I used to feel bad about all the things I’ve bought over the years that were never worn.  A few years ago I was on a suit mania, and bought a navy Liz Claiborne pant suit.  I never wore it, and now that the pants are much too large, I gave them to the thrift shop.  I still have the jacket, but God knows if I’ll ever wear it.

Recently I’ve grown philosophical about the items that are rarely or never worn.  When I think of the expensive hobbies some people have, such as golfing, I think shopping is actually quite cheap.  Also, there’s no replacement for the joy I feel as I skulk the aisles, looking for that elusive item.  Then there’s all the fun of trying stuff on, and finally the kill, which arrives at the cash register.

When viewed as a hobby, I think shopping makes a lot of sense.  We have hobbies because they’re a way for us to get our minds onto something we enjoy.  I practically whooped with delight on Friday as I found a pair of brand new, grey suede Liz Claiborne pumps for $10.00.  These days it’s rare to achieve that type of adrenalin rush for that little money.

I packaged and shipped an order of fruitcakes to an old customer, Stongs Market on Dunbar Street in Vancouver.  I have new labels for both cakes, so I’m hoping that won’t throw people.  However, the little white box is the same, and it still says Nuttier than a Fruitcake on it, so let’s hope for the best with that.

I’m continuing to chip away at the baking day by day.  Some days I have to practically get out a gun and put it to my head to make myself walk down those stairs.  However, once I throw the butter into the big mixer, add the sugar and turn it on, I get into the rhythm of it and seem to manage to make at least 50 fruitcakes each time.

Nicky’s helping me by putting the front and back labels on the boxes, which is great.  Then when orders come in I simply grab those labeled boxes, and can proceed to put the fruitcakes into them.  I’ve learned that bandaging my fingers prior to starting saves a lot of wear and tear on the cuticles.  You have no idea the kinds of things one learns from an artisan food business.

In this month’s Martha Stewart Living they have an article about glass-blown balls made in the last centurey, called witches balls.  They were individually blown by workers who toiled in extreme heat, 12 hours a day, six days a week.  So, if all I have is torn cuticles from the boxes, I should just consider myself very lucky.

Although I have to be careful about the euphoria of feeling lucky because it can immediately lead to an unnatural desire to hunt through the thrift store for that Joseph Ribkoff for under $10.00.  My mind immediately associates happiness with shopping, so if I get too happy, I’m off to Value Village.

Sadly, like any true addict, the converse is true.  Feeling upset?  I can’t think of a better antidote than an hour or two at the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

I was just downstairs and heard Nicky and his long-time friend Jordan, talking.  Nicky said, “I weighed myself, and I was like, 208 – yay!”  I was just weighing myself as he was saying that and thinking how funny it is because they’re both into body building and are therefore happy when their weights go up.  Of course my response to a weight gain is the opposite.

Because of this inane body building, Nicky drinks glasses of vile whey mixed into milk twice a day, and eats like a horse.  I say cautionary things like, “well, if you get too huge it’s not nice either, is it?” hoping he’ll stop prior to attaining the George Atlas physique.  By then our food bill will be in the thousands of dollars per month I guess.

I’ve been buying pumpkin pies all week, and Nicky consumes one nightly.  Today we’re driving to Osoyoos to visit mom and Gerry for Thanksgiving dinner, so hopefully he’ll fill up there as best he can.  I hope she remembered the whipping cream.

Last week I was fortunate enough to have the Lions Club put me into their bulletin, which goes to around 400 clubs.  I haven’t heard a word from any of them, but will follow up somehow.  Sometimes I feel like the laziest entrepreneur on Earth, as even typing those words makes my heart sink.

But in small business, the follow-up e mail or phone call can often be the thing that makes the deal happen.  It’s just that it’s so painful, that I find myself circling the task, coming ever closer.  First I have to make a cup of tea.  Then perhaps I notice a perennial that absolutely should be pruned.  I decide to look for photos that I could put into frames that I bought months ago.

