Good morning!  I am sort of liking this Monday morning blog thing I have been doing…well, let’s not jump the gun…it’s only day two and if history repeats itself, then in about a week my streak will end.  But! So far, so good!  

Do you know what makes blogging first thing possible?  First, having nowhere to be!  It’s my one day per week where I don’t really need to go anywhere, besides maybe the supermarket, which I do by choice to stretch my legs.  And also, that my phone is on airplane mode and has been that way for about 15 hours.  I would be lying if I said I haven’t peaked at my email, but it’s not awful.  It’s whatsapp and Instagram that suck me in and then suck the life out of me.  Want to know a disgusting fact?  The newer iPhones (lol not that mine is new….it’s a 6 and I really need to bite the bullet and get a new one!  The battery dies within 10 minutes of being off the charger…or I need to get a new battery)..anyway, the newer iPhones tell you your screentime everyday and your average screentime every week and I get messages on Sunday like “your average screentime was down 8% this week for an average usage of 3 hours and 22 minutes per day.”  THREE HOURS AND TWENTY TWO MINUTES…..which does not include the time I spend on the computer as well.  In my defense, MUCH of what I do on the phone is for work (communicating with customers via IG mostly), but still, I find that number to be excessively high.  I could get myself a part-time job for 3 hours and 22 minutes per day!

So anyway, long story short, I have time to write this post because I am choosing to make it a priority and do it before I do anything else.  Actually, it’s only 9:30 am and I have washed all of the dishes, took the chicken scraps out of the soup I made yesterday, and I have some matzo balls simmering on the stove.  Look at me, a modern day mrs. doubtfire.  Or similar.  I actually made the matzo balls with olive oil instead of veg oil because we don’t have veg oil and the box says to use a tight-fitting lid for the pot and I don’t have a tight-fitting lid (well I do, but it’s at the bakery), so the jury is still out on how these matzo balls will turn out.  Rest assured, I will let you know next Monday.

Let’s see, what other exciting things can I tell you?  Oh!  I fell asleep at 9:30 last night and slept 11 hours!  I started reading Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman (just the free preview) and after reading for 30 minutes, I really could not stay awake and you know those nights where you don’t even remember lying there for a minute?  That was last night.  I feel much better.  Maybe in this phase of life, I need to be in bed by 10.  I mean, not maybe.  Definitely.  It’s just so hard because Spanish culture is such a night owl lifetsyle.  We eat dinner between 10 and 11:30 most nights and then I shower and get ready for bed.  At 8 pm, it’s like the whole night is ahead of us!  But this quarantine has been forcing us to be more American (stay home more, we eat dinner some nights around 7 or 8 and it’s SOOOOO early 🙂 ).  

Onto more exciting topics than my sleep patterns…food!  As you know, I am making matzo ball soup (better late than never and the fact that I am even doing this during the same MONTH as Passover is a reason to pat myself on the back!).  Besides the soup, I made a salad last week that was delicious: massage a lot of kale in olive oil, salt and lemon juice.  Then let it sit so it gets soft and then add wheatberries or brown rice, dried cranberries, dried apricot or dates or figs, toasted walnuts, feta or other cheese, and another seed if you like (pumpkin, sunflower), and top with more olive oil and lemon.  It was delicious.  Luis added chick peas to make it heftier, but I opted out. 

I am also making another french toast.  It is soaking as we speak.  We are toying around with the idea of offering Saturday morning challah french toast, but since 1. our team is small and 2. our kitchen is small, we won’t really be able to make the french toast in the moment, so we are seeing if it can be pre-made and re-heated when ordered.  With the french toast I made last week, I reheated it for a few days afterwards and added syrup and to me, it was exactly the same as the first day.

In other work related news, things are going well.  We continue to sell out every day and actually just bought more boxes to be able to make more bagels per day.  Now that we figured out that our less-than boiled water was not giving the right texture to our bagels, the bagels have been amazing.  And we have been receiving great feedback.  Also, we have made more challahs in the last two weeks than we have during our entire existance…combined.  It’s insane.  But actually, I really like making challahs and find the braiding to be very soothing.  It’s something that has to be done slowly and with care, whereas bagels can be made quickly.  This upcoming Wednesday, which is our next work day, we currently have 10 challahs reserved, which is our highest number yet!  I know these are small figures, but they are big for us.

In other other news, we are planning to order a couple neon signs for the shop soon and I am VERY excited about it.  We planned to do it awhile ago, but neon (but actually LED- neon is illegal!) is expensive.  So we held off, but now feels like a good time.  We are also planning to have light-weight tshirts and tank tops made and I am super excited.  I really think it will help our brand/image to have some bagel-wear, but I am open to challah and lox-wear too.  

This past weekend was a good one at work.  We had a huge number of orders without a huge number of hiccups, but hiccups DO happen.  Criticism and not doing things perfectly has never been my strong suit, so there has definitely been a learning curve. I try to remind myself that when we do something wrong, 1. we will learn from it and not do it again, 2. we will create better systems to not make mistakes, and 3. it’s not ME they are criticizing, it’s just my business, by baby 😉  For so long, when I was working as bruja’s bakery, I was the brand, and to this day, my face is the picture for our Instagram, but with this new business, IIIII am less part of the image than I was before.  I am not quite ready to not be the image, because I do think it helps set us apart, but I have to remember that there is a whole team behind our image so we can all share the criticism together 😉  

Ok, this is getting to be way too long so I am off to get my Monday started!  Lots to do today including:

• laundry
• clean up the house…at least wipe down dust!
• make french toast
• organize business $$$ things
• figure out tax things
• answer emails and IG messages
• inbox ZERO or close to zero
• place orders for this week
• figure out sign/ tshirt things
• workout
• go for a walk (i mean…go to the supermarket…..)

Busy day!  Hope you have a great day and if you’re reading this, go for a walk 🙂