If you think sitting on top of the world is great, try going around it!
Freshly made cookie dough… Scooped with an ice cream scoop to make our cookies… Most days we have an entire freezer dedicated to cookie dough… That is just soft enough that you can eat it.
I try to stay far far away from this freezer.
Suburban Tap, one of GBC’s customers, gave Corey and Alex a challenge a week or so. Create a habenero burger bun to top their El Diablo burger… A burger that no one should be able to complete.
While working in the office one day my lungs began to cave in and my eyes began to well with tears. I couldn’t talk. What was going on?! Corey was working on the bun without an overhead fan to consume the fumes. It was painful.
Bringing home the buns and telling my brother Matt of the challenge he of course has to try it.
I call Brandon, the chef at Suburban Tap, and tell him to expect us.
When we get there he greets our table and Matt tells him he wants a burger that lived up to the name El Diablo. Our friend Emory gets the regular El Diablo just to see the difference.
Matt’s burger has 7 habernos within the meet with tons stacked underneath. Even the fries are spicey.
Matt dives right into the burger, finishing it in less than 5 minutes and drinking less than a glass of water.
I wish I had a picture of Brandon’s face when he came out to check on the progress.
“I’ve made that burger twice and one guy wouldn’t even bite into it and the other one took 2 bites and threw up!”
He gave us $25 off our tab and when I told him I wanted to take a super spicey one back to Corey at the bakery he put it on the house.
This is life at The Grateful Bread Company.
Tucked away in a little office building in Smyrna… Don’t drive too fast or you might miss us!
The only sign we have posted is our name written in very small letters across the door.
Come on in! You walk right in to our break room.
That’s Corey working on the computer in the office. This is where I spend most of my day from 10AM- 6PM Monday through Friday. I’m the only person working at the bakery who has somewhat normal hours and a normal work week. Corey works 1-10 or 11PM and gets Saturday and Tuesday off. Corey is 37 and went to culinary school in Denver.
View from my computer.
Where the dough is mixed
Tub of Butter! Yummmm. I’m pretty sure we go through at least one of these a day when making our sweets…
Molding stations
This is a glass oven. You have to be very careful when opening and closing the doors because they are made of glass and can break!
By 10PM these racks will be packed with bread.
I would hate to get locked in this oven! This is a steam oven and we have two. Being a steam oven, it sprays a steam for 15 seconds at the end of each cycle which gives everything a glossy look. They can probably fit 4 people inside.
Flour/ nap room. That freezer in the back is our cookie freezer and it is FULL of cookie dough. Now being a freezer, they should be frozen but trust me those cookies are most def edible at any time of day. I try to stay far far away from this freezer. Our cookies are AMAZING.
The packing and slicing room. The three machines on the left are slicing machines, each for a different size slice. A 1/2 inch slice is for thin sandwich bread, 5/8 is for thick sandwich bread and 3/4 is for French toast and Texas toast, though Alex would rather have a 1 inch for it to be true Texas toast. I told him this was not a good investment since less that 5% of the bread we sell is sliced into 3/4 slices. I doubt he will take my advice. These machines are not cheap!
This is the packing list. It has each restaurant and it’s order for the day. When I come in at 10AM my first stop is this board where I hope every restaurant has a big COMPLETO next to it. The bread on these racks is extra and I can help myself to it.
This is the bread bin where all extra pieces go at the end of the night. It is like Christmas every day because I never know what will be in the bin and it’s all free game.
This is Corey and my baker/boss Alex. Alex is “my baker” most of the time but sometimes if I’m having to talk business he is “my boss”.
This is Pablo. He, Pedro and Rigo are from Mexico. They are the mixers and bakers.
This is Pedro, he is Head Baker when Alex isn’t around. He has business cards.
This is Goober. He only lasted a week and the entire week he talked about how much this job meant to him (as the helper and dishwasher in the bakery). His dad even came in and talked Alex’s ear off about how proud he was of his 22 year old son getting this job. Then his dad stopped giving him rides to work and he quit. I really really didn’t appreciate this. Quitters make life at the bakery much more difficult.
