Cherry Blossoms

The cherry tree is blooming; I can't wait to eat cherries from this beauty.

Spring Break Visiting

 Joshua had a week off between the winter and spring terms this past week and, of course, with all the finishing up from last term, getting ready for next term, and trying to get done the things we had been putting off during the term, it wasn't much of a break. But we did enjoy having spending some extra time together and going up to visit Ben, Rachel, and their girls on Thursday. 

Both Jory and Amelia were sick, so that was too bad, but we still enjoyed getting to see them. We arrived in time to have tacos for lunch, then Rachel and I took the girls to a doctor's appointment while Ben and Joshua visited. The appointment ended up taking longer than expected, so once we were done it was almost time for dinner. Rachel's mom watched the girls so the four of us went out to dinner at a Thai food restaurant and it was delicious!

Back at the house, we enjoyed the chocolate creme pie I brought for dessert. It is always nice to spend time with good friends.

Birthday Time

We had rain Wednesday and overcast skies Friday, but my birthday on Thursday was a beautiful warm sunny day with white fluffy clouds. I enjoyed going on a walk around the neighborhood and taking pictures of some of the many flowers that are blooming.

Joshua and I tried out a Thai restaurant for my birthday dinner and we were quite happy with it. The atmosphere, although a little on the noisy side, was nice and enough on the fancy side to make it feel like a special dinner. We started with an appetizer and then we both had a crispy Thai basil dish for dinner. That was delicious and we had a great time enjoying dinner out together.

Saturday we had birthday dinner round two when Joshua made me breakfast burritos and we had apple pie for dessert. Evan's birthday is four days after mine and we share a love of apple pie, so we have had apple pie together around our birthdays for many years. This year we didn't get to actually eat our pie together, but we both had pies from apples that came from the trees here, some of which we picked together while they were here in August.

All in all, it was a fun way to celebrate turning 32.

Creswell Bakery

 I've been wanting to post some pictures from work for awhile, but since I don't take any pictures while I'm working, I didn't have any to post. Today I found these pictures on the Creswell Bakery facebook page, so I thought I would share them. This first one is from the outside and was taken a over a year ago, but it still looks pretty similar. The sign saying we are open five days a week is gone and the plants have changed a little, but you get the idea.

Here are some of the sweet rolls that I spend a lot of time with. Twice a week I make big batches of rolls, about 120 each time. We have four types of sweet rolls: cinnamon rolls, raisin walnut rolls, coconut orange rolls, and hazelnut sticky buns. The two kinds above are raisin walnut and coconut orange. And yes, they are huge.

Here are our two mixers, a 20-qt and a 60-qt. Yes, the 60-qt is huge too. It probably comes up to about shoulder height on me.

Bread, bread, bread! This is good stuff.

This is our large bread baking oven. We just recently started using this to bake a number of our breads and it has been working well.

Here are some more pastries from my side of things. I don't do any bread baking, my job is mostly pastry prep work and then on Saturdays I bake off the pastries for that day.

Here are Brenda and Heidi trying out the bread oven. Brenda is the head pastry baker and Heidi is the owner of the bakery. Brenda is the person I work with the most since we are the two pastry bakers. 

This is our bread baker, Dave. He is up in the front part of the kitchen at the lunch line, none of the three of us bakers spend much time up here except in the early morning when we are using the ovens.

Lots of delicious goodies on display behind the counter in the front of the bakery.

And this picture is from this morning after I finished baking off the pastries for today. Jason, the manager and head chef, made me the special for today for breakfast. On a typical Saturday I usually bake 3 dozen cookies, 4 dozen scones, 1 dozen ham and cheese pretzels, 4 dozen biscuits, 2 dozen muffins, 1 dozen meat pies, 32 danishes, and 68 sweet rolls. I don't actually mix anything up on Saturdays, everything is formed and ready to go so I run everything through the ovens, brushing some with cream or egg wash, and then drizzle things with chocolate or icing and frost the cinnamon rolls. So, there's a little peak behind the scenes. If you are ever in Creswell, come on by!

March Update

I haven't been posting much lately, so I figured it was time for an update.

We are coming to the end of the winter term and with just one week of classes left before finals week, Joshua has been busy doing lots of reading and writing. He just recently found out that he will be solo teaching a critical thinking class next term and has also started preparing for that.

  Meanwhile I have been keeping myself busy with lots of baking, both at work and home. I have been on a bread kick lately and have been baking lots of bread. I got a starter going and used it to make a decent loaf of sourdough bread, but then the starter froze in the back of our fridge, oops. I'm thinking about starting another one soon though and will not store it in the coldest part of our fridge this time.

We have cabbage and tomato seeds sprouting for our spring planting and with all the sunshine we have had lately it feels like that time is just around the corner. There are so many things blooming around town now, it is really pretty. The daffodils came first, but they have been followed by many other flowers and trees and it is beautiful walking or driving pretty much everywhere around here.