As you know, I’m a huge fan of CBC radio.  Every day I prepare dinner while listening to Jo-Ann Roberts of All Points West.  It’s on weekdays from 3:00 – 6:00 PM.  Once a week or so she has a man named Troy Townsin on, and he pairs wines with various foods.

I thought it might be nice for her listeners to hear Troy pair wines with my delectable fruitcakes, so I mailed two to Jo-Ann with a letter.  Imagine how wonderful it was today at 4:55 PM to be slicing onions, and hear her say, “Today Troy’s going to pair some wines with a fruitcake we received from a listener in the Okanagan.”

He chose a variety of wines, which you can check out on the All Points West site by following this link: http://www.cbc.ca/allpointswest/features.html.  Scoll down past the chicken and sticky pudding recipes until you see the list of wines.  Then under that see the wonderful link to my website!  Isn’t that incredible?

Another incredible thing is that I remain in business at all.  All fall I’ve been baking Totally Decadent Fruitcakes, as they’re the most popular.  However, at the end of last week I idly decided I should probably do a bit of an inventory of Okanagan Harvest Cakes.  Mein Gott im Himmel!  I discovered I have only 10 cases.

Fortunately, I have Marilyn coming to the rescue, and we’re spending the next two days just churning out fruitcakes until we’re dizzy.  In the midst of all this excitement I’ve had the downstairs fridge repaired.  The man came today, looked at it, and said, “That’s the biggest ice build-up I’ve ever seen.”  I shrugged.

Maybe I ignore ice build-up in fridges and funny noises under the car’s hood, but one thing I’m vigilant about is the Christmas lights.  They have to be up by December 1st.

Denis toiled for hours on the weekend, and I must say they look really nice this year.  I find with the fruitcake business that December just flies by, so I insist on a full month of outside lighting.  I also bought egg nog, which signals the beginning of the season to the family.

Luke discovered Star Buck’s egg nog lattes, and wanted to make them at home, so he said, “Can you buy an obscene amount of egg nog?”  I said sure, and then added, “In a few days I’m going to be starting the Christmas baking” to which he replied, “Sweet Jesus.”

It’ll all be fine if I can just spend fourteen hours a day on my feet.  So far, I must say I’ve been doing fine, and with the CBC perk just now, I think I might make it.

I’ve just completed the three-day gig at Urban Fare in Yaletown in Vancouver, and am both dizzy and giddy from the experience.  It’s an incredibly busy place, as I believe about 2,000 sample pieces were eaten!

I estimate that I spoke with between two and three hundred people.  I had the pleasure of hearing the famous, “This is the best fruitcake I’ve ever eaten” statement from a few.  However, each night I would arrive at my friends’ place feeling like a wrung-out dish rag.

I was lucky to be placed at a table with Dan, the really nice wine maker of Therapy Vineyards in Naramata.  My fruitcakes were being paired with a sharp English cheddar, and the wine was Therapy Vineyard’s Freudian Sip.

On Friday I had driven from Kelowna to Vancouver, arriving a bit early for the gig, which started at 3:00 PM.  I was half-dead from the drive, so walked for a few minutes along the sea wall in Yaletown.  As I walked I prayed for the Muse of Yuppie Buying to descend upon me.

As soon as the event started, though, I realized I needn’t have worried.  People flocked in eating and buying like Parisians on the eve of Bastille Day.  On Saturday there was a huge crowd of people, probably thanks to the buckets of rain pouring down outside.

When I left at 5:00 on Saturday, after starting at noon, I realized that my left knee would no longer bend.  I guess I was standing stiff-legged for so long that it forgot it was a joint.  Eventually I was able to haul myself out of the store, and scraped what remained of myself into my car.

I met a lovely food vendor at the event who makes beautiful sauces containing tequila and Grand Marnier.  Her name is Ann Kirsebom, and she owns Chef Ann Kirsebom’s Gourmet Sauces.  I tasted her absolutely fantastic sauces and she tried my fruitcakes, and we generally provided each other with a few laughs throughout the three days.

It’s funny, though, even at Urban Fare, where my fruitcakes retail for $19.99 and a package of cheese the size of a large eraser costs over $5.00, some people still act in the same way as those at the craft fairs do.  They arrive with their small kids in tow, and encourage them to just grab and eat whatever they like.

One woman grabbed samples and fed them to her toddler and one-year-old in a stroller.  Another customer came up, obviously wanting to sample some for herself.  So I said to the nice customer, within earshot of the rude mother, “The one you’re trying right now is soaked in rum, and the ones the children are trying are soaked in brandy.”

