Did you know that chocolate needs to be tempered?  Neither did I.  I’m not even sure how I came upon this fact, but needless to say, I now know how to temper chocolate. You know how when you buy commercial chocolate it has a snap when you break it, and a glossy sheen?  As well, it doesn’t melt in your hands instantly?

This is all thanks to the arduous and picky tempering process.  You’ll recall that last weekend I’d experimented with various chocolate bark recipes, and came up with four combinations.  I sent samples of each to my web designer to photograph and put on my site, and took a bunch of samples to the all-women gym I attend.

Then I discovered the process of tempering chocolate, and had to tell the web designer to just eat and not photograph what I sent.  He admitted he was a bit dismayed upon seeing the bark, as even though tasty, it wasn’t overly attractive.  Now he’s going to be photographing the Michelangelo of bark in that it is absolutely gorgeous.

To temper chocolate, you have to melt it very carefully, and use a chocolate thermometer to measure the temperature.  It has to be heated to 125 degrees F.  Then you take it off the heat, and cool it until it’s 86 degrees.  At that point you return it to the heat until it’s not more than 90 degrees, and work with it within that temperature range.  Can you see why I’m a bit prickly about it?

In any case, I now have glossy bark that has a beautiful snap.  It was tasty before, and still is, but now it’s also nice to handle and look at.  I’ve wrapped the pieces in cellophane and then put ribbon around it.  Tomorrow I’m going to put a display in the glass case at the Woman’s Place gym.  Women plus chocolate should be like shooting fish in a barrel, non?

And speaking of the gym, it’s the most wonderful conglomeration of interesting women.  I ordered a bee hive for this spring from my pal Lorraine, who has hives and sells honey.  She advised me to get a bee suit, saying, “you’ll feel better if you have one.”  Then she proceeded to tell me about forgetting to zip the hood shut one day and getting hundreds of stings on her head.

I figure the hundreds of stings I’ll be getting as I learn beekeeping will help distract me from the pain of holding a thermometer into a bowl of melted chocolate. 

Yesterday as I stood at the stove for three hours, sweating from the process, I was thinking this appears to be another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.

However, maybe the learning curve associated with the impending bees will top this.  But it’s all very interesting and wonderful, and contributes to the general excitement I feel about the Year of the Rabbit, which is supposed to be a lucky year for us all.

I’m not sure what happened, other than to say I got myself focused and it worked.  You know those books about getting what you want by visualizing it?  There’s a good reason why they sell – it works!  If you think about something positively, a good change will come your way.

I’ve long been searching for a product that would take the business more year-round.  I do okay with the Okanagan Harvest Cake at wineries during the summer, but still wanted something more than that.  You may recall I’d considered making chocolate pate at one time.

But because I already have masses of chocolate, nuts and dried fruit in the house, I’ve decided to try my hand at chocolate bark.  First, I met with the owner of Lake Country Harvest, a local dried fruit company, and sampled her wares.  Her cherries are really very nice.

I then bought some white Callebaut chocolate, and decided to make white bark with Okanagan cherries and roasted almonds. However, once I’d roasted the almonds and tried it, I went “meh.”  It was okay, but nothing special.  I prayed for the muse of bark-making to descend upon me, and as usual when we ask for this type of help, it arrives.

I came upon a brilliant idea of making my own candied almonds by stirring butter and sugar together, then adding the almonds.  Once coated, they’re very crunchy on the outside, and so very nice in the soft white chocolate.  Before I added the cherries I tossed them with vanilla sugar.  The end result is bark that’s both attractive and very good.

I spent hours trying various combinations of fruits and nuts, and have come up with four kinds for now.  Tomorrow I’m going to send some to my dear web designer to photograph and post on my site.  Because I don’t want to sell to stores, I’m only going to have the bark available from my site.

I already have an order for a pound from one of the women at my gym, so am taking that as a good sign.  For now my packaging’s going to be pretty basic until I know what the demand is like.

