Pumpkin and Spice

 Hoo-ray! I got Flickr to upload my photos. It was slooooooow, but it worked!
This is yesterday's (Friday) post- I didn't change any of the wording to reflect that. I'll combine today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) together, since I'm going to be doing the same thing at work.

This weekend is opening weekend at the resort, so it's been a busy past few days at work. Since most of the staff just arrived within the last week, yesterday there was an employee fair. There were vendors of all sorts, employees with crafty ventures selling their wares, as well as free food. Since they anticipated about 600 employees at the fair, I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday assembling and plating enough pumpkin roulade for everyone. After plating, I worked the dessert station. Everyone got one ticket for dinner and one ticket for dessert, so I took tickets and gave out desserts.

Roulade is a fancy French term for what is more commonly called a swiss or jelly roll. Ours was a pumpkin spice sponge cake filled with a sweetened cream cheese filling. It was then dusted with powdered sugar and served with a cranberry sauce.

After serving dessert, and while finishing up some last-minute things in the bakery (guess what I did? Rolled pie crusts! That's what happens when you get good at something, I guess...) I ate a snack. I'd resisted pumpkin-cake scraps, but I was starving, and needed a nosh if I was going to go to the gym before going home for dinner. I grabbed a Stonyfield vanilla yogurt out of the walk-in and topped it with a small handful of homemade granola with pumpkin seeds. It was delish.

After I got home from the gym (at about 8p) I was starving, dispite my snack, so I made a super dinner- a fluffernutter with my chocolate pb on Orowheat oatmeal bread and a handful of tortilla chips.

I also had a surprise waiting for me- Sissy had picked up the mail and I had a package, which is always exciting. This package was from my friend Laura Kate. Laura Kate and I went to college together. She's a music teacher and a super-talented knitter/scrapbooker/crafter. She lives in Wisconsin, and I don't get to see her nearly enough.

She sent me the cutest hoodie on earth from Dog Bone Art. I love it! (And since it's brand-new, it's super soft and fuzzy on the inside. Don't you wish sweatshirts stayed that way?) It's starting to get COLD here, so this is perfect!

 This morning, I enjoyed an little treat- a fat-free raisin bran muffin from work! One of the coffee shops in town gets their baked goods from the resort, and this was an extra from the batch that was made for them. I got to take it home last night. I thought I'd eat an apple, too, but it was a big muffin, and I was full afterwards. I know bran muffins may not sound exciting, but I kinda like them. This one was good- not too sweet, and nice and moist.

And while I was waiting for the bus, I watched the sun rise over the mountains...

Today was a super busy day at work! I started out by making ginger chocolate spice tarts for a banquet tonight. They're a chocolate tart shell filled with a spiced brownie-type filling, studded with candied ginger. They're then topped with a chocolate honey glaze and milk chocolate. Pretty, eh?

Next, I made a ginormous batch of sugar cookie dough- Check out the picture. I put a soup spoon in it for scale- that's 9lbs of butter and 16lbs  of flour! That pitcher in the back is holding 40 eggs!

After it was mixed, I had to scoop it out onto trays. They trays of pre-scooped cookie dough are then frozen for baking later. I got about 210 jumbo cookies out of this batch. (I used a #12 scoop for these- I'd estimate that they're 2.5 oz cookies.)

 After lunch, I made a double batch of "ultimate hazelnut brownies" for a banquet. These little guys are positively packed with toasted hazelnuts! They smelled heavenly while they baked.

Having completed my major tasks for the day, I spent the rest of the afternoon helping other people, organizing the cooling racks and "detailing" the 60qt stand mixer.

I ate a Caribou Coffee granola bar while I waited for the bus to the gym. I did an hour of cardio, sauna'd for about 10 minutes, and headed home, where I had half a can of vegetarian chili with some tortilla chips.

...And two chocolate Fiber One toaster pastries for dessert.

The resort opens tomorrow, so I've got another busy day ahead of me!