I don’t have an extraordinary amount of fruitcakes on hand, but nonetheless, for once I’d like to sell out.  Then people would learn to order more, and earlier, next year.  This is hard to do, of course, but I was cautiously optimistic about the double-header of promised media: a mention in the gift section of Savour Magazine, and an interview on Shaw Cable.

As it turns out, the winter issue of Savour Magazine doesn’t hit newsstands until tomorrow, December 20th.  Most women have bought their Christmas gifts by now, and few men probably browse Savour, so I can only hope it’ll catch women’s attention for next year.

However, it’s a beautiful-looking magazine that lies for months in hotel rooms around the Okanagan.  So I have to remain optimistic that tourists will browse the winter issue and see my bark and fruitcakes.

I have no idea when the Shaw Cable interview will be out.  They filmed on December 8th, and when they left, I asked if it would be on the next week, and Tamie said it would.  However, now it’s been 11 days and no sign of it.  I was kind of hoping that would drive my final sales.  Sigh.

So I guess you can see why a person would be in a vile mood.  I still have some miscellaneous bits of shopping to do for mom’s guests, which buoys my spirits a bit.  You may recall that I was assigned to get gifts on her behalf, and I’ve been working my way through that.

I find if you shop at the right time, Christmas shopping is a breeze.  The other day I went into Chapters at 8:00 AM, and there were two clerks standing there.  Over the year I had kept book reviews of titles I thought people would like, so had them with me.

I went to one of the clerks, and had him run the title through the computer, and print the little tag that shows where it is in the store.  He then handed it to the other clerk, who ran to get it.  This continued until I had all of my books, then I went to the counter, and paid.  I left in about ten minutes with all of my books bought, not a calorie spent.

I’ve been baking the usual Christmas cookies, which I enjoy immensely.  I hope one of the new recipes I’m trying turns out, because it’s also an old German cookie recipe.  They’re anise cookies, and called Springerle in German.

Aside from that, I managed to write a couple of Christmas letters to my dear relatives in Germany who were so kind to Nicky and me when we were there in 2009.  It’s good for me to practice my German, however painful it may be for them to read it.

I don’t want to be like the Grinch, with only three words to describe him: “Stink, Stank, Stunk,” so am going to get out of this bad mood immediately.  I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas, and a very happy time with those you love.

I had the best week ever.  Before Luke left for Alberta, he bought me a laptop and an external hard drive.  I accidentally called it an eternal hard drive, which I like a lot better.  It sounds so much more hopeful.

After that field day, I received an e mail from Tami Williams, the host of Shaw Cable channel 11 here in Kelowna, saying they wanted to film me baking.  She and her nice cameraman, Greg, arrived promptly at 10:00 last Thursday, December 8th. 

They were here for perhaps ten minutes when Tami exclaimed that she loved me so much, and this love fest pretty well continued unabated for the next two hours.  I think what she found particularly wonderful was the fact that she discovered we both suffer from potty mouth.

We were both in hysterics for large parts of the shoot, which hopefully to God will appear funny to the viewer.  At one point I said, “Now for the sticky hell of the fruit” to which Greg said, “Can we please think of a word other than hell?”

All three of us stood there for a few seconds, brainstorming words, but nothing appropriate was found.  I can’t remember what we eventually went with, but I must say I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of fool I’ve made of myself this time.

Tami said they now have a total of about 45 minutes’ worth of footage for the Shaw Cable information channel.  So I’ll be looping with several other stories, each hour, for the week before Christmas.  Don’t laugh, but you’d be amazed at the number of people who watch that, and who’ll race into the stores begging for fruitcake.

And here’s a surprise, Nicky’s one of the people who watches the info channel on Shaw!  I told him Tami was coming, and he actually knew her.  I told Tami, and she was thrilled, and said, “My one fan!” and wrote a note to him with her lipstick on the mirror in his bathroom.  Adorable, or what?

You’ll find this very hard to believe, but in the midst of all the baking and bark-making mayhem, I’ve managed to chip away at Christmas-related matters as well.  On the weekend I made a few batches of cookies, and wrapped gifts.  I packaged the gifts to be mailed or shipped by Greyhound, and off they went this morning.  Hurray!