Finally, I’m ready and I make the call, and usually people are surprisingly receptive.  I wonder why marketing remains so unpleasant, but I think a really large part of it is the times you do get rejected.  Nobody likes rejection, so once it’s occurred you try to avoid it.

Today I roasted a huge amount of almonds for the Okanagan Harvest Cakes and also prepped the fruit that I use.  It’s a finicky recipe because before I can bake with it, I have to have the fruit prepped, meaning the dried apricots, pears and apples have to be cut into small pieces.  Then the mixture of that, plus raisins, dates and pineapple get cooked in a bit of apple juice.

Once that’s done, I freeze the bag for when I’m ready to bake.  But that bag makes just 14 cakes, so imagine how many times I’m dicing dried fruit and cooking it.  I think that’s why when people ask if I want to expand my business I look at them without speaking for a moment as I collect my thoughts.

I realize that I have the stamina to make 3,000 fruitcakes in a year.  But anything more than that will be cause for a banshee-like scream to come from my kitchen as I have chopped so much fruit I’ve gone mad.  If I do get some orders from the Lions, I’m seriously looking at this as a way to make my business valuable to some energetic person who may someday wish to become Nuttier than a Fruitcake.

 At my age I find I’m able to do so many different things, yet remain defeated by technology.  Today no e mail accounts will open, even though I’m supposedly connected to the Internet.  It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to weep because I have no idea what to do.

If faced with a baking or cooking dilemma, I have no problem trouble-shooting it.  Sauce too thin?  I just remove the lid and allow evaporation to solve the problem for me.  Fruitcakes sticking to tins?  Cut and fashion parchment paper and the situation is solved.

However when something’s wrong with the computer, I have to just sit here, looking as dumb as Paris Hilton in a serious interview.  And I certainly can’t wake Nicky at 6:30 on a Sunday morning and ask him for help.  I recall our trip to Germany whereby I had to ask him a few times on the plane how to figure out the movie remote.  That didn’t go well.

On the positive side, sales are going really well this year.  Quality Greens will starting carrying my fruitcakes next week, and I received confirmation from Edible BC in Granville Island Public Market that they’ll be ordering again.  So all’s well on the business end of things.

The baking’s going surprisingly well, too.  I’m forcing myself to bake four batches, or approximately 52 fruitcakes a day. I also got all the existing stock organized and labeled, and feel somewhat in control.  It’s a strange feeling for me because usually I do the entire business from my gut.

Perhaps after six years I’m figuring out how to avoid a complete nervous breakdown by December 15th.  The Lions Club is kindly putting an article in their bulletin this week to all clubs in Canada!  If I do start getting orders from them, then I can assure you I’ll be thanking God on my knees that I got myself somewhat organized this year.

You know how I love all the women at The Woman’s Place fitness centre.  A couple of weeks ago I bought a couple of jars of honey from a woman who has bees, and who’ll provide me with a hive next spring.  Her bees forage in Okanagan Mountain Park behind her house, so the honey packs a real punch.  You can taste the sage and it’s really strong and delicious.

So last week I told her I’d like two more jars, and asked if she’d like a fruitcake in exchange, which she did.  Bartering is a great way to sample local artisans’ wars.  Now I have two jars to eat, and two to give as gifts.

Right now my life consists of the gym and baking.  The house is a filthy mess, but I have neither the time nor the energy to deal with it.  I’m pretty tired of cleaning by the time I leave my basement kitchen every afternoon.  but you know I have no-one to blame but myself, as I’m the only who insisted I wanted to become an artisan baker.

I’ve now baked about 1,000 fruitcakes, and need to bake 2,000 more within the next 80 days.  That would be manageable, but on top of the baking, there’s the purchasing of inventory, putting labels on boxes, vacuum-sealing, mailing, etc.  Right now I’m thinking if I eliminate sleeping every other night I can do it.

Last year in December when I was ready for a long rest in a mental asylum I begged my readers to remind me of this.  However, you did not, and I purposely ignored the need to bake a little bit all year long.  I refused to do it, and now I’m up to my elbows in dough from morning until late afternoon.  Sigh.

