anna star

I'm not exactly looking forward to the next three days at work. Let's just say that, on a regular Saturday, with four bakers, we bake about $4400 worth of bread & pastries. On Christmas Eve, with six bakers, the plan is for something like $7500 of production, not including all the tarts we'll bake the day before. At least the time will go by fast... right? I managed to switch to an earlier shift on Christmas Eve, so I'll be off by 1pm (or 1:30, or something close to that time, if all goes well) and Jason and I will be able to make the ferry to get to Saltspring for dinner at his sister Kelda's house.

Today I am baking, at home:
-bread pudding (for me to eat for breakfast the next three days)
-shortbread cookies (maybe more than one kind)
-peanut butter & Reece's Pieces cookies

...because I don't want to show up anywhere empty-handed, and I like cookies. I'm just waiting for my butter and peanut butter to warm up to room temperature so they'll be easier to work with. Cookies are so much easier than pastry.

I went to Value Village yesterday, and found this retro pudding mold for $5.99. It says "Made in West Germany" on it. Today, I buttered the inside and put the pudding batter into it. Then I rigged up a lid using aluminum foil and string, and set it up to steam for five hours or so. That was about an hour ago, so it should be done by 4:30... unfortunately, we have to leave here at 4 to get to Sooke on time for my dad's birthday party, so the steaming process is going to have to be cut a little bit short. It has to be steamed again for about an hour before serving it at Christmas dinner, so it should be all right. I was discussing steamed puddings with Jason's mother over the phone (she's British, so I thought she might have some advice on the subject). She got out The Joy of Cooking and was reading parts of it to me - apparently, steamed puddings have to be cooked very slowly, because otherwise the flour grains will explode before the fat melts, and then the pudding will be very hard and nobody will want to eat it. I was unaware that flour grains exploded. Most interesting. Anyway, the pudding is steaming slowly and hopefully all will be well.

Tonight, for my dad's birthday, we're going for dinner at the Sooke Harbour House. I hear they have new "locals only" prices, so we can eat there for something like $40 per person instead of $80. My mom's paying for it anyway. I'm excited! The reservation isn't until 7pm, but my mom asked us to come to their house first, around 5, hence the having to leave here by 4.

After yoga tonight I felt great. I listened to a dancey techno re-mix of Whitney Houston's new song, "Million Dollar Bill," as I stretched my legs into big happy strides from the bus stop to the house. I realized that yoga class is a safety net for me - I can feel crappy, forget to stretch, sit on the couch too long, but if I've paid for a class, I'll attend, and it will remind me why I need always to be in motion, why I need to stretch and dance and make myself feel good.

Unfortunately, now I feel totally blah and headachey and like I should just go straight to bed. Maybe it's from sitting on this couch. Maybe I've done it too much and my body is saying, "No! Don't sit on that damn couch any more! That's enough!" Whatever this cold was that I came down with on Friday, it's a lingerer. I'm fine, except I still have some kind of laryngitis. I worked today, and I was fine, except I couldn't talk properly, and I had a bit less energy than usual. The baker working with the ovens is supposed to call out each bread as it comes out of the oven, so that customers will know it's ready: "Hot German Rye!" as you hustle the loaves out of the heat and throw them on wire racks to cool. Fat chance of that happening today! I didn't say anything at all, I just banged the bread out of the tins and passed it to the sales people without a word. I want my voice back! I want to sing along to this song! I want to join a choir again! Having a cold is so OVER, people. I'm done.

Oh yeah - I'm making the Christmas Pudding. For the Christmas Dinner at Jane & Robert's, where there will be a lot of people in attendance, and the pudding will be served with flaming brandy and hard sauce, in true British fashion, and it will be exciting. So I'd better make a good pudding. I'm letting dried fruit, lemon peel, nuts, butter and grated carrot soak in dark rum and lemon juice in a sealed container in the fridge for at least 3 days, and then I'll make the pudding with it and steam it for ... five hours? Minimum? My god, no wonder they used to make these things a year in advance. When the hell am I gonna have five hours before Christmas to hang around the house and make sure I don't boil the pudding steamer pot dry?