The mom then laughed, kind of embarrassed, and mumbled something inane.  The public can be tough, but all in all, I can say the three days at Urban Fare will be a huge boon to my business.  Now if I can just feeling back into my tortured body everything will be fine.

I wanted to test my sprained knee on an easy fitness class, so went to a mild cardio at 9:00 this morning.  Afterwards I delivered two orders of fruitcakes, and got home to find the entire kitchen floating in water.  Denis decided to ‘clean the kitchen’ so I decided it was best to say nothing at all.

I thought of the handful of dishes that were on the counter when I left, and marveled at the enormous amount of soap and water in the sink.  The counters were coated in a heavy layer of water.  I felt it best for my nerves to leave the area entirely.

Fortunately, I’m much too busy with orders to concern myself with these small annoyances.  Even the old, broken fridge from the garage, which Denis hauled out days ago, and left standing like a sentry in the yard doesn’t distract me.  And really, besides the broken van covered in a tarp, and an old plastic table heaped in useless crap, the fridge adds a certain je ne sais quois to the yard.

Orders are now coming in daily, and it’s wonderful.  I’m still baking, as I do the daily, “I don’t have enough product” thing.  I’m also very busy with packaging and mailing.  As well, I’m still working on printed materials and am trying to think of free ways to market.

Nonetheless, fate likes to test one during busy times.  My sister-in-law Margaret decided to attend a tourism conference recently held in Kelowna, so she and her son Brendan, plus a work colleague came.  We’ve had Brendan, now 15, here many times since he was a small kid, and that’s actually an entire novella in itself.

I thrilled Brendan with chicken souvlaki, Greek salad and roasted potatoes one night, and curried chicken and rice on another.  Foor Margaret and Tanya I made Julia’s boeuf bourgignone.  I made chocolate mousse for dessert, and they all said that they loved it.

This week I’ll be crazy with preparing for three days of hell in Vancouver.  I’m going to be at Urban Fare on Davie Street for some kind of food event.  I’ll drive down on Friday, straight to the store.  Then I’ll stand there from 3:00 until 7:00 flogging my wares.

I’ll do that again on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5:00, and then drive home on Monday.  If I survive that, I’m going to have a rather large martini when I enter the house on Monday afternoon.  I can hardly wait to see what the house looks like when I get home.

Though grueling, the demo will be a wonderful way for me to personally introduce my product to the chi chi folks who shop at Urban Fare.  The nice bakery manager is going to supply some sharp, artisan cheese and pair me with a winery so that people will have the Full Monty.  I’ll report back next Monday, the 23rd on how it all went.

This past week I received a really nice e mail from someone who said that my story inspired her.  She’s also trying to run a business from home, and asked for some pointers.  As well, another woman  phoned me this week, asking to be connected to my mentor Prerna Chandak, who was found for me by CBC Radio.

When you’re self-employed, it’s really hard to know what to do.  I had to figure all of it out myself, though had lots of advice from great people along the way.  Some of them were friends with common sense.  For example, Alison suggested that I use mini loaf pans instead of my insane method of cutting bars from a pan.

Tracey from Discover Wines was my first store owner, so she helped me set a wholesale price.  The nice man at the kitchen supply store told me to use a food processor to chop the dried fruit, rather than using shears.  The owner of an on-line gift supplier to conferences suggested that I use a commercial sealing machine.

So here I am, armed to the teeth with advice and fruitcakes.  I’m ready to sell like a water vendor at a flea market in the Gobi desert.  My goal for the upcoming week is to market the hell out of myself, even if it kills me.  As I’ve whined many times before, it is one of the hardest things one has to do.

I met Monika, the owner/baker of Okanagan Grocery, and saw her production area in the back.  She was in the midst of making jam, and gave me a jar of her delicious quince and lavender.  Of course I had to buy a loaf of the chocolate bread, and you can imagine what happened that evening at home.

Monika was pleased to see that I had my little signs all nicely laminated and ready for her to display along with my fruitcakes.  It was so adorable when I arrived, as I walked in the front, holding a case of fruitcakes, and said to the startled girl who works there, “I’ve got some fruitcakes here, ordered by Monika.”

She did the typical nose wrinkle and said, “Fruitcakes? Uh, you’d better go and find Monika in the back.”  Once I’d returned to the front with Monika, she and I both teased the girl for being the prototypical fruitcake customer.  Yet, once she tries it and likes it, I know she’ll be able to sell to everyone entering the store.