I did receive three excellent bits of news, though.  First of all, I got a wonderful response from Jennifer Schell, a columnist for the local newspaper, The Capital News.  She also writes columns in BC Wine Trails and EAT magazines.  Upon sampling my fruitcakes, she wrote, “OMG!  I’m a believer!”

She kindly said she’s going to mention my fruitcakes in all three publications!  I get all hysterical and dizzy thinking about the number of potential customers I might get if that does indeed happen.

Then, I had e mailed Monika, the owner of Okanagan Grocery and creator of that insane Callebaut-filled rye bread for which I could kill.  I’d dropped in to pick up a loaf and found her store closed.  I thought she’d gone out of business so sent her a panicked e mail.  She replied that she was in San Francisco taking a bread course to make things even better.

She carries my fruitcakes at Christmas, so I was doubly worried when I thought her store was closed.  But as with the nice reply from Jennifer Schell, one must not allow one’s mind to leap to negative conclusions.  If you read my blog last week, I was all “waa waa waa, nothing’s working out” and yet this week everything’s great.

The third bit of good news was that the owner of Quality Greens, my biggest customer, said they’ll want to have my fruitcakes at their four locations starting the first week of October.  I also contacted another regular customer, Edible BC on Granville Island, but no reply yet.  And no, I’m not going to get all negative and crazy about that.

The other excellent thing about having to work like a lawyer at a victim’s assistance convention, is that I can’t shop.  I’m dreaming about those adorable new shoe/boot combo’s and yet I can’t get anywhere near a store to try them on.  It’s kind of a wonderful feeling of anticipation.  Because as you know, whenever I’ve curbed shopping for any extended period of time, the blow-out is huge.

But that’s what January sales are for.  People such as me who will be browsing the racks, looking for that perfect 30th pair of pants.  Circling the shoe racks like a scruffy lion surrounding a herd of gnus, ready to pounce on the weakest one.  With the goal of the January sales in my mind, I believe I can make it.

 It’s hard to believe the latest Mercury retrograde is over, as obstacles continue to be thrown in my way.  For example, I finally decided that perhaps by taking inventory of what I have and what I need it might act like a motivational tool.  Almost immediately I felt completely defeated when I realized I’d ordered 5,000 of the wrong labels last fall.

Now I can’t quit the business until 2025 or something due to the number of back labels I have for the Totally Decadent Fruitcake.  Plus of course I’m out money I don’t have to order the back labels that I actually need, which are for the Okanagan Harvests.

Then late on Tuesday afternoon I received a call from a young-sounding female health inspector saying she’d like to come and do an inspection.  I said no problem, and we set an appointment for 1:00 the next day.  Of course I then ran downstairs in a lather and turned on the auto-clean for both ovens, and gave the inside of the fridge and cupboards another cleaning.

Fortunately she was a sweet young woman, and we spent a pleasant hour while she checked the fridge and freezer’s temperature, looked under the sinks and asked about my baking method.  We generally kibitzed around talking about things like the intrepid town of Prince George.  It turns out she lived up there for a few years, too, and could totally relate to my tales of learning how to party hard in that town.

If you read my September newsletter, you’ll see I have a recipe for green tomato relish in there.  I decided to make it after publishing the recipe, and then went Oh My God.  By following the instructions I ended up with a vat of liquid in which vegetables were roiling around.  There was no way I was going to pour that into jars.  Why?

So I ladled out the vegetables and discarded the several cups of unused broth and pureed the pulp a bit in the food processor.  Now I had something resembling chutney, which I put into jars and which are now in the fridge.  I had some on a ham sandwich for lunch and I must say it was really nice.

Other obstacles include closure of a store that carried my product, as well as no reply yet from the local Lions Club, or in fact any Lions Club representative anywhere.  On top of it, a pithy e mail sent to a columnist was ignored.  You’re probably starting to see how hard it is for the small entrepreneur to remain positive.

And yet, there they were: six beautiful martini glasses, each with a different coloured swirl of glass embossed elegantly around their stems.  Once again, at Value Village I was able to find that small bit of hope that keeps one going.  Now I can have one of my brazenly strong cocktails in a different coloured glass every night.  You see how very small things keep someone with a very small mind happy?

