Red Hat Society Cupcakes!

I have been meaning to write about these cupcakes since they were made. The wonderful Lara and I made them for my mother’s 50th birthday party. (If you don’t understand the importance of the colours and whatnot, then you should read up on the RHS. Then they are quite funny.) Their creation was a bit of a fiasco, but as you can see, they turned out wonderfully, and with much leftover material.

Our initial shopping trip involved a lengthy visit to the bulk barn for baking supplies, (fondant, food colouring, bulk icing sugar…) and some other grocery store for an entire dozen eggs and two whole sticks of butter, all of which we used. (These cupcakes were healthy.) The baking all took place at my parents’ house, so I had a hard time finding things, so we wound up buying a large amount of unnecessary junk. (For example, four muffin trays and a giant bag of powdered sugar.) There was also a dart lying around in the kitchen mysteriously, so it got used as a baking instrument. (By baking instrument I mean poking thing to open stuff with.)

Our first step was to make the cake itself, which I am ashamed to say was cake-in-a-box. After using an entire container of red food colouring to make the batter the right colour, we popped the cake part in the oven and planned our next trip to the Bulk Barn. We made one batch of buttercream in the meantime, thereby making a complete disaster area and staining pretty much everything in my parents’ kitchen purple. (The meat cutting board will never be the same.)

My plan with the rec cupcakes was for the icing to be red as well, so the fact that we had already used up all of our red food colouring on the batter was an issue. Once the cupcakes came out of the oven we went on another Bulk Barn adventure and picked up another container of red food colouring and (on a whim) a tiny vial of strawberry flavouring. Seemed like a productive trip. We then drove fifteen minutes back to my parents’ house and started making the second batch of buttercream. One whole stick of butter (See? Healthy.) and a crazy amount of icing sugar later, we had some yellowish-white icing. Upon adding another entire container of red food colouring, we had some slightly pink icing. Frak. Two more trips and three more containers later, we came out with the right colour.

After icing them, which was totally the easiest part, I had to figure out how the frak to make things out of fondant without them falling apart. (And pray that the little bit of purple that we had left was enough to colour the fondant.) With an awful lot of instruction from Lara, I spent about a million years making tiny bows out of sheets of purple sugar. Lara felt the need to take a picture of my “trying hard face”, which, though you can’t really see it, features my tongue sticking out of the side of my mouth. It would have been neat if I had any tools besides a knife that was altogether too big for my purposes, but it wasn’t a complete disaster.

All the people who ate the red ones kind of looked like they had been eating people, but sacrifices must be made for aesthetics. If I hadn’t spent so much money learning to be a musician already, maybe I would consider learning to be a baker. (Maybe I will anyway?)

Adventures in Deep Frying Pickles

I was having a conversation with a friend today about life and hoop scotch [sic] and other things, and eventually we got to talking about food. Being in Japan presently, he was talking about places from Kitchener that he misses eating at. Greasy food cravings, bacon (which apparently is not that common in Japan), and pickle fries. I suspect now that pickle fries are something completely different than I thought they were, but regardless, I started thinking (and talking) about deep fried pickle spears. (There was also talk of wrapping deep fried pickles in bacon and then oven-roasting them, but as I didn’t have any bacon, that will have to be an adventure for another day.)

I decided, as I hadn’t eaten anything yet (at 3 in the afternoon), that deep fried pickles were as good a lunch as any. I Googled “deep fried pickles” and briefly looked at one recipe, but before I had even finished reading the ingredients list I thought to myself “psh. I can do this. How hard can it be?” I know what you are thinking: “Oh no. Things that start with ‘how hard can it be?’ always end in disaster!” but not so! For once, it was really easy. If anyone cares to try it, I will send you my delicious made up combination of stuff that I used for breading and breading adhesive, but it would be easier for you to just look it up on the internet. (I’m sure there is a name for ‘breading adhesive’, but I don’t know what it is.)

So Operation Home-Made-Deep-Fried-Pickles was a great success. Successful enough that I felt the need to take an artsy picture to show them off. (I should be a food photographer.) As you can see, they are a little bit ugly. (Who knew that the technique for getting breading to stick to meat does not also work for pickles?) The ones that were double-breaded looked much prettier, but the breading fell off of them a lot easier. You can’t win them all.

All in all, a delicious way to spend half an hour.

Drink Recipes Made Up While Drunk

Blue Murder-Death 5000: Approximately one eyeballed ounce of blue curacao, one of spiced rum, ice, fill with gingerale. 

Verdict: Actually kind of delicious. This has a real name, and real measurements, but we found it at a LAN party and couldn’t be bothered looking up the real name or recipe, so we renamed it.

Black Hole: (Originally called the Blue Murder-Death 9001) One small blue freezie, some strawberry syrup, pink lemonade, lemon juice, and a completely arbitrary amount of blue curacao.

Verdict: Tastes like syrupy sweetness. Started out blue with red at the bottom, then when it got stirred, it turned black. Hence the new name. Devised by Bryan when I told him to surprise me, with the qualifier “make it something delicious”.

