Pumpkin and Spice

When I have some time to kill, I love to visit the blog Cake Wrecks. Have you been? It's side-splitting. If you haven't been, go right now and poke around a bit. Don't worry, it'll open in a new window. I'll wait here... Back? Funny, right? Anyway, the premise of the blog is essentially that people send in photos of professional cakes gone horribly and hilariously wrong.

It's obvious from most (like, 98%) of the pictures that the cakes came from grocery stores. Okay, I live on planet Earth. I've been to a grocery store. I've seen half-heartedly decorated cakes sitting sadly in bakery cases and thought, "Man, oh, man. What jerk made these?" I don't fool myself that those cakes are made by highly experienced pastry chefs.

Well, friends, my time in Utah has come to a close. It's been quite an experience, and I've been glad to have you all along with me. I really do appreciate all the support and kind comments- they really helped keep my spirits up.

As I was looking through my photo albums, I found lots of pictures that didn't make it on the blog. I thought I'd share a recap of my time in Utah in pictures...

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 the new lodge, now- it's much smaller than the old one. The old lodge was the "base" lodge- where skiers park for the day, where you pick up your ski rentals for the day, and where you buy lift tickets, so it's quite a large lodge. The new one is the highest one up the mountain, and can only be reached (during the day) by skiing in, so there's not the same amount of traffic as the other two lodges.

In the morning, we bake muffins and other breakfast items for the day. There's a little cabin at the top of the mountain that sells hot cocoa, muffins, cookies and other snackie foods. We bake their treats for them, and then have to send them up the mountain to the cabin. How do we get them up the mountain? We pack them in a box, put them on the ski lift, and send them on their way. It's so funny watching that little box full of muffins and cookies riding up on the lift all by themselves. It makes me laugh every morning.

I started my new shift this week. I'm off midnights, and am now working the evening shift at the seafood restaurant. It's actually kind of a nice shift, because I'm sort of a night person, and I can sleep until 9:30 or 10a, and still go to the gym before work. It's awesome. I love not waking up early.

When I arrive, I generally duck into the employee cafeteria for a quick bite to eat- usually a sandwich and some fruit. I eat quick, then head to the bakery to start work. The restaurant doesn't open until 6:30p, so prep work occupies the first part of my shift. Usually it involves making sauces, baking mini-cookies, assembling tarts and making dessert items that need to be done day of, like chocolate mousse. After all the prep work is done, we have to slice and portion all the desserts. Since the restaurant is buffet, we then have to plate and garnish all the desserts.