That amusing incident last week with Nicky, a rag, the toilet, and a plumber ended up costing $712.  You would’ve been proud of me, though.  I simply wrote out the cheque as though I’m handed bills like that on a daily basis.  Because after all, one needs a toilet that works, so it’s pointless to go mental at these moments.

The week improved somewhat after that.  My potato salad was such a raging success with Minister Bond and Denis’ co-workers that I was asked to produce another one for their big day in Penticton on Tuesday.  Once again, Denis brought home the huge, gleaming, empty stainless steel bowl and said the entire salad had been polished off with glee.

While Luke was home I cooked like a camp cook at an oil rig.  Huge steaming plates of spaghetti and meat sauce were consumed, along with vats of chocolate mousse.  I made Yorkshore puddings, mashed potatoes made with butter and creamo, and boats of gravy to accompany a gigantic pot roast.

Luke left with some reluctance this morning, and said he wouldn’t likely be back home until Christmas.  I doubt that.  I didn’t want to point this out, but since he left for Alberta in January, I believe he’s been home pretty steadily every two months.  Not that one begrudges the visits from one’s child, of course, it’s just that it seems quite frequent to me.

And now the time has finally come for me to devote myself to the production of fruitcakes.  I bought a ton of product, and need to spend the afternoon getting the kitchen organized.  Then tomorrow, all by my brave little self, I’m going to start early in the morning and produce delectable baked goods like a pastry chef at Oprah’s on a Saturday night.

And I serioulsy must start to make some decent money because unfortunately that shopping genie’s grabbed a hold of me again and it’s been quite mischievous.  Would you believe, I was at The Bay four days in a row, thanks to their 50%, take ANOTHER 50% off, sale.

I got two pairs of lovely jeans, regular $100 for $25.  I nearly went mad.  Once I’d bought those I was just like Barbara Amiel and my extravagance knew no bounds.  Of course for her, that means Tiffany’s, but for me, I was luxuriating in the wares at The Bay.

After all the buying came the purging.  I filled two black garbage bags with old clothes that either no longer fit, or let’s face it, I hate them.  So off they went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store for someone like me to find.  It felt really good, actually, because I realized I’m never going to wear those clothes, so why am I keeping them?

I believe with the 15 pairs of pants and 18 tops I should be able to scrape something up for the daily jaunt to the gym.  It’s funny because to bake I put on a ratty pair of leggings and a grease-stained T shirt.  Why I continue to purchase clothes is a topic for Dr. Freud’s couch.

Denis has always had a rather unorthodox manner of doing things, and the way he’s packing is in keeping with that.  The other day he said he’d bought a ‘container’ for his tools.  I paid no attention whatsoever.  Then a couple of days ago I heard the beep beep beep of a dangerously large truck trying to back its way up our steep driveway.

I looked out and saw a rust-coloured, God knows how long, metal shipping container with the large letters HYUNDAI painted across the sides.  When the machine unloaded it, the container landed with a thud so loud it shook the entire house.  It’s now sitting squarely across the lower part of the yard.

Denis plans to fill this up with his stuff, and then have the man return and pick it up and move it into the yard at Oxford Street where Denis plans to live.  I hesitantly asked him if perhaps the neighbours there, it being such a suburban area of Kelowna and all, might not object to something like that in their line of sight.

Denis just said piffle to all of that, and is busy buying lumber and building some kind of weird interior.  I’m watching all of it with an odd sense of detachment, knowing that in a few weeks my yard is going to be pristine for the first time in 20 years.  But who knows, maybe I’ll grow nostalgic and ask the kids to put the shell of a vehicle up on blocks for me outside the garage.

To help Denis look like a hero at work I told him I’d make huge potato and Greek salads for him for a barbecue today with Shirley Bond, the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure.  So last night in preparation I boiled and peeled a bunch of eggs and put them into the fridge.