This is Anna, she is the happiest lady ever though I only know that through her smile because she speaks very little English. She and the other bread molders and packers are from El Salvador.
This is Silvia she’s super nice too. I like when the ladies come in at 6 and say “Hi Kate!” it makes me really happy. Juana is our other packer but she was off the day I was taking pictures!
Peter and I stopped by at 10PM on Friday to take Corey some dinner. Giving Peter a tour of the place this is what the back looked like. We have to cool all the bread before we can bag it so everything is on racks with fans going.
So this is my life :) Another adventure and we’ll see where it takes me… A road less taken… A road I didn’t know existed. It’s an exciting time.
http://perezhilton.com/2009-06-17-taylor-swifts-thug-story
Just love her…. So much love. Must watch.
29 days until Peter and I leave for Europe!
(Which means 31.5 days until his Ironman)
Sooooooo excited words can’t even do it justice!
Two Fridays ago marked my final day at The Wyche Group PR firm. A 3 month internship in the PR world taught me a lot more about PR than I learned in my 2 years of upper level public relations courses at Florida State. Serves me right for taking that Kaplan Test Prep marketing internship for $10 an hour rather than getting a real PR internship my final year of school. (I <3′ed my days at Kaplan!)
So now that the internship is over I’ve moved to Grateful Bread full-time, 10-6, the best working hours in the world. I absolutely love it though am a little unsure of what the future holds. Inez, my baker Alex’s wife, is getting out of the business so she is training me to keep the books, a task that she has been in charge of since the company opened in 2003. On top of book keeping, I’m still taking orders and creating our recipe pound sheet for the day (which tells the bakers how many pounds or ounces we need of each dough). When we aren’t doing those thing, Alex and I are trying to create an overall more efficient system for the company as well as create a marketing strategy to be implemented over the next few months. I also get to stalk restaurants online and see how our bread might pair well with their menu.
I’ve never been in the restaurant realm before so a few of my ideas get shut down since they aren’t restaurant protocol, but for the most part Alex is receptive to my plans and has a many great ideas himself. I think for him it’s nice to have someone with fresh ideas and for me, it’s nice to have someone who is a seasoned professional. It’s a good combo and the conversations are always interesting! (Plus my baker is absolutely crazy which I love!)
I swear I’m going to take pictures soon… I want to take pictures of all of my coworkers but for some reason I don’t think they would like that!
Just want y’all to know I’m having a blast and look forward to going to work everyday :) If anyone is interested in becoming a baker or a delivery driver we have positions available. I just need you to promise me you won’t quit after week one… It’s a tough place to break into but once you do you might really like it!
A few months ago Mom and I attended a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) luncheon with the Theta Alum group. I was the youngest by 5 years at the minimum, 20 years at the average. Coming into the dining hall we saw a few prizes you could purchase raffles tickets for. Most were stays at golf resorts, Serenbe and the like… As I recall there was a picnic basket with nice wine in it and an offer to have a professional chef come to your house and cook for you and 5 friends. The raffle that stuck out to me though was the one consisting of 2 tickets to NASCAR in Charlotte, 2 VIP Red Bull Energy Station passes and an autographed Matt Ryan football.
Now I’m not particularly a NASCAR fan but Peter (a sports freak to put it lightly) is, so the least I could do was try my hand at this prize (and at the very least if I was forced into a NASCAR weekend this one would be nice!)
So as the story goes I won the tickets and counted down every day until this past Sunday.
Here is the story of my NASCAR weekend…
We start the drive at 9AM and stop for breakfast at Waffle House around 11. Although telling Peter several times I would not be eating there he ignores my objections and pulls into Waffle House. It’s the “proper” NASCAR breakfast. Peter orders 3 orders of hashbrowns covered and a double waffle (which he does NOT finish[8 bites left... sissy]). Still it is a ridiculous amount of food to watch one person eat, especially knowing that person has a six-pack despite consuming 4000 calories a day. If Peter keeps eating like this after the Ironman we are anticipating he will weigh 200 pounds by August. I order hashbrowns super well cooked (nice and crispy!) double covered (that means 2 slices of cheese) and raisin toast with apple butter.