Besides that, I started writing an ebook.  In case you don’t know, it’s one of those PDF files that you pay for, then download, so no actual product has to be shipped.  Since I have my website already, it seems silly not to use it more.  The topic of my book is weight loss, as it’s a topic I know all too well.  Maybe it’s strange for a purveyor of such fattening foods, but perhaps that’ll have some cachet.

When I tell people what I do, they say, “it doesn’t show”, so perhaps a diet book makes sense.  You should’ve seen me with all of the bark experiments, as of course I had to try all of it.  I’d better get that product developed and behind me so that the diet book continues to make sense once I have it written.  No-one wants a 200 pound diet book author.

I’m sure I must write about this topic around this time every year.  Why does it take months for some of the stores to pay for the fruitcakes they’ve sold?  It’s really heart-breaking for the small business person, but I have to spend a lot of my time in the early months of the year hounding large stores for payment.

A pox on them, I say.  However I remain optimistic because I can honestly report I’ve never been stiffed by a customer.  I take everyone at their word, and that’s stood me in good stead over time.  I guess there’s always a first time, but so far everyone who’s ordered fruitcake has always paid.

You’ll recall this year I made only one resolution for myself, and that was to say yes where I would normally have said no.  In other words, I want to be open to ideas and suggestions and try new things.  My resolution for the business is to try harder to grow my on-line sales, because of course that’s where I make the most profit.

There’s a great website called www.brighttalk.com, wherein one can take free marketing seminars.  They’ve got great workshops with titles like A Social Media Marketing Strategy in 90 Days, and Three Secrets to Web Marketing Success.  I’m going to force myself to try one on-line marketing strategy a day and see what happens.

It’s laughable, though for me to think of myself conquering ‘social media.’  I’m on Twitter, and forget to tweet.  Then if I go to the site I have no clue how to read messages from anyone, so have no idea who’s even reading my useless tweets.  I’m on Facebook and Linked In, and won’t update either of them.

So I’ll try this computer marketing stuff for a while and keep you posted on any and all progress.  Motivation to start marketing arrived today due to an order for Okanagan Harvest Cakes from a nice person.  It was so much more than just an order for three fruitcakes; it was a big wake-up call for me.

I’ve resolved to be more open to new things and also to try to increase direct sales, yet I was already defeating myself by feeling negative about the idea of being able to market my product outside of the Christmas season.  But this order showed me that I need to try much, much harder with the Okanagan Harvest Cake as a year-round product.

We have to try so hard to stop the negative and limiting self-talk, don’t we?  I found an interesting book called The Power of your Subconscious Mind, and have started to read it.  It’s funny because it was written in the 1960’s and looks pretty much to be the same philosophy of the wildly popular The Secret and The Law of Attraction.

The main messages in these books seem to revolve around getting a grip on your thoughts and focusing all of your attention on your goal.  One is not to be distracted by two litres of milk left out overnight, one’s vehicle being moved out of the garage into the rain so the space can be used for hacky sack, or by one’s tequila being drank once again.

 Yes, I know I’m behind with my weekly blog, but I find the less I have to do, the less I do.  When I have dozens of things to do in a day I can do them easily, but as the ennui connected with January settles in, I can’t do a damn thing.  However, for once I’m going to enjoy it and revel in slowing down for a while.

I was enthralled by the January Martha Stewart magazine.  I spent a couple of hours browsing through it, and then went through it again, removing interesting recipes.  There seem to be quite a few recipes that I want to try.  For one, there’s a beautiful recipe for eggplant parmigiana that I plan to try, but using chicken breasts instead of the eggplant.

Perhaps as a result of Martha’s craft suggestions, I took out a needlepoint that I’d started last year.  It’s very pretty, consisting of the usual jumble of pansies on a cream background.  I don’t know what happened to me, but on Sunday I spent over eight hours working on that thing!