I bought the tree on the weekend, and got it home in the Honda.  You have no idea the amount of needles I had to vacuum out of that little trunk afterwards.  I’m pretty sure that tree was cut sometime during the summer.  Anyway, what’s left of it is now all nicely decorated.

Due to working day and night like an indentured servant, I’m very happy to report I’ve been able to shed a couple of unsightly pounds of flab.  I need to, as on December 24 I’m going to be like a hungry shark let loose in a tank full of boogie-board riding politicians.

There are now 12 days left, and with any luck my supply of fruitcakes will hold out.  I’m still making bark daily, as several people who just ordered, have re-ordered!  I think there’s something deadly about the sugar-coated almonds in the soft, tempered chocolate, and mixed with the sun-dried cherries.  You see why I need to lose weight, don’t you?

There’s no way to explain why a person goes into entrepreneurship.  Right now, I’m three quarters dead, and people are asking me in earnest, “Is it worth your while?  Do you make any money at it?”  And I have to keep the smile pasted on my face, while my mind searches for a way to answer without appearing insane, or completely stupid.

This is Year #8 of fruitcake-making for the public, and I’ve learned so many things that I really do need to write one of those e books about it all.  You know, How I Made a Few Bucks While Working Like a Fool, or something like that.

But seriously, there are too many wonderful things that happen, and that I wouldn’t give up for anything, even sanity.  Last Thursday after baking like a crazy person all day, I thought I’d better check my e mails, and there was a nice one from Shaw Cable, saying they want to come and film me baking!

So they’ll be here this Thursday at 10:00 AM, and this will be my fifth filming.  CHBC-TV’s filmed me twice, and this will be Shaw Cable’s second time as well.  Though the first time they interviewed me, and there wasn’t any baking involved.  The fifth interview was from an on-line TV station.

Hence I know what to do this time.  First of all, I cleaned the kitchen, and have removed all ugly-looking things, and replaced them with cheery Christmas stuff.  I have the ideal pair of oven mitts, in green and red plaid, and will wear a raspberry-coloured blouse, and a black half-apron.

It’s a scary time, as I know all of the media will hit at the same moment.  Savour Magazine, the Kelowna Capital News and Food and Wine Trails Magazine will have have articles mentioning my products.  Then the Shaw Cable piece will likely hit at the same time, so there may be a sudden spike in orders.

As a result, and due to white-faced panic over the unknown, I spent yesterday packaging the Totally Decadents.  Now I know exactly what I have on hand, and can deliver at a moment’s notice.  However, I just started packaging the Harvests, and can see I’m a bit short of inventory, and may have to bake on the weekend.

Being the egomaniac that I am, I adore the media coverage, but even with all of that looming, I sometimes daydream about the time when I’ll be out of the fruitcake business.  Decembers will be spent browsing stores, baking, sending cards, and generally enjoying the season.

But obviously I’m not ready for that yet, as I just sent a note to Sheryl MacKay, host of the CBC program North by Northwest, in response to her request for listeners’ childhood Christmas memories.

I told her mine was of my gramma baking her cookies each year, and perhaps that’s from where my love of baking stems.  I sent Sheryl a fruitcake, too, so if she mentions it, I’ll have covered almost all media formats possible.  Shameless!

Twice in one week complete strangers have offered to help me in my business, for no pay!  The first kind offer came from a woman who works part time at Okanagan Grocery, the German bakery.  She said she loves my fruitcakes and would love to help me bake. 

The second offer came by phone, and it was from a nice woman who had stumbled upon my site while searching for Christmas cookies.  She began to read my blog, took pity on me, and called me to say she was willing and able to lend a hand as required!

It’s funny, isn’t it, how complete strangers, especially women, run to help when they see it’s needed.  I’m not used to that, as I’m surrounded by useless males.  To whit: the other day I bought several heavy bags of salt for the water softener, and unloaded them into the carport and asked Nicky to carry them downstairs for me.