Oh, don't worry. I'll figure it out.

There are two very small baby slugs crawling about in the soil of one of my houseplants. I recently re-potted and resurrected this plant, which was nearly dead, using garden soil - which clearly had slug eggs in it! There's life everywhere, booze everywhere, jazz everywhere...

They're really cute. I don't know how long they'll survive, though. I don't really want them to eat the plant, and there isn't much else for them in here. But just for today, I'm not going to do anything about it. Now, off to the post office, to send a large package to Laura in Korea! It's probably going to be expensive, but everyone is chipping in!

I know this is kind of a long shot, but does anyone know if the Willows Galley fish'n'chip shop is owned by the same people as Demitasse (one or the other of the Demitasses in Victoria)? Google is not helping me out with this one.

My bank statement clearly says I spent $15.49 at "Demitasse Coffee", but I know for a fact that that $15.49 was spent at the Willows Galley on an oyster burger, a galley dog and a regular order of chips. So I'm guessing they have some connection to one or the other of the Demitasses. I got all confused at first, because I was at Demitasse with April just yesterday, but she bought my lunch. Seeing "Demitasse" show up on my bank statement made me wonder if someone had stolen my debit card info or something - but I didn't even take anything out of my wallet at Demitasse, April was so sneaky, she'd paid for everything before I even realized what was going on, and I KNOW that I spent about $15 at the Willows Galley. SO yeah.

To make things more confusing for everyone, there are not one, not two, but THREE places in Victoria with the name "Demitasse." There is the lunch/brunch coffee-shop at Blanshard and Johnson, the bakery store on Broad (what used to be the Rising Star bakery) where they make the bread for the Blanshard shop, and there is (as far as I can find out from Google and Eat Magazine) an entirely separate place in Oak Bay, owned by someone different, which is also a cafe/bakery called Demitasse. Apparently the Oak Bay place tries harder to be French, but I've never been there so I can't comment.

I'm fairly certain that no one stole my identity or my bank account information. Even if they did, they would have discovered quite quickly that I have negative amounts of dollars and given up, but all the transactions on my statement make sense to me, other than the fact that the Willows Galley is apparently actually Demitasse Coffee.

I got a lot of knitting done in the last two days. I called in sick to work on Saturday, and then heard the distressing news about my brother's friend's death, and so I was not only sick but also sad and really didn't feel like doing anything. But knitting always seems to calm my mind, the way that yoga or rock-climbing or other activities that force you to focus do. And so I knitted, because I didn't know what else to do. All I have left to do on my dad's sweater vest is the few rows of ribbing around the neck and sewing in the tails. Then blocking, and it's done. It may be a little bit too wide, but I made Jason try it on and it didn't look too ridiculous, so I think it'll work. My dad's wider than Jason, anyway.

Interestingly, when I called in sick on Saturday, my co-worker who answered the phone immediately told me I should stay home and rest up. My experience with this place of work has been that everyone comes to work sick, and when you do call in sick, the managers will try and convince you that you can work anyway. Uh, and give it to everyone else who works there? Not to mention the fact that we're working with food, and it's a damn bad idea to work with food when you're ill. Perhaps my co-worker had, like me, read the Wikipedia article on sick leave, and was bound and determined that he wasn't going to catch whatever I had. I don't think we get more than one or two paid sick days per YEAR at my place of work, and that's probably only for full-time or salaried staff. I think everyone should read that Wikipedia article, especially the people who decide whether or not to allow for paid sick days. Dammit. The statistics say it all.

My mom keeps asking me if I'm going to get a flu shot. As in, an H1N1 flu shot. Well, not right now, as I seem to be fighting something else off. But I don't know if it's worth it or not. She even admitted that it does seem like "a bit of a crapshoot." She also told me that most of the people who end up in hospital with the H1N1 are women, between the ages of 19 and 40. I suppose I do fall into that category. I don't know. I just don't see myself getting it done, especially not before Christmas. Maybe I'll consider it again after that.