I told one of the women at the gym about it, feeling embarrased, but fortunately she said she’s just signed up for a knitting class!  What a madcap, adventurous group of women we are at the gym, eh?  To their credit, a couple of members are taking pole dancing to spice things up a bit.  So far, I’ve declined their invitation to join.

My friend Kathy invited a few of us ‘girls’ over to her house on Saturday late afternoon for appies and drinks.  She has a gorgeous house, with a panoramic view of Okanagan Lake.  Her furniture comes from Jordans Interiors, and there’s not a speck of dust to be found on the marble counters.

I’m telling you this so that you can appreciate how she feels when she comes to this pet and big-footed male-damaged house.  You can imagine what the cats have done to the furniture, and what the kids and their friends have done to the general interior of the house.

Which reminds me of the big plans I have for the yard in the spring (notice how I’m ignoring the paint jobs that need to be done inside the house).  Because I no longer get any amusement from running in and out of the house every ten minutes from May to September, moving sprinklers, I want to try xeriscaping.

Here in the Valley there’s a great resource in the Okanagan Xeriscaping Association.  I’ll probably have to take one of their introductory classes just to figure out how to reduce some of the English garden I’m currently emptying Okanagan Lake to water.

All I can say in my defense is that when I moved here and started gardening, the garden centres were full of all of these madly beautiful water-loving plants that we now all have.  However, if I can get used to some of the xeriscape flowers, I’ll survive the change-over.

Thanks to the change in my marital status, there’s going to be some belt-tightening that’s got to occur around here.  For example, I just went downstairs and as no-one is there, I turned off the TV and all of the lights which had been left on by Nicky.  He finds bills incredibly cheap as he doesn’t pay them, so fails to see what the fuss is about.

The most horrible thing that could happen to me would be if I have to get a job outside the house.  I was telling my mom that I’d run into some former colleagues who contract to the government.  I told them about my fruitcake business, which they seemed to ignore, and they said they were always looking for people and to give them a call.

I said to them with a bit of embarrassment, “Um, it’s probably not going to be a good idea because I can’t actually be anywhere at a set time.”  This took them back a bit, but I explained in as friendly a manner as possible that with my firm gym schedule, and the other things I have to do, it’s really hard for me to find the time to fit in a job.

Here’s an example.  I did some research on Biore pore strips, and bought a box of them.  I wanted to get rid of the blackheads in my nose, so used one of the strips and it actually worked.  This made me try the strip on other areas, and by the time that was all done, you can imagine there’d be no time to race to some silly-assed job.

I grew up in a house where nothing was wasted, and being frugal  was a normal way of living.  Sadly our generation lost all of that.  As we know, the great economic strides that were made during our lives have contributed to the downfall of the Earth, so it’s probably good to be forced to cut back a bit.

And can you believe, I have no difficulites living like that, but it’s the mammals I live with who balk at cost-saving measures.  I won’t malign Nicky any further, but have to say the dogs and their chi chi food, as well as the cats and their finicky appetites, are a large financial burden.

However, I’m certainly not going to get rid of the kid or the pets, as they’re now my sole hobby.  With no money for the Number One hobby, which as you know is to shop, I now have to dote on those around me for something to do.  I’ve walked the dogs every day, and that’s good for all of us.

In case you’re wondering, the fruitcake business was good, but again, not the banner year I keep expecting.  It all starts out with such promise in November, then those last cases just sit here, waiting for homes and never getting adopted.

Never mind.  My only resolution for this year is to be less rigid and more open to suggestions and ideas.  Perhaps as a result of that, money will absolutely pour my way, and the Earth-destroying hedonism can return.

This morning I went downstairs and was greeted by a scene from the movie The Hangover.  Thankfully, all of Nicky’s friends were gone, but their detritus told a sad tale.  I could see from the pulled-out hide-a-bed that someone had the brief idea of sleeping it off, but then they must’ve changed their minds.