Needless to say, they’ve been there ever since, with Nicky coming and going, whistling a happy tune as he goes by them.  He kicks over his beer and Jaegermeister empties, also in the carport, and comes into the house, all nice and hungry from the gym.

Luke surprised me by arriving home on Friday morning.  He said he came home now because he might not get Christmas off, which is totally shocking.  I told him he simply has to try, but he said as a single guy, he can’t really justify it.  I said, “But tell them about your poor, sainted mother, for God’s sake….”

Last night he and Nicky ran upstairs holding Luke’s laptop, and announced they were going to make cinnamon buns.  I looked for yeast, but must’ve thrown out the last of it due to age, and so they had to abandon the idea.  Luke said, “What kind of artisan baker doesn’t have yeast in the house?”

I said, “Look, here’s egg nog,” and diverted them with that.  This morning when I went downstairs I saw the remnants of their night.  There was the empty egg nog container, a few mini marshmallows sprinkled over the floor, cans of Red Bull with a few dregs in the bottom of each, and an empty tin of those finger-shaped biscuits coated in chocolate.

But besides being masterful junk food imbibers, it turned out Luke was tremendously helpful to his old mother.  As you know, I’ve practically had a nervous breakdown over my vacuum-sealing machine, which is now fixed.  However, I didn’t like the way it seals, and the repair place had no clue how to fix that.

Luke took three minutes, re-jigged the length of the vacuum time, and the machine’s now sealing beautifully, so at least he has some very marketable skills when it comes to me and my business.

Now if only I could get either of them to work for more than five minutes at a time I wouldn’t have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

As you know, I’m a regular gym attendee, so am in fairly decent shape, even though large in girth.  So imagine my surprise at hurting myself doing simple stretching at the end of the Tuesday morning class.  By Wednesday I couldn’t life my left arm, and my left shoulder felt broken.

However, that was just too bad for me, as it’s my High Season, so I had to continue making fruitcake and bark.  On Friday morning I was vacuum-sealing away, when suddenly the vacuum sealer died.  I turned it off, and back on again, as we all know this is the way one repairs computers, so I thought maybe it works for other machines as well.

But the machine had totally and completely seized, and in that moment, I knew I had no-one to blame but myself.  The red oil change light’s been blinking for months, but when I see things like that, I just think they’ll get better on their own, like my shoulder, and ignore them.

As the machine weighs 80 pounds, Nicky had to put it in the car for me, and the guy at the kitchen appliance repair place had to unload it.  When I confessed about my slothful behaviour, he said if the pump is filled with ‘gunk’ and if it has seized, a new one is $1,000!

Can you imagine how furious I was at myself when I drove away from there?  To keep my mind off it, I’ve just spent the entire weekend making bark, as I can’t face fruitcake-production without my vacuum-sealer.  I currently have several Tupperware tubs full of fruitcakes waiting to be sealed.

And can you believe, my shoulder did get better on its own, so you can see how my philosophy has both good and bad applications.  I guess for people with muscle-ache, it’s good, and for machines with red, blinking warning lights, it’s bad.

Whenever I send out my monthly newsletter, I get orders, and I did again the other day.  However, some of them are for Okanagan Fruit and Rum bars, which I have yet to make.  So my nerves are kind of bad, with five weeks to go until Christmas, and still producing stuff, with one of my major machines down.

Then Alison phoned to say, “It says teat on your website!”  Although Steve the web designer is absolutely adorable, whenever he writes stuff on his own, I have to e mail him and say, “Look.”  This time it says teat instead of treat, and special is misspelled, but the intent is very nice.

Remember when I had just the Totally Decadent Fruitcake, and so people naturally only bought it?  Then I added Okanagan Harvest Cake, and people ordered one of each.  Then I added the bars, and now the bark, and so my orders are getting bigger and bigger.

I always said I will never, ever make cookies, but now I’m thinking, hey, why not?  I want on-line sales, and once people trust you, they just add on whatever you make, so maybe that’s something to ponder for 2012.  For now I just have to weep over my inability to believe that a red, blinking light usually spells trouble.