Blue Cow: Blue curacao and milk.

Verdict: Kind of delicious also, but bad for people who are lactose intolerant… Like me.

Adventures in Closing a Restaurant

I was really worried about my first close all by myself, and while I don’t think it was a complete failure, it was definitely a bit of an adventure. I’m not even going to embellish this one. It is pretty entertaining on its own merits.

(Note: I’ve decided to use fake names for my coworkers because I am not sure how they feel about me talking about them on the internet. Not that it will really help, but at least I can feel like I am providing some kind of anonymity.)

First of all, I started the day thinking that I was going to be closing with Bill as my delivery driver. (Most times there are only a manager and a driver working on a close shift.) I was not excited about this premise because Bill does not know how to do managerial things, so if I couldn’t remember something I would be up the creek. The store manager called me that morning for an unrelated reason, and told me that Bill had quit, effective immediately, that morning. (I suspect that this is related the yelling match that he had with another driver two nights prior.) She also told me that it didn’t matter to me, because my closing driver was supposed to be Dimitar (who does know how to do managerial things). So I went in to work at 5:00 armed with that knowledge, thinking that my close might not be a disaster after all.

I got to work and the store manager informed me that Dimi was not my driver after all. It was supposed to be Diego. This was troubling, because he does not know how to do managerial things, or even basic non-driver things, so he would be no help at all. (Especially combined with the fact that I find his accentreally hard to follow.) Then about an hour into the shift, the manager gets a call saying that Diego has just found out that he is getting deported, so he has to quit, effective immediately. Dimi was at work at the time, so we asked him to stay and close (even though he had already been there since 10 AM) but he was feeling fairly unwell, so he opted to go home and sleep. We called in the assistant manager to close with me, which meant that I probably wasn’t going to fail. Bully for me.

The night went on fairly uneventfully. The store manager went home, the assistant manager drove deliveries, there was a little rush, we dealt with it, the night went on. Then, at about 9:30 or so, Mr. Assistant Manager called me up while he was on a delivery and told me that he had blown a tire and had no idea when he would be able to get back. At this point I had no idea what to do. I texted the store manager and she said to call Dimitar, so I did. I told him the story, and he grumbled and thought about it for about a second and then said “Fuggit. I’ll be right there.” (I later found out that he was only hesitant about coming in because he was in bed and full of Nyquil.)

I called all of my delivery customers and told them the story, and they were all very amicable about it, and agreed to come pick up their orders. Great. Now I had just called in Dimi and dragged him out of bed to not make any deliveries.

After that the night was fairly uneventful. Dimitar, in his true fashion, was not upset at all, (or at least didn’t seem it) and said that I should have called him right away instead of waiting. Assistant Manager came back after Dimi had been there for about half an hour, and then he left and the we finished the close, (very late,) after I dropped the scale on the floor and broke it. But that was one of the less concerning parts of my evening. Hopefully my next close goes smoother.

Distraction

I had originally written a long and elaborate series of words about the tiny herb garden that I recently acquired, and then I remembered that I have to close at work tomorrow, ALL BY MYSELF and I am terrified, and that is much more interesting than me not knowing how to identify a bunch of plants. Maybe I will talk about my plant-related confusion another day.

So work. I am SO SCARED to close tomorrow. It is a Monday night, so hopefully it won’t be busy, but I don’t have a good driver helping me, and I don’t want to have to call the store manager in the middle of the night and ask her what the crap I am supposed to be doing, so I will have to figure it out. I am just concerned that ten million people will decide that they want pizza at 10:30 on a Monday night and I will have to make them by myself because I will be the only one there because the driver will be out delivering ten million pizzas. I am also concerned that I will forget how to do all of the computer things that are necessary for a close because I still haven’t ever had to do them myself without some serious prompting from someone else.

I guess time will tell. I’m sure I will have a ridiculous story to tell tomorrow night, but I will be too tired to tell it, so maybe the internet will hear about my exploits on Tuesday. We’ll see.

The Work Day from Hell

(Note: I’ve decided to use fake names for my coworkers because I am not sure how they feel about me talking about them on the internet. Not that it will really help, but at least I can feel like I am providing some kind of anonymity.)
Today I ran the store for the first time. For eleven and a half hours. From opening, at 9:30, (after getting out at 12:40 AM on my close last night,) to a scheduled 8:00, which turned out to be 9:00 when I finally got out. I had Will there helping me out, but it was still largely my problem to deal with things that came up. It was a Thursday night, so needless to say, it was stupid busy. People like pizza on Thursdays. Something about it being pay day or something. Not only was it ridiculously busy, my first shift as manager, and my seventh shift ever, but I was saddled with the two worst drivers in the store.