We make it into the race traffic and somehow are coming from the opposite direction as everyone else so it only takes us a couple of minutes to find a lot not too far from the track (about half a mile) for $10.
We have VIP passes to the Red Bull Energy Station so we bee-line it over there to start in on our free drinks. The place is pretty awesome and we soon decide we are very happy with our lives. Seeing as I hadn’t had a drink in 2 weeks it may have just been the alcohol but looking at the pictures I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.
Brian Vickers and Scott Speed come to the Energy Station and do short interviews. Brian Vickers is short. Scott Speed is silly. I got his autograph and it’s up on my bulletin board in my room.
A Red Bull BMX rider came by and did tricks. It was pretty sweet.
We sat outside on leather couches right next to the track.
We were served crab cakes and scallops on glass plates with real silverware and cloth napkins. There were also about 10 pretty attractive Red Bull girls serving drinks.
When it rains the track is dried with the use of plane engines on the back of trucks. It is very noisy and I think it probably consumes more gas than my Bronco. Just a guess…
Since you can bring your own beer, people go to their seats hours in advance even though they, unlike us, don’t have air conditioning for the hot HOT heat.
Before the race was scheduled to begin we hitched a ride through the infield where people were camping in motor homes.
The starting ceremony featured lots of flying things and American pride.
The seats we won were pretty sick.
Though it would have been cooler if the race had ever begun. Instead we sat and waited and drank for 2 hours until they had to call off the race for the day.
Not finding food aside from a gas station on our hike back to the car we stopped at this tent. Really I stopped and was welcomed in and then Peter came once I had gotten the okay. We hung out with these boys for the remainder of the evening before we went back to the car and passed out for the night. Or really, Peter passed out and I went to sleep.
The next day we got up feeling dirty and walked around from 10 until 11 waiting for the Red Bull place to open again. They had food and drinks but it wasn’t nearly as nice as it has been the day before and they were actually out of straight vodka so if you wanted a mixed drink it had to be made with citrus vodka which got me to stop drinking after about 1/2 a glass. The plates today were paper as were the napkins and the silverware was plastic… We stayed for 70 laps and then made the decision to head back to Atlanta. After 220 laps the race was called and some random guy won because he chose not to pit stop when a yellow flag was called and that yellow flag eventually turned into a red flag and the entire race was called.
Overall it was a very fun weekend and I would enjoy to return to NASCAR someday. But only if we have VIP passes.
Just realized it’s been a year and a week since I departed for my RTW trip! Thank you everyone who has kept up with me through this crazy adventure!
A year ago, I never would have guessed I would be at the place I am today but I am so very happy that I am where I am. I can’t imagine anywhere in the world I would rather be… Or, more honestly, any people I would rather be surrounded by (though a few of my overseas friends would be nice to have around!).
It sounds cheesy but I am so thankful for everyone in my life- especially my friends who keep up with WWK :) Thank you- you really mean the world to me.
(PS- I know you’re still reading- Google Analytics tells me so!)
So some of you know that I’ve always been a bit of a runner up until I tumbled down those stairs in Scotland. Not the best runner in the world, an average one really, but it’s something I’m able to do and that I enjoy (most days).
Last spring I began training for a 1/2 marathon I planned to run the weekend before my graduation but my plans got foiled as plans for partying my way out of Tallahassee took over. It’s a goal that I did not accomplish and for about a year now I’ve felt a little shame about my “I almost ran a 1/2 marathon” conversations. I planned to remedy this upon my arrival back in the states but the bum ankle I came home with wouldn’t allow me to do so.
It’s been 5 months since surgery and my ankle seems to be doing very well. I have my (hopefully) final doctor’s visit on Wednesday of this week and (hopefully) Haley (my PA [Physican's Assistant]) will give me the okay to start running again.
With this is mind, I started looking up half marathons in Atlanta. There aren’t many over the summer because of the heat so I’ll have a little more time to train than I had anticipated- which can be a good or a bad thing!