Naturally when I went to get the eggs this morning half of them had been eaten.  Did I mention that Luke’s home for a couple of weeks?  In preparation I went straight to Costco last week and got a box each of Taquitos and spanakopitas.  Showing some restraint, Luke said he was on a diet so declined my offer to make him some chocolate chip cookies.

I certainly didn’t decline any of the delicious morsels of food offered to me by the caterers at our friends Mark and Gitte’s 25th wedding anniversary party last Saturday.  They live in a beautiful house right at the base of Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver.  A full bar complete with a bartender were set up in the dining room, and all evening we were served platter after platter of fancy snacks.

The delicacies and sophistication of that evening seem far away as I sit here waiting for the plumber to plumb our toilet.  Upon querying each of the children last night, Nicky said he threw a bucket of water he’d used to clean the basement floor into the toilet, and ‘perhaps’ the cloth had still been in the bucket.

What can one do after 24 solid years of child-rearing but walk straight to the cupboard and get out the Tequila and Cointreau and mix a Margarita?  After all, one of these days all of these stories are going to seem very, very funny, right?

 You know that old saying, “I cried because I had no shoes, and then I met a man who had no feet?”  This morning I was comparing myself to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay.  That’s because I’ve been held down and visited by people for almost the entire summer.

Then I heard the news about the trapped miners in Chile and felt silly.  They could be trapped in a small space for four months, whereas I’m only trapped inside my house for a few weeks.  It’s very important to try to get some perspective on our lives sometimes.

My cousin Heilke is still here from Germany, and on Sunday Alison, one of my oldest and dearest friends, arrived from Toronto.  As it was Denis and my 25th wedding anniversary on Tuesday the 24th, we all went out for dinner, Nicky included.

However, it wasn’t your usual anniversary dinner, in that Denis and I have taken a somewhat different approach by deciding that we’ve reached the end of our time together.  It was so adorable at our wedding, as the Marriage Commissioner didn’t use the words, “’til death us do part” but, “for as long as your time together.”

And now, our time together is up.  So I’ll have to figure out some challenging things, such as how to get the cover off the smoke alarm and God forbid, how to shovel snow off the driveway.  You may be thinking that Nicky, being six foot two and 21 years of age, might be able to help.  However, I’ve lived with him long enough to know that it’s not likely going to happen.

And so what does one do in trying times?  Shop, of course.  Alison took me out to one of those insane high-end lingerie shops and forced me to spend $150 on one bra and one pair of underpants.  I felt dizzy at the till, but she stood her ground while I got out the debit card and swiped.  A bead of sweat formed on my brow as I saw the total and hit the OK button.

The purchase was somewhat balanced out by the purchase of a $10.00 bra by Joe Fresh, the Superstore’s own brand.  Plus I shouldn’t kvetch because Alison also gave me a beautiful pencil skirt that she bought and never wore.  And really, when you consider how much good new items do for the psyche, you can’t put a price tag on it.

By September 1st I’ll be free of visitors, and should hopefully to God be able to focus on the fruitcake business.  As you know, Urban Fare in Vancouver and Potters in Surrey have placed orders already, so I guess it may be time to consider baking.  Or not.

I received an e mail from my cousin Heilke in Germany a couple of weeks ago saying she decided she was coming to Canada for a visit.  She arrived on Friday, August 13th, so I had to drive to Vancouver to get her at the airport.  Heilke arrived in pretty good shape from the nine-hour flight and we proceeded to drive to my brother Freddie’s in Maple Ridge.

On our way we stopped at a cute market that sells Cloverdale honey, and of course being the inveterate shopper, I decided I needed a jar of it.  In fact, this has pretty much been the case since I’ve begun showing Canada to Heilke.  I end up in these cute stores and I decide I need some of that stuff for myself!

My brother lives right by the cute and tiny Alouette River, which is quite a change from where he used to live on the much bigger Pitt River.  He and his wife Wendy used to rent a tiny house there, which was actually the caretaker’s house for the rock quarry.  They’d paid $75 a month rent for the past 35 years!

The four of us spent a pleasant evening sitting outside, my brother and I trying our best with our German, while Heilke had to think hard after a long flight to find English vocabulary.  In any case, we managed to hammer out our thoughts and ideas pretty well.