I made 56 fruitcakes today, and it wasn’t easy.  On Friday at the end of a gruelling one-hour cardio class, the instructor had us squat.  Ostensibly she wanted us to stretch our Achilles tendons, but once I was way down there in the squat I wondered to myself, “will I ever be able to stand up again?”

Fortunately, I did manage to get up, but have since had a stiff, swollen knee that hurts like the dickens whenever I walk downstairs.  As the kitchen is downstairs, and people require my attention upstairs every two minutes, it’s been another test of my entrepreneurial mettle.

If sarcasm is a form of anger, then why did Bill Gates purposely design this into his systems?  Yesterday as I was trying to save a file the computer sent me this message, “The last time you tried to save this file it caused serious problems to your system.  Do you still want to continue to try and save this file?” or something to that effect.

In other words, “If you put your hand on this hot element, you will seriously burn yourself.  Do you want to continue?”  Of course one is then shamed into making the prudent decision, “No, I don’t want to continue, you sanctimonious piece of hardware.”

However, much as I malign the rude messages, I sure could’ve used a warning like that last week from the washing machine.  I thought I was being a tremendously helpful mother by picking up Luke’s clothes and throwing them into the washing machine.  When I retrieved them and found his BlackBerry, however, I felt a bit sick.

So that was about $500 down the drain.  Then on Friday I was admiring my new black leather Naturalizer loafers.  I’d been wearing them that morning and took them off, leaving them under the dining room table.  The worst part is that a little voice inside reminded me that Ricky had done in a similar pair of shoes, but I ignored it.

Sure enough, the next time I looked, there he was, sitting beside the flap he’d chewed off the top of the left shoe.  I grabbed the shoe and tried to catch the little weasel, but he was too quick, dodging this way and that as I lunged, screaming, from one side of the table to the other.

Then I needed to pick up the new promotional materials I’d ordered at Staples, and this all came to around $250.  I tried to keep a calm expression on my face.  I’ve been asked by Urban Fare to bring Serving Suggestion cards, so I had to have those made as well.

The final insult occurred last night when I returned to bed after going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  As I put my head on my pillow I realized it was wet.  I turned on the light, and sure enough, Ricky had peed on my pillow!

This time I didn’t even bother trying to find the little troll, and just got busy making the area half-ways habitable for a human.  In the morning I decided I would save money by washing both feather-filled pillows, even though one is advised not to do it.  Apparently, they are to be taken to a special feather-cleaning facility.

However, I’ve washed them before, and though I believe it may have been partly responsible for the final breakage of the old top-loading washer, it can work.  Once the pillows make it through the wash cycle, you just have to manually put them through the spin cycle a few times.  Finally, the machine is able to drain them of their hundreds of pounds of water.

They’re currently rattling around in the dryer, throwing it back and forth wildly.  After several cycles, once they’re finally dry, I will feel so proud of myself for having saved the money from the special feather-cleaning facility.

Imagine how surprised I was on Wednesday when right in the middle of a batch of fruitcakes the faithful old floor mixer decided to stop working!  It’s about fifty years old, and has an on/off switch and some sort of device for controlling the paddle speed.  It was this lever that started to sound funny, and then the paddle stopped turning entirely.

I had to wrestle the huge steel bowl onto the table and go upstairs for a whimpy hand-mixer.  I then laboriously mixed the dough as best I could, and added the fruit.  Finally I had to get in there up to my elbows to incorporate everything, but I did it.  Once I got that batch into the oven I allowed myself time to panic.

When you own a fifty year old machine, and when it’s broken, it’s easy to imagine the hell that awaits one in finding a replacement piece.  However, luck was with me as when Nicky opened the top, he quickly found that a belt was broken.  He removed it and the next day I was actually able to find a replacement very easily.

Imagine the shock, then, when Denis put the belt on the machine and the faithful old thing started to work again!  I wasn’t too shocked at the machine, but at the fact that Denis had actually fixed it.

To celebrate I skipped down to the garden and harvested a bunch of broccoli, carrots and beets.  Then I went out and picked several pounds of very ripe concord grapes.  I made jelly, which should be called ice jelly as the grapes have already been through a cold spell.

Our old friends from Vancouver, the Lynch’s, came for a visit this weekend.  I made a Mexican dinner, which involved a new rice and bean salad that was very good.  You put cumin seeds in a frying pan and gently brown them first, so the flavour is really wonderful.  These are added to lime juice, oil, and chopped pickled hot peppers for the dressing.

For dessert I made a four-layer chocolate chunk torte that everyone appeared to like as well.  I ate some of the leftovers today, and it almost made me want to give up on dieting forever.  However, if I would ever do that, I’d soon be giving Kirstie Alley a run for her money.