I’ve chosen the 13.1 Marathon in Atlanta on October 4. Already registered and paid for so I HAVE to do it.
Check it out::: http://www.131marathon.com/atlanta.htm
I’m really excited to have this new goal with a slight tinge of fear- gotta get things done- don’t want to disappoint myself!
Looking in to 1/2 marathon training schedules online (sadly I must have tossed the one I used last year which I loved!). If anyone has any suggestions or advice I’d love to hear from you!!! If anyone wants to make this 1/2 a goal with me you are more than welcome to join- the more the merrier :)
(And yes, it is slightly motivating that Peter is training for the Ironman in Switzerland… if he can do all that [2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride AND a marathon run] I think I can pull off 13.1miles. If not, I think he might seriously re-evaluate this relationship…)
I know I know! How could someone be so good at posting almost everyday while traveling and then get home with a job that involves sitting in front of a computer for at least 5 hours a day and never post a thing?
I’ll tell you how. If I wrote about this sedentary lifestyle, you, my loyal readers, would be disappointed and maybe a little ashamed. Man, I used to be cool… Like 7 months ago. What happened?!
OKAY soooo I’ll give you a quick rundown of my life.
Weekend after Easter- went to Panama City with my sorority sisters Jenna, Lauren, and Lindsay (and Lauren Whidden, Liz and Sam but they are still in college so they don’t really count!). I was going to post the pictures of the shenanigans that took place there but then Peter told me his parents found my website and seeing as I had not met them yet I thought it would be a poor decision on my part. Mom agreed.
I went horseback riding on April 26 in Conyers at Meneely Show Horses (where I rode consistently from age 7-18..). I was in pain for about 3 days but I plan to do it again soon! The problem with work is that it goes on till 5:30 and by then I can’t make the 45 minute drive to the barn so I can only ride on weekends and lately I’ve been out of town!
My tennis team made it to the play-offs! I only won one match all season (playing with Katie Pendergrass!) but I had a really good time and if Katie invites me to play again next year I will most definitely be up for it.
My sorority sisters Jenna, Lauren, Lindsay and Casey (Lauren’s cousin) came to Atlanta the weekend of May 1. Somehow I managed not to drink the entire weekend. I think everyone should pat me on the back for this. Or maybe I should get smacked. I know upon reading this some of you are frowning.
I spend Sunday, Monday and Tuesday afternoons working at the bakery. I am kind of obsessed with my job and the people there. They think I’m pretty weird. I can call my boss a crackhead and he just laughs so you can imagine it’s an entertaining place to work. Plus, we make the best bread in the world. It’s literally amazing. If you are ever in town and need bread just holler. Added bonus, my friend Andrea (who you remember from my time in England) is coming to work with me once she graduates this summer!
I spend Monday mornings, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at The Wyche Group. I felt really really lost for a month or so (as I did at the bakery) but I think I’ve finally hit my stride and I understand what’s going on. I’ve learned a lot about running a small business and how seemingly simple tasks (like going through certification processes) are actually a job in themselves. All I can say is that when you graduate with a degree in PR you think you know what it’s going to be like but really you have no idea.
Last weekend I went to Wastersound Beach with Peter and his family (minus his sister who lives in DC) for a 1/2 Ironman in Panama City that both he and his dad, Rob, were competing in. So now I’ve met the family and it was a much less scary situation than I had built up in my head (Me? Build things up in my head?Never…). Super nice. Never awkward. Good times. I got Peter an air-brushed towel with his name, race number and a sweet graphic of the triathlon components within “2009″. It’s awesome. Oh, and we played putt-putt.. I don’t think I lost as badly as when we played the same course over New Years but I still lost… Badly.
Thinking of which, I’m choosing skills that I want to become incredible at (in secret of course) so one day when that skill comes up in conversation I can be like “Oh I can do that” and then be amazing. Suggestions welcome.
My trivia team still kicks butt when people show up on Tuesdays. Mom, Dad, Peter and I won at NY Pizza Exchange in Vinings last night which was an unexpected treat.
I’ve been making a ton of pies.
60 days till I go to EUROPE! Wooooooooooo!