Heilke and I drove home to Kelowna on Saturday, and arrived to the usual stinking heat of the Okanagan in August.  She was prepared for it, as her parents and other relatives have visited here, and they know what it’s like in the summer.  We laughed over the perception of most people in the world that Canada is a land of ice and snow.

On Sunday we did some nice touristy things, and strolled along the walkway in front of the Delta Grand Hotel.  Then we drove to Summerhill Winery and visted the goat cheese farm on Lakeshore Road, too.  It’s at the edge of the forest fire that occurred in 2003, so it’s an interesting area for people to see.  It kind of looks like what’s depicted in movies after a nuclear war.

Monday was Nicky’s 21st birthday, so we drove to Penticton to meet mom and Gerry for lunch.  After lunch we drove to Naramata, because Nicky and his girlfriend had never seen it, and it’s just such an adorable town.  If you’re ever in the Okanagan, you must drive down there to see it.

As you can imagine, with the watering and so on, entertaining a guest does add an extra little thing in a person’s day.  However, I find it best to just surrender to these types of things, as fighting them and fretting over them doesn’t make them in the least bit easier.  Better to just head to that tourist site and adopt a positive attitude about it.

And of course that nasty haze is back from the forest fires burning all over B.C.  I hope it won’t put a damper on our our sight seeing, as today we’re off to Fintry and then O’Keefe Ranch.  As you may know, Germans are simply nuts for cowboys and Indians.

I think it’s finally safe for me to announce it, but I believe Luke is launched into the world!  You know how nowadays offspring like to tease their parents by leaving home briefly, returning, then leaving again, only to return?  They do this until the parents no longer believe good-bye means anything other than see you next week.

However, Luke now has his own company, and does directional drilling work all over Alberta and Saskatchewan.  Sometimes I ask him how it works, and he tries to explain it to me.  But as I’m unable to do a task such as record messages on my phone, I certainly don’t understand his highly technical job.  All I know for sure is that it involves a computer, and that he makes decent money.

He and Dan (aka The Boarder) have bought a house together in Sylvan Lake, Alberta.  Luke already has one of those stupidly large pick-up trucks and a dirt bike.  Now he wants a boat and a snow mobile.  I said to my mom next he’ll own a rifle and have a moose head mounted on his living room wall.

All I can say is I tried my best to raise the kid as a decent left-leaning, animal-loving environmentalist.  Where did I go wrong?  He went to French Immersion and took piano lessons, for God’s sake!  Something about Alberta and the stench of oil money has changed my baby.

Now I only need to concentrate on getting the second kid launched and all will be well.  However that’s probably easier said than done as Nicky has always been a tougher personality type to deal with than Luke.  When there was some type of bad news to be delivered, Denis and I would do rock, paper and scissors to see who’d have to be the one to tell him.  Nicky’s philosophy was always to shoot the messenger.

I had an interesting call last week from a nice woman in Alberta.  She’s having a wedding anniversary party, and ordered 250 pieces of Totally Decadent Fruitcake.  She wanted them made with no brandy, which I’ve done for her, but I’ve yet to cut them to see if it even works without booze.  I know I don’t work well without booze, so I assume my cakes carry the same philosophy.

As always at this time of year I’m making tons of apricot jam.  It’s really the only jam anyone likes to eat, so I give it as gifts.  I also need it at Christmas for the Spitzbubchen (granny’s cookies).  Sadly there are fewer and fewer apricot trees left in the Okanagan Valley because they’re such a finicky fruit to grow.

All the vegetables are late this year.  We’re finally starting to get ripe tomatoes from the garden and there’s local corn.  The other night I made sauteed yellow zucchini and tomatoes, topped with handfuls of my chopped herbs.  I accompanied that with tiny potatoes, boiled, then browned in butter, and wild coho salmon, baked in the oven with a bit of brown sugar and butter.

When Nicky came to get his dinner and saw it was all so beautiful and from around here to boot, he said enthusiastically, “Now that’s a legitimate dinner!”