I simply can’t believe my luck.  First of all, mom’s partner Gerry’s son and family are coming to Osoyoos for Christmas for the first time.  They’re coming all the way from Virginia, so mom wants to buy some decent things for them for Christmas.  So she handed me a cheque and basically said, “Get at it.”

Then Luke e mailed me and said, “Look, I hate Christmas shopping, so can you please buy the gifts for Margaret and Brendan for me?”  I e mailed back, “Thank you!”  On my way south to Osoyoos the other day I immediately got an adorable thing at that cute antique shop in Okanagan Falls for Margaret.

And then, joy of joys, mom advised me to do the same for myself as I did last year.  She told me to buy a bunch of stuff that I want, and then say it’s from her.  Last year I wrapped my gifts beautifully, and chose lovely to/from cards.  I plan to do the same again this year and am basically breathless with anticipation of how I’m going to surprise myself.

I’m just not sure how to fit all of that in, as I now seem to be baking daily.  Of course I have to do it, but I’ve noticed I put the dough into the pans with less and less enthusiasm as the days go by.  But I suppose that’s the lure of a seasonal business.  The moment you think you simply can’t make another fruitcake, it’s over and Christmas has arrived.

Yet anything you do over and over again is bound to get monotonous.  The other day one of the nice women at the gym said she feels bored with the gym routine and often has to force herself to come.  I said I feel the same way occasionally, but as a true hypochondriac, there’s no way I could stop going.

Although I have to admit that sometimes when I’m in the class, lifting the weights over my head dozens of times, doing a hundred dead lifts, a myriad of squats and countless stomach crunches, I do feel a bit cranky about it.

Chytra Brown of Savour Magazine asked me for the list of stores which carry my fruitcakes, so I imagine that’ll boost sales when it comes out on December 1st.  Jennifer Schell, the editor of Wine Trails and writer for EAT Magazine and The Capital News also said she’d mention me in her Christmas columns.

Today I was called and interviewed by Kevin Parnell, the business writer for the Kelowna Capital News.  It was a half-hour interview, in which I wildly expounded upon many fanciful things, so I’m somewhat hesitant to read the interview.  Sometimes in the heat of an interview I can say the darndest things.

I’m often working until late afternoon, and sometimes find myself in a less than favourable mood for making an elaborate dinner.  Fortunately Nicky’s been able to keep himself fed with meals like the one he had around 3:00 PM; five scrambled eggs on two pieces of toast, which he spread with a mixture of mayo and a hot sauce called Spiracha hot chili sauce.

I’ve decided that the gym and sleep are the only really necessary things I have to do , and outside of that, I have to concentrate on just two things: shopping and baking.

I always love Daylight Savings Time.  Today I have an extra hour, and what better way to use a gift like that than to shop.  In the spring, we lose an hour, and since the day’s shot anyway, is there any better time than that for a shopping excursion?

Although due to not having baked ahead, I have an awful lot of catching up to do, and therefore have precious little time for joyous shopping.  Yesterday I made 84 fruitcakes, and hope to do the same again today.  It sounds like a lot, but those sell very quickly when stores like Quality Greens order 8 cases (192 fruitcakes).

As well, I get asked to make adorable little gift baskets, and that can be time-consuming. You know the nice woman from the gym who ordered bark for her business’ conventions?  She wanted to see a little gift ensemble for their managers for Christmas.

I recalled the half fruitcakes I made for the huge Nokia cell phone company order I received in 2007.  I still had some fo the cute cube-shaped boxes left, so cut one of each fruitcake in half, vacuum-sealed them, and put them in the little boxes.  Then I put half a pound of bark in one of the larger fruitcake boxes.

All three labels, the Okanagan Harvest, Totally Decadent and Okanagan Chocolate Bark, have the same orchard and sun-rise theme, so they look absolutely fab together in the box.  I wrapped the bark box in a thin green fabric ribbon, and placed all three items onto a pillow of white tissue.  Voila!

It’s a really nice-looking gift.  I put a note into it for Joanne saying, “I scare myself sometimes.” She loved it, and said they want a minimum of 12, but maybe more.  That’s the kind of thing I love fooling around with so much.

