Pumpkin and Spice

It seems as the season goes on, my internet becomes less and less reliable. This morning I typed up a big, long blog post, and then my internet connection died, and I lost the whole post. After that, I was so frustrated, I had to take a nap.

Now, I've had a nap, been to the gym, eaten dinner and some ice cream, so I'm ready to tackle this again.

I'm at a new lodge (again)- I know! You can hardly keep track of me and my movin' all over everywhere! I'm at my final location now. I've been at the base lodge, and the top-of-the mountain lodge, and now, I'm at the mid-mountain lodge. Currently, I'm on the day shift, which is pretty similar at all the lodges. The day shift primarily does production for the front bakery, banquets, and helps a little with prepping things for the restaurant at night.

The front bakeries all have the same basic offerings, with some slight variations. Cookies, brownies, bar cookies, layer cakes, pies, breakfast pastries, that kind of thing. We also do lemon meringue pies, ice cream, ice cream sandwiches and carrot cake cupcakes for one of the restaurants at the lodge. Aren't the cupcakes sweet?

One of my favorite things to make at work is rice krispie treats. At the mid-mountain lodge, they're made with bittersweet chocolate and chocolate chips. (At the base lodge, they're butterscotch! Yum!) I love to make them- melting the marshmallows, stirring the massive batch of rice krispie treats by hand. mushing them into the pan... it makes me feel like a little kid again. Luckily, no one else really likes to do it, so whenever they come up, it's easy to snag that task. Lately, we've been trying to "fancify" them, so when I made them, I moulded them into a circular shape, then drizzled them with white and dark chocolate. I haven't seen Chef since then (he was off that day, and I've been off the past two days), but hopefully he likes them. I think they look classy.

There are a few breakfast items that all the bakeries make- cinnamon rolls, croissants, brioche toast, and bear claws. Our bakery also has a selection of savory breakfast items- ham and cheese croissants, florentine croissants (filled with an egg and spinach mixture) and mini-quiches.

The mini quiches are very popular, so while I've made them several times, I've not yet gotten the chance to try one, because there are never any left at the end of the day! I can't imagine they are anything other than delicious- filled with egg, cheese, bacon and shredded potato, how could they not be tasty?! They're also terribly adorable- I'm pretty sure it's a scientific fact that small, cute food tastes better than it's larger counterparts.

The other day, I signed up (we have a prep list) to make the ham and cheese croissants, which seemed like it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. I mean, it's just a croissant with cheese and ham slices wrapped up in it, right? I was expecting the ham to be the ham that they slice thin and use on deli sandwiches at the sandwich counter out front. As it turns out, the recipe uses bone-in ham, so I had to go down to the storeroom to fetch a huge 25lb ham. Unlike your holiday Honey Baked ham, though, this was not trimmed of most of its fat and spiral sliced, so I had to carve it, and trim it of almost an inch and a half of fat and skin. It was rather time consuming, and kind of icky (being cold and slimy). I dunno- I think there's a reason I'm a baker and not a butcher... Once I got the ham carved, though, it was all easy-peasy from there. I don't know if I'll be signing up for that again.

I'm starting to pack up boxes to mail home. I have less than thirty days left in Utah, so I'm trying to lighten my load for the trip home. Both of my suitcases were overweight, and crammed so tightly I could barely zip them. I just don't feel like trying to deal with that again. I'm starting to get pretty excited!