Orders are coming in from my stores such as the Cookbook Company in Calgary, Stong’s and Edible BC in Vancouver and Discover Wines here in Kelowna.  I’m packaging and shipping daily, and so never have to wonder what there is to do.

As well, I made the scary trip to Staples with some discs to get some promotional materials printed to enclose with orders.  Stapes is scary because it involves a computer, hence many chances for mistakes.  That’s why my mixer is not so scary.   An on/off switch and one lever are about all I can handle at this stage of my life.

Now I guess it’s payback time for all the people I scoffed at who suggested I may grow weary of making fruitcakes.  I find these days that I practically have to put a gun to my head to get myself downstairs to start.  Once I’ve started it’s okay, but unfortunately, my limit is now two batches a day!

Seriously, it’s all I can really do because there’s the shopping for inventory, marketing attempts (however feeble and ridiculous) and of course packaging, which is completely onerous.  The other night Nicky and Taya put labels on 500 boxes and it was wonderful not to have to do it.

So I guess that tells me that 3,000 fruitcakes a year is really all that I am ever going to be able to do.  However, that’s potentially 3,000 happy people, so that’s got to count positively toward some decent karma.

And there’s just the general good karma I must be creating daily as I run our home like a soup kitchen.  Nicky’s girlfriend often eats here, and Luke likes to invite his friends Felix or Tyson over.  The other night, after having eaten several decent meals here in a month, Felix said, “Wow!  You always make good dinners.”

Today at the Superstore I was checking out with the usual: a box of Taquitos, doughnuts, a huge bag of cookies, four different types of chips, a package of pepperoni sticks and sundry other items including eight litres of milk.  I said to the nice woman at the check-out, “Imagine how much money I’m going to save if my kids ever move out.  They’re like locusts.”

As expected, upon arriving home with all of the stuff Luke said excitedly to Nicky, “Mom did a big shop-out, so it’s gonna be a good day!”  They are 23 and 20 years of age, but one would never know it.  The oven was immediately turned on, and in went the Taquitos.

Yet I would never dream of serving this type of swill to them for dinner.  No, dinners are always divine creations that make everyone swoon.  A typical week might be cabbage rolls, chicken chow mein, pot roast, chicken enchiladas, meat pies, Mediterranean-style fish stew and lasagna.

As well, I always like to try out new recipes so that we don’t get bored.  Perhaps that’s the danger of the 3,000 fruitcakes, in that one has no leeway whatsoever for any creativity.  In fact, it’s really important to make them as identical as possible or the public balks.

And really, being the egomaniac that I am, all it will take is one bit of publicity, and suddenly all talk of boredom will be forgotten.  Maybe I need to float one of the dogs off in a helium balloon and call 911.

When I went down to the vegetable garden yesterday morning I saw that frost had killed the basil and dahlias.  However, I was still able to get huge handfuls of parsley, sage and tarragon, which I chopped and added to the stuffing for our turkey dinner.  We had it last night because The Boarder’s in town and may have to leave soon.

Nicky took the prize for eating the most food.  He had two full plates of turkey with all of the homemade accompaniments such as the cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, Brussels sprouts and yams topped with marshmallows.

He then had three pieces of pumpkin pie for dessert, laden with whipped cream.  The Boarder also ate two plates of food, but Luke could only choke down a bit due to the amount of Jaegermeister he’d consumed the night before.  Luke and I are sadly both panty-waists in the drinking department.

This week I finally decided to stop acting childish and actually confront an ugly question: how many fruitcakes do I have, and how many will I need?  I just hate things like that, as they require counting and looking at records.  Did I mention that I failed math?

Actually, the only reason I passed math 11 on the second try was because the teacher made me promise never to take math again.  I said, “Why would I?”  Little did I know that a few years later I would be in graduate school, taking something evil called statistics.  That was quite a traumatic experience for all involved.

I suppose the fruitcake count was a good exercise, as when I counted what I have on hand, and by projecting how much I’m going to need, I could see that I have to work like a lunatic for the next two months.  Hence, I have to say I’m very thankful for the garden frost, as it means I can at least stop spending time on watering.

Plus working like a ferret on caffeine helps remove me from more troublesome situations.  As I was baking away, I could hear Denis drilling into the wall a few feet away.  I hated to ask what he was doing, but did.  He said that he was putting hooks into the wall so that he can hang his hockey equipment on it when he comes home.