I guess that’s why an article about macarons caught my eye.  I’ve heard of macaroons, of course, but never macarons.  It turns out they’re also a meringue confection, but made with almond paste and filled with butter cream.

There’s a new chi chi French patisserie here in Kelowna, called Sandrine, and I see they make macarons.  I plan to go in there and buy some, so I know what the finished product should be like.  Then I can start to experiment.

And wouldn’t you know Alison, whose mother was a home ec teacher, and who can’t stop emulating her mother’s penchant for hunting down new recipes, said she has a recipe for macarons which she’ll send.  There’s even one in the older edition of The Joy of Cooking, even though I’ve never heard of these little delights until now.

I’m telling you, the old home ec teachers from Osoyoos Elementary Junior Secondary School would be amazed.  My best pal Liz was called a “lazy pudding” by one of them, and I only survived because my mom would sew my projects for me.

But here I am, all Martha Stewart-like, with tons of ideas, and no time.

As I type this I can hear the raucous hoot hooting of the great horned owls who love the tall Ponderosa pines around here.  Of course as a cat and small dog owner I’m not all that thrilled by their penchant for small pets as food, but as long as they’re just eating rabbits and other mammals, then okay.

I know I’ve told you this before, but I believe this time it’s really going to happen.  Chytra Brown, associate publisher of Niche Media, who produce Savour Magazine, contacted me last week.  She said they’re doing a section on gifts for the December issue, and wondered if I could send photos and short descriptions of my products.

I did so immediately, and haven’t heard back, but am hoping and praying that I do indeed get into that spread.  She e mailed that my bark “is to die for” so I have a feeling a strong emphasis will be on the chocolate bark.  This is rather scary in some ways, as I kind of know what numbers of fruitcakes to bake based on past sales, but this is my first year carrying bark.

But that’s the fun of entrepreneurship.  You’re constantly getting surprised by things, and on top of it, cheques arrive in the mail.  It’s really quite wonderful.  Though on a day like today, when I plan to bake 84 fruitcakes, by the end of it I’ll be somewhat less enamoured by the thrill of being an entrepreneur.

I’ve had to cut my gym attendance from five to four times per week due to time constraints.  I still walk the dogs daily, though, as now that it’s a habit they actually get all antsy and demand their walk.  At first they hid under the bed, but now they realuzie it’s fun so they look forward to it.

Yesterday Ricky thought a garbage can was some type of prey to be pursued, so we ran the length of Wildwood Street toward it.  He didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed when he realized it was a garbage can, but then that dog’s no Einstein.

The other day the phone rang at 5:30 PM and it was someone from the Kelowna Wine Museum calling.  The woman said, “We’ll take four cases of fruitcakes.”  I said, “You want 96 fruitcakes?” And she said she did, as they were down to just six fruitcakes in their store, and people were beginning to ask about them.

So I didn’t waste time and spent the next couple of hours packaging their order.  I’ve learned that you never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because of all the surprises in small business.

Now the cat’s jumped up beside me and is looking out the window, growling at the deer that likes to graze on the neighbour’s knoll.  Why one would have to growl at an innocent deer is beyond me, but you know how crabby cats are.

But in spite of these days, fraught with orders and the unknown, I take great comfort and enjoyment from the owls, deer, dogs and cats around me.  Even if I do have to push a hind paw off my keyboard every time I need the letters on the left.

One thing I really like about my business is the surprising inquiries I get.  The other day I came home to a message from a man in Brooklyn who owns a bakery.  I called him back, and he said he wanted to order my fruitcakes for his store.  I told him I don’t have an export license, but he said he wanted to try them anyway, so ordered one of each for his own consumption.

I googled Jude Nwabuoku and saw a photo of him and his bakery, and it looks fabulous.  I mailed the fruitcakes, and hope he likes them, though I can’t see shipping from Kelowna to Brooklyn.  I suspect there’s someone within a thousand mile radius of Brooklyn who makes fruitcake, so perhaps they could supply him?

A month ago I was watching the news and they were talking about the cranberry harvest in the Fraser Valley.  Huge tanker trucks pull up, and the cranberries get poured in through the top, just like water.  Then they’re all delivered to Ocean Spray, who buy the bulk of the harvest.

