I know how frightening it is to check for my new blog on a Sunday and not find it.  However, yesterday Marilyn and I were slugging it out, baking as many fruitcakes as we could.  I can only describe the experience as similar to deciding to push your car home, rather than driving it.

To make Okanagan Harvest cakes, I have to have all the bags of fruit ready to go.  I start by shopping for the fruit and nuts, and get cases of apples, pears, and apricots.  Then I have to go to a different store for the butter, eggs, flour and sugar, and finally the licquor store for brandy and rum.

The pears and apples have to be chopped into small pieces, and I do this by hand with shears.  The apricots can be chopped in the food processor.  Then I measure the fruit, cook it briefly with apple juice, and put it into plastic bags.  After that, I have to put sheets of almonds into the oven to gently brown them.

When Marilyn comes, we use the prepared fruit and nuts, but still have to make the dough, and also chop the two kinds of chocolate.  The pans have to be sprayed, and the older ones lined in parchment as well.  Once we get going, we’re like automatons.  We fill pans, put them into the oven, make more dough, remove baked cakes, and stack them on the baking racks.

Once cool, the cakes are de-panned, poked with a skewer, and soaked with rum.  They’re then placed into plastic bags, which are then vacuum-sealed.  Later on, these go into my little white boxes, onto which I’ve stuck the front and back labels.  Did I mention the cleaning of the pans and kitchen at the end of the baking day?

You know what I said to Marilyn?  I just love it when people tell me the fruitcakes are too expensive.  One day some poor fool’s going to tell me the product is too expensive, and a few seconds later they’re going to be walking away with a black eye.  Why I ever wanted to get into the artisan food business I will never know.

A nice woman from The Bay e mailed me a couple of weeks ago and inquired about my fruitcakes.  I e mailed back to ask her if she was thinking of ordering tens of thousands, but she replied that she was thinking of trying only 50 – 100 in a few stores.

I sent her my information sheet, and in reply she sent me The Bay’s forms for food suppliers.  I laughed when I looked through the pages and pages of information they wanted, including insane stuff like, “% moisture content.”  I e mailed back with a pithy message:  Look, I’m an artisan baker, and have no clue what the moisture content is, or any of that other stuff!

Of course getting into The Bay would push the value of the company up exponentially, but certainly at the expense of the proprietor’s sanity.  I know you’ll want to have me committed anyway for my lack of vision, but to me, it’s just not worth it!

When Margaret was here earlier this month, and I was dropping her off for her talk on social media, she said she was a bit nervous.  I said, “Just pray for the Muse of Public Speaking to descend upon you.”  I’ve often told people that I ask for various muses to descend upon me, and when they ask what happens, I can honestly reply, “They usually do.”

So, when I prayed for the Muse of Motivation to descend upon me this week, it (or perhaps she) mercifully did.  I finally took inventory of how much baking supplies I have on hand, and realized I don’t have enough tins.  I vaguely recall throwing away a hundred or so in December, but Step 2 – re-ordering, had alluded me.

So much better to know all of this now, before Marilyn comes barreling up the driveway, ready to bake.  Besides quickly ordering more tins, I placed a large order at the bulk foods store, and have asked for new labels to be designed for the Totally Decadent Fruitcakes.  Once I have those, all my labels will hopefully be done.

You can imagine the amount of coercion required to get me to do that, so off to the clothing stores I went.  I started at the sainted Bay, where I surprised myself entirely by buying a bathing suit.  Where that came from, I have no idea!  As it was 30% off, I immediately spent the money I’d saved at my favourite consignment store.  I bought a pair of adorable Liz Claiborne pants and floral-printed Susan Bristol shift.

Unfortunately, as with all addicts, opening the door a tiny bit is a complete mistake.  The next day I went to my second-favourite consignment store, and as they had 50% off all shoes, I bought a to-die-for pair of pink sandals.  On the shelf they had the most gorgeous bag, and the woman said it was a Gucci, and was around $350.

She said, “Would you like to hold it?”  I, being much cagier than the saleslady, declined.  I said, “If I go to the SPCA to look at kittens I don’t hold them, either.”  When I got home I told Nicky and his girlfriend about the great bag.  Taya said her mother (an antiques dealer) found a Gucci purse at a garage sale for $10.  The owner said she’d paid $3,000.

Taya said it was in a ‘weird’ colour of yellow, and the lining was dirty, so though her mother had given it to her, she never used it.  I said, “You give me that bag right away.”  And she said she would!  I’ll keep you posted on that, for sure.

