Grand kids trip page 1

Gosh, a week has passed since my last blog. This was to be our grandkids vacation week but just before we were to leave on Sunday Dale was told that he would not get any vacation time as there is no other nurse to replace him. We’d already canceled Alaska when his job was iffy at best so flexibility became the key here.
We decided to just come to the Santa Barbara area, try a beach first then Cachuma Lake 2nd. Dale drove the Mazda as he had to go back to work for 3 days while I drove the truck with RV. As we started into Carpinteria State Beach the clutch on the Mazda started burning up and was dead as he coasted into the park. It is at a garage just outside the state park with a new clutch wiping out our vacation fund.

Carpinteria campground was full so after leaving the car off, baked about 450 cookies and drove on to Cachuma where we are camped near the lake. Well kids don’t care; they’d just as soon stay here.

Cookies are selling 2

Thursday was a really incredible day for me. I worked the farmer’s market and was able to sell cookies that I’d made to absolute strangers. I was more than a little nervous before the market just because I was concerned that people would not really like the cookies.

Now I know that I shouldn’t have my ego tied up in the cookies, but I’ve developed these cookies after investing lots of long hours. So my ego was on the edge a bit when I started giving out samples of cookies.

People really liked the cookies. I would handle samples of the cookies out and could see that they really liked them. I brought ½ of the cookies I’d baked on Tuesday which amounted to about 25 packages of cookies containing 4 cookies in each. I sold all of the packages except for 2, one of which I traded for a bottle of olive oil and the last one I gave to the lady next to me.

It was amazing to me to see that people really liked something that I’d developed and would like it enough to open their wallet.

Nate sold a bunch on Friday and I actually baked more as he can see more on Sunday. This is so exciting.

Accidents in the kitchen

On Tuesday Nate had the kitchen all day. I didn’t make it over there until afternoon because Dale and I were cleaning the apartment kitchen for Nate and Bekki.

We made it to the kitchen but after I started mixing the cookies found that we did not have enough sugar. Since Dale was helping me he was off to buy the organic sugar that we use. While he was gone I started mixing what I had and then the large mixer hit my wood handle spatula knocking it into the bowl and breaking it. The spoon broke in half. I threw away the butter/sugar as I was afraid of wood splinters being in the dough. I remembered a claim when someone bit into a piece of wood in a chicken sandwich then sued the vendor. No more wood handled implements for my kitchen.

Grandkids Vacation is Cancled.

Kids had their 1^st day of summer camp: computers, kick ball then swimming in the morning. Afternoon of kayaking, surfing and boggie boarding. We didn’t have much food to send, only a sandwich and water so they were starving after it was over. We went to Trader Joe’s and bought a ton of food for snacks and lunches for the rest of the week. By 8:30pm they were all asleep. Easy week for us.

I went back to Bakersfield and picked up Dale after dropping kids off. He has been swamped with his night job, a major pressure cooker these days. Now he was told he couldn’t take his vacation as he had requested. I know that we requested the days off before I left for Oklahoma, over 4 weeks ago. He was told today that he must give a request 4 weeks in advance. In reality there is no one to work for him as they are completely short of RN’s.

We are now trying to salvage our grandkids vacation. Good thing we didn’t go forward with the Alaska plans.

A long day

What a long day. We left at 6am for Santa Clarita to work the farmer’s market. We’d baked so many cookies only to find out when we arrived in S.C. that we were not yet approved to sell them. Seems that Nate forgot to tell me that he didn’t get all of the info into the market manager.

People actually came and asked for the cookies, one guy was specifically told by his daughter to pick up some. So we gave out cookies as samples building some good will I hope.

We came on to Santa Barbara where we will mostly be for the week. Grandkids have summer camp starting tomorrow at UCSB. They will have activities in the a.m. and then do a kayak/surfing camp in the afternoon. They are quite excited.

Cookies are selling

Got a call from Bekki tonight. Nate sold all of the cookies I made on Tuesday night between yesterday and today’s farmers markets. That was 4 recipes of each the chewy and the crunchy. There are no cookies for the Sunday market in Goleta. Guess is back to baking.

Oven is dying and I want to help

Since all of the cookies were left in Santa Barbara for the S.B. and the Montecito markets I had to bake more for the Sunday market in Santa Clarita. I’d promised some to several neighbors so thought that I’d make a couple of double recipes. Now one single recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies so I was hoping to make one double recipe of the crunchy and one double recipe of chewy.

When I was finally able to start baking it was already about 2 pm. As I started to bake I found that cookies were talking lots longer than they did when Dolly and I were experimenting with this recipe. The oven didn’t even seem hot at all. I have had problems with this oven; it is about 20 years old and not the highest quality.

I told Dale that I refuse to do any repairs on the oven because it is old. I’m determine to get my Viking.

Sick around here.

On Monday I tasted a cookie and found them too dry and by Tuesday they were really dry. I determined that I’d probably baked them too long in the commercial convection oven plus cooled them wrong. Since we were going to Santa Barbara to trade kids anyway I thought that I’d bake more and did that. The cookies turned out much better. Not the same with kids though. Poor Elias wanted to come back with us so badly but we’d promised Christabel that she could come back and besides Elias has had about 3 times alone here while Bel has had maybe 1.

Christabel had been sick but was feeling much better; well enough to be running around the apartment complex so we weren’t worried. Much to my chagrin she got worse almost as soon as we got home. She has had a high fever and we have spent our evening with cold compresses, cold water, Tylenol and so forth. Now we are all hoping that she not only gets better quickly but that the rest of us come thru without a problem.

Next week is day camp at UCSB for the older 3 and some sort of camp for Bel. Then we are off to San Antonio for a week, then back to Santa Barbara to camp at the Channel Islands and other things for a week. We have no time to be sick.