The whole day was a bit of a fiasco, but the worst didn’t really start until the dinner rush. My drivers were alternating on boxing pizzas, which is always a bit dicey, because while one of them seems to be able to read the labels, the other just takes the first box and the first pizza and puts them together, regardless of what the label says. Needless to say, disaster ensued. At LEAST two pizzas were switched around and delivered to the wrong places. I only heard from two customers, at any rate. Who knows how many suffered in silence. I shouldn’t let the drivers box, but if they don’t do it we’ll be even slower. One set of people called back and were really good natured about it. We were swamped with deliveries, so they said that they would come out and pick it up, and all was well with that order. Another wronged delivery recipient called, and were much less friendly about the whole ordeal. (You can’t win ‘em all I guess.) At this point I had a lobby full of people, I was the only one on the phones and front counter, Will was buried in pizza orders, and my drivers were both out on unnecessarily long delivery runs. I am pretty sure I sounded like an absolute idiot on the phone with these people, as I had like ten people trying to talk to me at once and I was trying to get advice from Will on what to do for these people. In the end they opted to come pick up their order too, because god knows when my drivers were going to get back in. So they brought back their pizza and talked to Will about the order. I was too busy freaking out and being frazzled to talk to them, and Will seemed to have it under control. He took the old pizza, (though why that was necessary I am not sure,) gave them the fresh one, and all appeared to be well. After another little while of running around like an idiot because I didn’t know how to deal with it being as busy as it was, Will and I noticed that the pizza we had taken back had vanished. One driver had gone home and the other had no idea what happened to it. I just pray that it didn’t get brought out to a customer, but I am seriously worried that it might be the case. I suspect that I will hear about it later, and who knows what will happen, in that case. I know I would fire me, if I were the boss and that is what has happened.

The Most Interesting Part of My Day So Far*

Here I was, being all domestic and cutting up an onion in the kitchen, and this quiet sort of constant hum asserts itself on my awareness. I don’t really notice it for a while, cooking happily and blinking away onion-tears, but then I realize that it is getting louder. My directional hearing has never been very good, so I am not surprised that I can’t really identify where it is coming from. I assume it is a sound from outside somewhere and move on to crushing garlic in a damn poor excuse for a garlic crusher. As I listen to the ambient sounds of the house, I realize that this noise sounds something like a motor. In fact, it sounds remarkably like a small motor boat, skimming over water, complete with the pulsing rhythm as it skids over waves. For almost a whole second, my brain is satisfied with that answer. There must be someone boating. That’s fine.

Wait, what?

There is no body of water within miles of here that could support that kind of boating, never mind within earshot through closed doors. What the hell could it be? Then suddenly… It stops. I shrug and move on with my life, stirring spicy things into my pot of pungent mush. I go into the living room to check up in the internet, when all of a sudden: BANG! - from above me. What the hell was that? Is the woman upstairs throwing furniture? Then comes a terrible sound like the house is going to come crashing down on my head - Have I told my family that I love them lately? I’m about to be crushed by the two upper stories of my house. Should I try and make my peace with god? The bookshelves are shaking, the light fixtures are trembling, the whole building is about to come down, I’m sure. - Oh no, wait. That’s a vacuum cleaner.

          *Aside from my conversation with my most faithful reader, of course.

Disaster Averted

Aside from some very minor, and not particularly amusing disasters yesterday, I would say that my first day of pizza-making was a success! Actually, I think it may have been one of the less awful first days on the job that I have experienced. Let me tell you though, rolling pizza dough is exactly as hard as it looks. (That is to say very hard.) A person needs a lot more hand-eye coordination than I possess, but I managed to avoid throwing any dough across the room, so good on me.

The fact that I will eventually hold the title of ‘manager’ at this place doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot. More responsibilities, like a quarter more per hour, and otherwise exactly the same work. But what can you expect at a place where there are never more than two people working at one time?

On a non-pizza related note, I made some really revolting cupcakes this morning for no reason whatsoever. I had a box of cake mix and a sleeve of cupcake… sleeves (?) so I made cupcakes. As it turns out, you really can’t substitute margarine for shortening in that kind of situation. You will wind up with frosting that is nothing but margarine and sugar, and it will not be at all delicious. At that point, Bryan showed up and saved the day with a stroke of genius a flash of inspiration chocolate syrup. Now I have a bowl full of watery, poo-coloured frosting that is fit for a king. Or maybe a starving baker.

Thank You, Papa John!

I have just completed one of my shortest job hunts ever. I suspect that this is because I was willing to settle for whatever job someone offered me. Here’s the story:

Yesterday I did my first day of actual resume distributing in person. I went to about a dozen places, though only a couple of them were actually hiring. When I got home, Bryan called and told me that he read on a piece of paper stuck to a pizza box that the pizza place down the street is was hiring managers. Thinking that I really have no managerial experience, and didn’t really have a chance at all, I sent off a resume. An hour later, I got a call asking if I could come in for an interview. I went in for that interview today, announced that I wanted to be general manager, and the manager basically said “Okay. Can you start on Tuesday?” (There was a little bit of ridiculousness in the middle where I had the manager and my mom laughing at me simultaneously, but that’s a different story.) So… Now I am going to be a manager at a pizza place, despite having never made pizza nor been a manager before.

Sounds like an adventure to me!