but it seems repetitive!  Anyway, hello friends, random readers, Mom, Dad- nice that you’re all here!  I am writing this to you after going for a run and then I went to pick up bagels from the local bagel shop.  Lol jk, I went for a run and ran over to MY bagel shop and baked some bagels and brought them home.  Lest you think I am insane for going to work on my day off….I did that because we have recently been doing a bit of experimentation with our bagel dough…more water, more/ less mixing, water temp, rest times, etc., and since we did a bunch of tests yesterday, I wanted to go and bake a sample of each batch today because baking them 1 day later gives us a more accurate idea of what the dough is like with the new tweaks.  If I wait until Wednesday,  which is our next bake day, the dough will be different because it will have been in the fridge for 2 days instead of one.  SO all of that is a long-winded way of saying….I am trying to find the perfect bagel recipe and I think we are on to something.  I know these are kind of ugly, but it’s because I bagged them when they were very hot and they got all beat up

Let’s see…news since I last entertained you….Spain is sort of getting back to normal, except for the fact that people are wearing masks everywhere and look at you like you should be crucified when you sneeze (Luis has bad allergies and sneezes A LOT when we go walking and I pretend not to know him).  And everyone is wearing gloves and all of that….but things are starting to open, at least for limited hours, and there are definitely a lot more cars and people out at all times, but there is also a big police/military presence which is a little bothersome at times.  We haven’t passed into “phase 1” yet (they cancelled it at the last second), so at this point, we will be back to “normal” well into July, which blows my mind.  I remember back in February, my Mom was messaging me about Coronavirus and my brother was saying that their trip to Spain in April might not happen and my Mom and I were both like “you need to chill…. this will blow over soon!” and…here we are.  Never in a million years did I think this would go on for so long.  Most days, I don’t think all that much about it (which may be bad), but it makes me sad when I go for walks or run and its 75º and sunny and there is not a terrace in sight that’s open.  This is the best time of the year in Spain and it (selfishly) makes me sad that, well, this “season” may be cancelled.  If I get some prime beach time, I will be ok with it.

In other non-corona news, the nice weather is making me very into summery foods and fruits.  I had my first blueberries the other day (likely from very far away) and it immediately made me think about bluberry picking with my Dad and brother way back in the day.  And also raspberry picking…we would pick raspberries and eat them all before we got home!  Funny how a taste of something brings make memories.  I also had my first apricots, pineapple (from Costa Rica), and watermelon!  I have been putting watermelon cubes, mint, and a slice of cucumber into seltzer and I love eating the watermelon at the end because it gets nice and fizzy.  I am strongly considering buying myself a seltzer maker because I have been consuming an alarming amount of it and the plastic bottle waste makes me feel bad.

Full disclosure: that is not seltzer…it’s a gin & tonic with cucumber and mint.  

In work news, the last 5 days of work felt….long and tough.  We didn’t have any huge disasters, and actually Wednesday and Thursday were some of our lightest days ever, but then Friday…Friday was one of those days.  To start, we realized that we were 40 bagels short, which means that we have to tell some people their bagels would not be arriving.  For one person, I just told them they would arrive the next day and it was fine (someone who ordered 12 bagels) and then for the other 30 bagels we needed, the easiest thing was to remove the person who ordered 30 bagels, but this person also happens to have 35k followers on IG and I was hoping we would get a shoutout, which would be great publicity and a fast way to reach 35k people.  There was a lot of back and forth with her because we THOUGHT we had the bagels so after canceling, I said they would go, and then we realized that all the extra bagels we had were actually for our 8 pick up orders and I quickly messaged her to say nvm it would be the next day and ahghghgh it was a lot of back of forth and I felt bad about it.  It ended up being fine and we sent her a box of cookies the next day so all is well!  But also that same day, we made a strawberry short cake that MELTED inside the motorcycle on the way to being delivered, so the delivery driver brought it back and we had to do an operation to make it whole again.  It was funny, but also stressful and time and $$ consuming.  And the phone would not stop ringing…the phone rings in the most stressful moments, I swear.

The damage (the cake was in surgery at this point).  In the end, the newly dressed cake arrived safe and sound.

Then Saturday and Sunday were very long days, but only because we had a lot of work to accomplish, which is a good thing, but I constantly feel pressure to let our employee leave early and it really stresses me out, but we have solved that issue.  On the bright side, we have made 2 beautiful cakes this week!

Doesn’t that picture of the cheesecake make you want to dive into a pool of dulce de leche?  No?  Just me?  They made for some very happy customers, which made me happy.

On the mistakes front, we only forgot a couple of bagels this week, and the people weren’t overly upset, which is good.  I swear, every day we learn something new but MAN it is hard.  

Lastly, we started offering homemade challah french toast this weekend and it was a big hit.  We sold over 20 boxes in 2 days and I know that’s not a lot, but it sure ain’t bad!

It is already after noon and I am still in my sweaty running clothes so I am going to get going.  My day is going to involve much of the same, but since I am nosy and like to see what people do all day, I am going to tell you what I will be doing:

1. Take a shower 🙂
2. breakfast!  We have a lot of frozen berries, so I am going to make berry smoothies.  We also have a lot of leftover french toast, but I am a bit french-toasted out.
3. update the orders for next week.  I have 31 unread emails and a lot of unread IG messages, so I need to add them to our order excel
4. update our income/ expense form for last week
5. review last week’s orders and make sure everyone has paid us (this is very time consuming and a big pain in the a$$ and I know I should just make people order online but…here we are)
6. inbox zero- respond to and delete almost all emails
7. post to IG-….maybe one of the cakes from this weekend or a picture of the french toast boxes
8. call my gestor
9. place orders from our two suppliers
10. clean the house
11. make some food for the week (said smoothies, a batch of brown rice, baked crispy tofu, roasted zucchini and tomatoes, form  some hamburgers)
12. go for a walk and pretend not to know Luis when he sneezes
13. The end.

Ai voia!  (I know that’s not how it is spelled 😉 )