Since early March the Muse of Dieting has remained, and I think this has added a new dimension to shopping.  Now I say to myself that I ‘need’ this or that item, and so you can imagine the predicament I’m now in.  I ‘need’ new clothes, and I want motivation to bake, so the hunger is insatiable.

However, as long as the muses keep me shopping for baking supplies, ordering new labels, and marketing to stores, then I guess that’s just the price one has to pay.

I’m as rigid as a piece of chalk, so change is something I avoid at all costs.  Same thing with surprises.  So it was quite astonishing that I actually did something very spontaneous, and dropped everything to attend the Celebrity Wine Festival in Osoyoos over the weekend.

I was minding my own business on Thursday when I was called by my friend Marie.  She said a friend had won tickets in a contest to this event, and couldn’t go.  I told her that I’m not much of a fan of these types of things, but she said I simply had to accompany her.

We left on Friday morning, arriving at my mom’s at noon for lunch.  When I had said to Marie, “You’ll meet my 85-year-old mom and her 95-year-old boyfriend” she said she thought she was going to be meeting typical geriatrics.  However, after a few minutes, Marie said she was just crazy for mom and Gerry, because they’re both so adorable.

We then headed to town to the Watermark Resort, where we had a large two-bedroom suite, all courtesy of the contest.  We went down to the pool, and lounged for a while before getting ready for the first event, a so-called ‘beach party.’

The organizers had cleverly arranged for free shuttle buses to the events, so we hopped onto the bus at 6:00 PM, and were soon joined by a group of women.  They immediately asked us if we were media, to which we replied that we were just ordinary schlubs.

However, these women were from Savour Magazine, which I’ve been trying to get into!  Guess what?  The editor wants to talk to me about getting into their fall issue!  It was just so lucky to be on that bus at that time.

The first event was a total snooze, involving standing and trying various wines while eating tiny bits of food.  We had to google Jason Priestley on Marie’s Ipad to see what the celebrity looked like, and once we spotted him we felt we had fulfilled our obligation.

On Saturday we had tickets to the gala dinner at Spirit Ridge, the huge N’Kmip Indian band’s winery and resort.  Tickets for this event sold for $250 each!

We had five courses of food, paired with so much wine that Marie and I started to get behind with our pairings.  Eventually, I had to just fob some of it off on the nice couple from Edmonton at our table.

Needless to say, I awoke this morning feeling like a small subway train had run over my head.  Marie had to drive my car back to Kelowna, with me reclined in the passenger seat.  With the excellent contact I made at Savour Magazine, I figure it was all worthwhile.

Doesn’t it seem like yesterday when Luke was home?  You may recall me saying I was cooking and cleaning like a lunatic, and it feels like it was just two minutes ago.  Yet, it was actually two months ago, and he’s home once again!  Not that I begrudge my beloved child a visit, but honestly.

This morning a made a dozen trips up and down the stairs, retrieving half-full cans of beer, a partially eaten package of Camembert, tipped Slurpee cups, and bowls caked with God knows what.  When Luke comes home, he arrives very hungry.  I guess that’s what home is for, so I have to stop being so resistant to it all.

My friend and sister-in-law, Margaret, was also here because she was giving a talk on social media.  She said she uses me as a test case, and as I’m too dumb to know almost everything she mentions, she said she knows people in ‘my demographic,’ ie old, need her help.

As you may recall, she’s the one who talked me into doing the monthly newsletter and to get onto Twitter and Facebook.  I love her newest idea for my business, which is to make videos and put them on my site.  Wouldn’t that be hilarious?  People everywhere could see me driving off, Ricky perched on my neck.

But seriously, Margaret said I could be filmed making various recipes, which could be helpful to some people.  She admitted that even though my recipes involve only four or five steps, they’re too complicated for her.  I often like to tease her about things like that, but then she reminds me that she has 2,000 followers on Twitter, so I shut up.

So, I guess that shows you that what one person considers the height of idiocy, such as not knowing how Twitter can help you in business, or conversely, not being able to produce Yorkshire puddings, is highly individual.  I asked Luke if he knew how to zip e mails, and he looked at me as though I was asking him if he knew how to count to three.

Mercifully, Luke and Michelle left for a trip to Vegas today, and won’t return until Wednesday.  That means I have a few days where I can work my way through piles of debris and that’ll hopefully enable me to clear my mind enough to do some more marketing.  I still haven’t called N’Kmip to see if they want to carry my product!

I e mailed Marilyn and asked her if she’d be able to help me bake a bit.  I know I had previously decided I could work away at baking on my own.  But surprise!  I haven’t done one damn bit of baking, so obviously I need to have Marilyn driving up to the house at an appointed time and date.  However, I see this problem-solving ability as just another sign of intelligence, however small.