I had lunch with three of the members of our special group.  You know the one – the eight of us have known each other since elementary school, and we’ve celebrated turning 40, then 50 together.  With four of us managing to meet for the lunch, it constituted an impressive 50% turnout for the group.

At the lunch I asked Phyllis how she manages to stay so thin, and she said she doesn’t eat after dinner.  I’ve pondered that idea many times in my life, however it just doesn’t work.  So now I’ve found a compromise, which is to keep low-cal snacks in the house, and attempt to talk myself out of eating the bad stuff.

You’re thinking, why does she keep any bad stuff at all?  However, I can easily make bad stuff out of a loaf of bread, a pound of butter and a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.  I’d have to move to North Korea in order to truly be able to keep bad foods out of my house.

I may have mentioned a time or two in the past that I felt like quitting the fruitcake business.  This past week was another one of those times, when I half-heartedly thought I’d better do something for the business, and then wondered why I should bother.

Then the usual happened.  On Friday, I received a lovely e mail from Esther, the owner of Handworks Gallery in Oliver, saying she was running low on stock and needed to re-order!  I was giddy with excitement, and thankfully forgot all about abandoning the torture chamber known as the artisan food business.

Armed with this motivation, I’m going to do another marketing trip south on Friday.  I’ll re-visit the ten stores in the Okanagan currently carrying my product.  I’ve had new signs made for the Okanagan Harvest Cake, and bought adorable tupperware containers for samples.  That way I’ll be assured of a good quality sample going to the customer.

I sent my May newsletter out last week, and got a nice inquiry from Dawn, one of my favourite customers and a faithful reader.  She was confused about one part of the Yorkshire pudding recipe. I have to say, nothing makes me happier than when I hear from fruitcake customers, especially when they enjoy my newsletter, too.

So to expand my writing horizons, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and will be starting to record mom’s life story this Saturday.  Then once I’ve typed the hours and hours of information into my laptop, I can begin to write.  I have a strong suspicion that I’ll need all of the bread, butter, cinnamon and sugar in the house in order to pull off this project.