Every frozen Costco hors d’oeuvres was eaten.  This included boxes of shrimp nests, calamari, Mexican, Indian and Chinese foods, as well as a Delissio pizza.  Every cup and glass in the house was downstairs, as were two of the kitchen chairs.  It must’ve been quite a crowd down there at one time.

Of course I was in bed, fast asleep.  The dogs and I keep opposite hours to the children, and it’s a system that works well for us.  I go to bed at 9:00 and get up at 5:00.  The kids go to bed at 3:00 and get up at 1:00, so it means the core overlap is kept to just a few hours, and that way familiarity doesn’t breed contempt.

A few days before Christmas Luke and Nicky both had friends over, and it was a cookie fest.  I was pretty upset by that one, as they got into my sister-in-law Wendy’s shortbread and cheese cookies.  I’d had one of each, and the rest were devoured by the locusts in the basement.

I have no-one to blame but myself, as I’ve always been overindulgent with the kids.  Just before Christmas I was in the licquor store line-up, when I said to people in line, “Oh darn it, I forgot to get stocking stuffers for the children” and left the line.

I started to browse through those tiny bottles of hard licquor they keep near the till.  The customer who’d been ahead of me said, “You buy stocking stuffers for your children in the licquor store??” and I explained that the ‘children’ were actually 21 and 24 years of age.  That kind of eased the concerns of the cashier and customer, who were both laughing at my choice of gifts.

The good news from all of the children’s consumption is the amount of cash I stand to gain at the licquor store from their empties.  They’re far too flush with money and too pressed for time to take in their empties, but I have neither of those concerns.

I have a filled stamp book from Value Village, meaning I have 30% off on my next purchase.  With the $12 or $15 from the empties, plus the discount, I figure I’ll likely be coming home with either a designer coat or shoes.  What a great day I have ahead of me!

I don’t think I can say the same for Nicky, though, judging from the package of Gravol I found on the table downstairs.  If you don’t know, it’s an excellent way to stave off certain death if you’ve over-indulged.  Trust me, I know.

I’ve already made myself sick from bingeing on a box of Lowney’s maraschino cherry-filled chocolates.  Last night I ate quite a few cookies, and today I’m wondering why I gave away all of my comfy clothes.  I put on my jeans and they were a bit snug, so I can see two weeks of this is going to lead to no good.

Luke’s home from the oil rigs, so I invited Denis over for dinner last night.  The four of us enjoyed a beautiful dinner of chicken souvlaki, roasted potatoes and Greek salad.  This was accompanied by pita bread and homemade hummus and tsaziki.  For dessert I made a lovely baked cheesecake.

I have to say it’s so great to be able to remain such good friends with Denis.  It could’ve gone either way, but after 25 years it’d be a shame to be hostile.  Yet we all know people who divorce and the entire situation is really ugly.  I feel blessed that we can have evenings like we did last night, as the kids really enjoyed it.

Today Luke and Nicky drove to Osoyoos to visit their dear gramma.  I put Christmas music on as soon as they drove off, and started baking cookies.  I’ve made several batches already, but now I’m baking just for us.  Every year the list of people demanding the Spitzbuebchen gets longer. 

I did a demo at Quality Greens in Kelowna yesterday.  There was a funny old gentleman there doing a demo of some jellies, cream cheese and crackers.  He asked how long I’d be there and I told him about two hours.  He was shocked.  “Two hours?  You only stay two hours?  Why?”  He told me his stint was five hours long.

I said, “Because I don’t like to do this at all, so two hours is the most I can do.”  In between customers he told me he lived alone, so said these food-tasting gigs were a way for him to get out and be among people.  He begged me to stay on, but after two hours hours I said I was sorry, and that he was on his own with the public.

I told him I had a cheesecake cooling, chicken to debone and dips to make.  He asked if I had a large family, and I said, “No, I just enjoy the domestic arts.”  I could see he was mulling that over, and I said, “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m the world’s laziest entrepreneur” and with that I left and drove home.