This was the perfect opportunity for me to smile, say nothing, and return to the safety of my kitchen.  I then took my mind off murder by practicing my multiplication tables, which I need to do anyway.  “If I make four batches a day, at 14 fruitcakes a batch…..”

When one is in small business, marketing is the kicker.  It’s really expensive to buy ads, and most of the time they do nothing anyway.  I’ve come to realize that though it may seem expensive, the best and cheapest way to market a food business is to give away product.

And certainly, when it comes to fruitcake, God knows the skeptical customer needs to taste it.  Once again, I had a few people recoil at my question, “Would you like to sample some of my fruitcake?”  This was at an event at the Kelowna Wine Museum on Thursday evening.

They were pairing my fruitcakes with some locally-made ports.  It was really lovely, as people had sharp, aged cheddar, pieces of fruitcake and a glass of nice, fortified wine.  Several people left with fruitcakes, vowing to serve them on a tray interspersed with a good cheese.

At this event I found out about a store called Okanagan Grocery Artisan Breads.  I raced right in there the next day and was amazed at the beautiful stuff the baker, Monika Walker, makes.  I instantly bought chocolate bread, made with Callebaut chocolate, and a loaf of salty olive bread.

Strangely, while I was buying these two items, I imagined myself presenting them to the family, and not eating any.  Imagine my surprise when I found myself cutting piece after delicious piece of the chocolate bread.  I went to bed bloated, but extremely happy.

I have a new customer, and again, this is as a result of the person eating the product.  Through networking at The Woman’s Place fitness centre, I was able to get samples to the owner of a store at Big White.  At first, she was like, “I don’t see how fruitcake is going to work.”  Then she ate it, and immediately e mailed an order!

I was speaking with the bakery manager of Urban Fare in Vancouver, as we were discussing my upcoming sampling session there.  As it turns out, they’re having a three-day food and wine event starting November 20th, so I’m going to be there for that.  I told her that a nice addition to my fruitcakes is sharp cheeses, so she’s going to provide them, and they’ll pair me with a winery.  Fun!

But here’s the news that made me jump up and down with excitement – a company called Nutenfru, that used to be a competitor, has allegedly decided to get out of the fruitcake business!!  So with any luck I’m going to become everyone’s favourite fruitcake.  Armed with that piece of news I’m ready to march bravely into the upcoming season.

You may recall the horrible incident I had last year whereby an order was delivered days late to Peppers Foods, a major customer in Victoria.  I had tracked the boxes on-line, and to my frustration could see they were sitting in Richmond for days.  So it was deja vu when I sent iced brownies to someone in Victoria on September 15th, only to have them finally arrive on the 25th!

When I tracked the parcel on-line, all I saw for several days was that it had been received in Kelowna.  Then I saw that it had been sent to Mississauga!!  Finally I guess someone there noticed the V in the postal code prefix, which helped them twig to the fact that V=British Columbia.

Perhaps it was just this most recent Mercury retrograde that caused the delay.  It may also explain why I didn’t know my interview was going to be shown on CHBC!  It’s true.  I happened to be sitting here last Sunday, idly watching the news with Denis, when I saw that my interview was going to be on.  I was totally shocked, as I’d wanted to let my mom and others know so they’d be watching.

The good news is that a ton of people watch that show in the Okanagan Valley, so I immediately received oreders.  Quality Greens is my biggest customer, and they e mailed and ordered because they said people were coming in and asking for the product.  That’s about a month earlier than usual.

So I’ve been living up to the motto I used to have at my former job.  It came from a Dilbert cartoon with him all askew in the frame, as though he’d just been catapulted from a canon.  Underneath it said, “Work like a frightened idiot.”

I’m just wondering, as I put labels onto my boxes, why I didn’t do this slowly over the winter months.  As I snip the ends off the bagged fruitcakes and place them into their boxes, I ponder what made me decide to wait and do every aspect of the business in three months.  Maybe I just work best under pressure.

A new customer I got as a result of being on TV is the new Watermark Resort in my dear hometown of Osoyoos.  It’s managed by the Boutique Hotels and Resorts of BC, so it’d be fab to get into all of their properties.  The Watermark is going to give guests a fruitcake over Christmas as an amenity.

Here’s what could happen: Oprah decides to visit Osoyoos, and stays at the Watermark.  She receives one of my fruitcakes, and exclaims that she must have an immediately shipment of this ambrosia.  I mail her some, but the parcel ends up in Mississauga.

However, I shouldn’t think negative thoughts.  So, here’s a positive one.  If Canada Post does delay or lose another parcel, perhaps someone will have the good fortune of witnessing me actually Going Postal.