Just a random thought that I had today: I don't know why I didn't look into taking a Greyhound bus home to visit! I tend to find out my work schedule only a week at a time which makes it difficult to book a reasonably priced flight. However, I just checked and there is a Greyhound stop in San Rafael (about 10 minutes North) and it would generally only take 8 hours to get to LA and I wouldn't be the one driving! I will explore this option further once I find out my schedule for next week and see if they are so kind to grant me with another weekend off. I have this weekend off as well but will be visiting with Kim and Eric and helping them with whatever wedding stuff they want help with and venturing over to Benicia for an adventure. Here are two cakes that I did today. This one was a FULL sheet cake. Now that's a lot of cake! (Sorry, I couldn't figure out why the picture isn't the right side up!)

And here is a totally radical cake! Careful not to look to long at it or else it might make you nauseous!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone! I have finally emerged from pie shell madness :) Needless to say, last week was filled with 12 hour days and a couple of nightmares about pies but other than that everything went fairly smooth for such a big holiday. Susan, the owner of the bakery, was in our store on Wednesday for pie pick ups and was very happy with the way the day went *pats myself on the back!* until about 4pm when the store in the city was mysteriously missing 14 pumpkin pies! We double, triple, quadruple count the pies for this specific reason and still to this day have no idea what happened. Luckily, we had just the right amount of pie shells and had just finished making new filling and were able to bake them right away so they could get to the city hopefully before the customers arrived to pick them up. I wish I could have been with my family for Thanksgiving but it just wasn't feasible. Thanksgiving day was actually not too bad though. Two other managers from work were also not going home so we all got together at one manager's apartment because she cooked the turkey (thank goodness because she was the only one that did the actual culinary part of culinary school!) and made stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. The other manager made a sweet potato casserole and a corn souffle. I was in charge of appetizers which was brie and crackers, shrimp cocktail, strawberries with marshmallow puff, and a new recipe I tried Parmesan-Scallion Pastry Pinwheels. They were really easy to make and actually quite delicious for being so simple. Ultimately, I ate way too much but slept like a rock that night (probably a combination of exhaustion and food coma!) I didn't have to be at work until 7:30am on Friday so I threw caution to the wind and braved the Black Friday shopping! First stop, 5am Sports Authority. I bought myself a new pair of warm fuzzy boots that were $30 (half off!) It has been pretty chilly here lately. My car even lets me know when it's cold because it *dings* and then a picture of a little snowflake appears on my dashboard! Next stop, Target. Nothing too exciting. Just bought a new duvet cover. Cashier commented that it was odd I was buying sheets and not electronics. Guess it was busier earlier but I didn't have to wait very long in any lines (or get violent with anyone for that matter!) Next stop, the mall in San Rafael that I had no idea existed until not too long ago. Kohl's wasn't that crowded and I grabbed 4 new bath towels for a grand total of $11 with tax. Walked over to Zumiez to get a new hat for EJ and then half off a hat for myself (I got complimented on my hat the next night which ultimately confirmed that it was a fantastic purchase!) Then I headed down to Mill Valley to Best Buy to get a new electric tooth brush that was $30 off (I have a mail in rebate form for $10 so it's pretty much like I got it for half the price!) and then went to Bed Bath and Beyond only to be disappointed in their sheet selection and left the store with water filters instead. Stopped at Starbucks to get an eggnog latte and a bagel and then headed into work. Yup, all that in 2.5 hours :) Impressed, aren't you? Here is a picture of a Jedi Lego-man cake that I did recently although I think it looks a little bit more like a Beatle Lego-man:

And here is the 3-tier dummy cake that I did for Christmas. The bottom tier is a ring of gingerbread people and each one is named after someone on our team:

This week's recipe wasn't too much of a recipe. I saw a delicious picture that was chicken breaded with French's French Fried Onions. However, it was very disappointing and not "better than breadcrumbs" like it claimed. When I headed out to work at 7:30 this morning, there was frost on my car! Thank goodness for seat warmers :)

We rolled a LOT of pie shells today to get ready for Thanksgiving. Thank goodness we don't have roll them out by hand! Here's a fun cake of a seahorse that I decorated today:

Here is a cute picture of Holly Monster that EJ sent me! She likes to burrow into the covers and peaks her nose out to say goodbye when EJ leaves for school:

Thursday was our quarterly employee appreciation lunch. They bought us food from Sol Food in San Rafael. We had Tostones Con Mojo and Maduros which were both plantains. I didn't really care for either of them. However, their salad with lemon-garlic dressing was absolutely addicting and so was their chicken. They hired a new HR lady named Lisa who was very thoughtful and wrote everyone a "Thanks a Million" envelope filled with a Lottery quick pick and scratcher. Neither one won but it was the thought that counted and was appreciated. Everyone also was able to pick out of a grab bag of giftcards and I drew out a $10 Whole Foods card that I can't wait to use for a nice home cooked meal with EJ!
Thursday and Friday were pretty hectic days at work. Lots of orders for pies are coming in already for Thanksgiving and we are in a pie shell making frenzy on top of our increased holiday daily production of buttercreams, cakes, cookies, etc.
Yesterday was my day off so I treated myself to a new pair of work jeans from Old Navy for $11 and a new belt from Target to hold up my other jeans for $7! I also treated myself to an hour massage because I feel like I've been working really hard and deserved to spoil myself. I also decided that I deserved a hair trim since I haven't had one since August and splurged $30 on that as well. One of my best friends from college and her fiance that lives in Pleasanton, came across the Richmond Bridge to have dinner with me last night. Kim and Eric met me at my apartment and we walked to Pizzeria Picco. The pizza was absolutely delicious! We ordered the Cannondale pizza with marinara sauce and house made sausage, roasted peppers, roasted onion, mozzarella and basil as well as the Della Santa with broccoli di ciccio, roasted peppers,roasted onion, roasted garlic and mozzarella. For dessert we each ordered a different soft serve ice cream that was delicious as well. It was the perfect ending to the day.
The bakery is usually closed on Sundays but both NorCal stores had to meet at our store today to do training. I decided to go to Donut Alley before work to start myself off with a healthy spread of donuts and coffee. The donuts were some of the best that I've had in a long time. However, the owner claimed to have the best apple fritter but I'm not sure that it can compete with one from Randy's Donuts! It will suffice until I can get back to LA to taste test. Anyways, back to training, a lot of the staff is new so it was good to go over various procedures and to ask questions and to make sure that everyone was on the same page. There were even some new things that I learned today which were very helpful. I can't wait to make it through this week and get to LA and vist! I've been missing this:

The recipe I tried this week was Taco Pork Skillet from Kraft. Pork tenderloin was a little pricey in the store so I opted for loin pieces which ended up working perfectly because the recipe calls to cut the pork into strips anyways! Also, I couldn't find the Taco Bell Taco seasoning so I went will good ol' trusty Lawry's taco seasoning. This recipe was very good and perfect for the cold weather we've been having here lately! Here are a couple of photos that were on Mom's camera from this past weekend that Grandpa downloaded for her and then emailed to us:

I got to do the 3-tier cake dummy for our store this month. All styrofoam! We were issued a challenge between all the stores that whichever store got the most orders based off of their dummy cake, would win homemade cinnamon buns from our Executive Head Baker! Our store is pretty competitive and together we came up with the idea to do a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving cake with a matching cupcake dummy display. I'll keep you posted WHEN we win!

I survived Giants madness and The World Series! Congratulations to the Giants for winning and ending the cupcake craziness. A fun side note: Brian "The Beard" Wilson apparently stopped by the store in the city and paid for everyone's sweets that was there! He caused quite a commotion and there were lots of photos taken but no one has stopped into our location yet. Last week ended with great news: I got promoted to Assistant Head Baker! That means I've just been promoted TWICE within 2 months. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself! The previous AHB put in her two weeks notice to go take care of her family which naturally opened the position to me. I was glad to accept and further my career. It was perfect timing because Mom, Dad, and David came into town this past weekend to visit me. We were celebrating an early birthday for Dad and being together for the 4th anniversary of Grossvater passing away.

Saturday night we ate at Guy Fieri's restaurant in Santa Rosa called Johnny Garlic's since Dad is a huge fan of Guy. Dinner was great. Sunday we headed into the city and checked out AT&T Park where the Giants play. We had a clam chowder sourdough bread bowl lunch at Boudin Bakery on the wharf. It was raining pretty good all day which put a little damper on our site seeing but the most important part was that we were spending time together as a family. Fam Bam, thanks for a great weekend! I love you lots!