And I’m afraid that’s just the way it is when you’re Martha Stewart the Second and Christmas looms.  I found two new German cookie recipes that I want to try, and I’m busy planning the accompaniments to our Christmas Eve and Day dinners.

Last night I sent Denis home with a batch of shortbread cookies made with really fresh unsalted, cultured butter and the taste of them is to die for.  Thankfully the kids at the rest of those last night as I’m not sure what happens nightly at about 7:00 PM.  However at that hour I begin to shovel snacks so the less there are, the better.

It’s quite ironic that after all the times I found Mojo in the garbage, I almost killed the dog by my own hand.  Last Thursday I made the molasses, honey and Dijon mustard-glazed pork roast that Nicky and I like.  There were a couple of large bones left, so I gave them to the dogs, as I often do.

I know not to give chicken or other sharp bones to them, but I honestly thought a heavy bone like that would be fine.  The next morning Mojo ate her breakfast, then threw up.  The vomiting continued for hours, as did alarming bouts of diarrhea.  By 2:00 PM I said to Nicky I had to take Mojo in to the vet.

By the time I got the listless mutt to the vet it turned out she was massively dehydrated, near death, and had to be put on intravenous immediately.  They said they’d have to X ray her stomach to see if there was a blockage from the pork bone.  I felt absolutely horrible as I drove home.

I prayed to God to save the dog, and said, “I don’t care how much it costs, just don’t let the dog die.”  Fortunately, God answered my prayers in both ways.  The dog survived, and I received a massive bill!  Can you believe that moment of stupidity cost me $900?

Oh well, that’s what money’s for, eh?  Now I know never to give a bone of any kind to any dog, ever, so that’s worth something.  I’ve already told a couple of dog owners about it, and they thanked me, as they were also in the ‘who knew?’ category of giving bones to dogs.  It seems so wolf-like, but I guess not.

Luke arrived home without any prior announcement, and it was great to see him.  However, I’d already booked a demo at the Quality Greens in Vernon so just said hi and bye and drove off in a fury.  I could only do two hours there because by then my feet were absolutely frozen solid.  I don’t know how the cashiers stand it.

Today Luke has big plans for the two of us to go to Costco and shop like we’re Conrad and Barbara Black.  I’ve already bought boxes of Indian and Mexican frozen appetizers, but he wants lashings more of everything.  As he’s found his fame and fortune as a directional drill technician in the oil fields, he’s offered to pay for it all, and I’m going to allow him to do so.

The nice food writer, Eric Akis, e mailed me with a question about fruitcake which was sent to him from one of his readers.  He said if I helped him with the answer he’d mention my fruitcakes in his column so I hope he does.  I actually had to Google the question as it concerned the safety of eating a 25-year-old frozen fruitcake.  The general consensus is that it is still edible!

So what a week it’s been, filled with expensive, yet important new bits of knowledge.  Dogs can die quite easily, but fruitcakes appear to be immortal.  They’ll go on and on and on, until some archaeologist finds them down the road and wonders.

 It’s heart-breaking being a fruitcake monger, as everyone likes to get in on the defaming action.  Even The Bay, for God’s sake!  For example, in this weekend’s flyer, they have these “cute” holiday factoids.  One of them says “Holidata #12: The Fate of Fruitcake” which depicts a pie chart.

The witty ad writers have delineated a slice of about 1/8 of the pie as “door stopper.”  The next slice of about the same size says “pet rock”, and a smaller sliver says “eaten.”  Three quarters of the pie, ie 75%, is shown as “re-gifted next year.”  Isn’t that funny? Not!

Stereotypes like that sure make it hard to sell this product.  But for some reason, I’m not the only certifiable lunatic out there trying to sell this vile food.  In the Globe and Mail’s Life section they had pages of gift suggestions, and one page was entitled For the Epicure.  What should I find there, but another soul’s fruitcake!