At Thanksgiving when I bought a bag of Ocean Spray cranberries, I wanted to see where they’re located.  I turned the bag and it said Massachusetts on the back.  So the cranberries went from Langley to Massachusetts and then back to Kelowna where I bought them.

You see the moral dilemma we should all have around this sort of thing?  While I loathe fanaticism of any kind, I do think the general principles around the 100 Mile Diet are sound.

We’re all forced to lose our eyesight with these new light bulbs in order to save the planet, but if we just stopped buying ridiculous items like well-travelled cranberries we could probably still have the bulbs that illuminate a room.

I’m also going to re-think some of the things I try to grow in my little garden.  After God knows how much watering, I have one pumpkin.  It just seems too expensive for the Earth to provide me with one of those.  I think a solid crop of tomatoes is probably the wisest, as I freeze them and eat them in stews and sauces all winter.

And the bees?  They’re all going to die, as confirmed by an old beekeeper named Bob Chisholm.  He came to inspect my lone hive, and said, “Foul brood.”  I said, “What?” I wondered what my children could possibly have to do with the bees.

He said it has nothing to do with one’s offpsring and explained it’s a term describing a blight that kills bees and is very contagious.  I’ll have to burn the frames and start over with new bees, though the boxes are salvageable.

But you know what?  Next year I’m getting all new supplies from Bob, and then I’ll be making my own honey before you know it.  I’ll no longer have to go to Costco to buy honey that’s come all the way from China.

I think you’ll be really proud of me.  I’ve now donned my bee suit, and stood inside a swarm of bees, and didn’t scream, flap my arms or run.  Because of my desire to save my poor bees from certain death, I made an appointment with a beekeeper who has 250 hives.  I figured he could probably help me.

I went over to his house on Friday afternoon, and he showed me how to build a smoky fire in the smoker.  Then we put on our bee gear and marched over to the vast area of hives.  He opened the top of one, took out the screen, and then smoked the bees a bit.  After that he started to pry the frames apart in preparation to put in a feeder frame.

Soon enough he was making me pry them apart, so there I was in the midst of hundreds of thousands of annoyed bees.  I pretended I wasn’t scared spitless, as I’ve read that bees can sense fear pheromones and will sting en masse.  So I used every bit of my mental powers to remain calm.

Then I was sent home with a feeder tray and a pail of syrup and told to do the same at my own home.  Luckily Bev came to Kelowna for the weekend, and I asked her to take bunch of photos of me to update my website.  When I told her about the bee assignment, she coerced me into getting at it so she could document it in photos.

I suited up  and started the fire in my smoker, and we went down to my hive.  I couldn’t believe it, but I had the nerve to open the top, pop out a frame, put in a new one and close the top.  I felt triumphant.

We spent the rest of the weekend doing our favourite thing, which is thrift store and garage sale shopping.  There was a large garage sale at the college parking lot, so we started there.  A woman was selling some willow China that said Japan on the bottom of it, so I bought it immediately for $6.00!

I got a lovely storage cabinet made of maple, and miscellaneous adorable items like a CD of Marilyn Monroe singing songs like Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.  Bev got a cute wicker plant stand, and some kind of a Gucci knock-off purse.  We made two trips in and out of the sale, we had so much stuff.

Last weekend I was in Osoyoos for Thanksgiving, and so were a couple of good friends, Jim and Bernard.  We stuffed a turkey and thew it into the oven, and then didn’t look at it for another five hours.  We learned that unless you cover or baste a bird, you’re going to end up with something resembling Maria Shriver.

This weekend with Bev here, the food was more successful.  I made Jerralynn’s salmon, which is baked with butter and brown sugar.  Then on Saturday night I made Thai chicken in coconut milk and red curry paste.  I gave Bev some of the bark to try, which she then termed “evil” and immediately bought a pound to take with her.

Now giddy with the new beekeeping knowledge and satisfied with a great weekend of shopping, I’m celebrating with a glass of very cheap white wine.  Cheers!