This fruitcake is sold at some chi chi bakery in Montreal, and costs $50.00!!  I’m obviously approaching this entirely incorrectly.  Instead of charging a paltry $14.00 for mine, I should triple the price, and say as they do on that site, “limited quantities” and create a Tickle-Me Elmo-like riot.

Here’s another way:  I’m about this far from President Obama eating my fruitcakes!  My sister-in-law and close friend Margaret is dating a man in D.C. whose brother works for the President.  I’m going to mail a fruitcake to the boyfriend and encourage him to share it with his brother and the Prez!

Then on my site it’ll say: Eat the fruitcake adored by President and Mrs. Obama! Clever advertising, eh?  I’ll definitely keep you posted on that project.

The marketing continues at a heady pace, as I’m contacting newspapers and will phone Phil Johnson, the local AM radio morning show host.  He’s one of those people who loves talking about sites where they use a trebuchet to catapult innocent fruitcakes into kingdom come.

When he interviewed me last December, he began with a long preamble about the vile nature of fruitcakes.  When I came on air, I began with, “Do you bait all of your guests before you interview them?”  I think it must happen only to the person daring enough to create the excrement called fruitcake.

Oh well.  As I said, I could easily have started a company selling cookies, but where in the world is the challenge in that?  That’s pretty much a no-brainer if you ask me.  Which reminds me, it’s time to start making the two most delicious German cookies in the world, Spitzbuebchen and Zimmtsterne.  Just saying them makes a person hungry, non?

I adore Sundays because it’s the only day of the week I don’t go to fitness.  Don’t get me wrong, I really love fitness classes, but sometimes it’s wonderful not to be tortured like that.

Picture this: sometimes we have to do what are called burpees.  You crouch, then fling your legs out behind you until you’re in a full push-up position.  Then you jump your feet back in to where you started, and then you stand up. Repeat about 15 times.  I think you can see why a day off is so appealing.

However, I have fitness to thank for my ability to shovel our entire driveway without keeling over. It snowed like nobody’s business on Wednesday night and Thursday, so I spent an hour shoveling in the morning, and then an hour in the afternoon.  I slept like a log on Thursday night from all the fresh air!

On Friday morning on CBC Radio I heard Jian Ghomechi interview a woman who’d invented a cereal called Holy Crap.  Apprently she’d been on Dragon’s Den with her product and the dragons had just loved it.  I felt a mixture of jealousy and fear when I heard her talk about the people they’ve had to hire due to the rapid expansion.

That’s always the tension in small business.  If you go mad with advertising you have to be ready with product.  But if you don’t advertise, then you have yourself a hobby, and not a business, as you likely don’t have enough sales to make any money.

But when free advertising comes, I always take it.  As I wrote earlier, I was mentioned in the business column of our local Capital News last Wednesday and was in the Novemeber/December EAT Magazine.  Now I’ll be in Wine Trails Magazine’s December issue with a proper article accompanied by a photo!

After that, Jennifer Schell’s going to write about me in her food column in the Capital News, and the Osoyoos Times has kindly said they’ll run a photo and story.  So I feel very privileged to have so many nice journalists willing to help with the word of mouth.

Another interesting contact I had was from a woman named Alix Cameron who’s a co-founder of the site called Eat Drink Be Local.  She said they’re going to be recommending 12 must-have local gifts, and my fruitcakes will be one of them!

I’ll be at the Wine Museum’s Neighbourhood Nosh on Thursday.  It’s a once-monthly event wherein people can sample local foods and wines.  I’ve been there before and it moves a lot of fruitcakes as people love to sample, then buy.

I’ve decided my reward for all this is going to start on December 19th and hopefully end January 1st.  Those are the two weeks in which I’m going to allow heady indulgence.  And then of course I’ll be thanking God for the burpees as I slap myself back into shape for the New Year.