My friend, Kate, is one of the most business savvy people I know. Among her many businesses, including Golden Fleece Press, she owns a bakery. Irongate Bakery is the name. She owns this business with her best friend and partner, Kim. The run their bakery out of their homes. Kim does quite a bit of the gluten free items, since she can't have wheat. Kate does most of the cookies. They attend several events throughout the year and are very well known at these events. In fact, they are known as “The Cookie Girls” when they attend the DC Big Flea. They sell other things beside baked goods. They sell and assortment of teas, including tea bricks, yes....I said tea bricks.....as well as other tea paraphernalia. During baking week, the week before a show, it is a flurry of flour, sheaves of sugar everywhere, and total coconut chaos. Everything has to be baked, packaged, weighed, stickered with ingredients, and packed in large bags, ready to be packed in the car. Kate's mother, BR, does a good portion of the baking.
I became involved this past year. It was baking week and I offered help one night after picking up copies of my book. I helped pack cookies until close to midnight. They were still baking. I offered my help in the future and they gladly accepted. On my first day, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't really understand the large amount of baking that was taking place. I had husband drop me off on his way to work on the Thursday morning. It was rather early for me. I mean, we all know that I am not that much of a morning person. BR offered me coffee and breakfast. Coffeeeeee......
Anyhow, it was early in the morning and she was already baking. It was cookie day. My job was to bag the cookies, weigh them, write the weight on the label, and stick the label on the back of the package. The labels identify the type of cookie as well as the ingredients. Those are kind of important to know, especially if you have an allergy. I was up to my elbows in chocolate chip cookies. It was heavenly. I, of course, had to sample the products. The brownies are particularly delicious. We managed to get everything done in record time. BR usually started the Irish Soda Bread at 9 to 10pm at night, of they were lucky. With my help, the bread was in before dinner. That is how I became the Baking Minion.
I have helped a few times now. BR and I work well in the kitchen and she doesn't really have to give me any direction. I love Cookie Day. That is the only day I work. There are other days. Nut Days. Gluten Free Day. It wasn't until I was packaging the Irish Oat Cakes, that I noticed there was far more going on than just baking. The only food allergies I have are not very common ones-- white grapes, ginger, and I'm lactose sensitive. I can't have white wines or sultanas. Anything that has a ginger sauce, or milk and ice cream. Not that the lactose thing stops me from having a milkshake. But they are not going to kill me. The white grapes make me violently ill for a couple of days, but I'm not going to die. However, cookies with nut pose a problem for people who are allergic, like Kate, and any form of wheat can make people with a gluten allergy incredibly sick. So, how does a small bakery based out of a kitchen fix this problem? Easy. As I stated above, there are other days. Nut Day is dedicated to making things that contain nuts of any kind. To avoid any possible contamination, there is a box that has measuring cups, spatulas, etc, that are only used for nuts. There is even a different color of shirt you must wear when handling nut products. As an aside, coconut qualifies as an actual nut. I didn't know that. I felt silly. Once the nuts are done, everything stops, and the decontamination begins. All the nut dishes are washed in really hot water, dried with towels used only for nuts, and put back in the nut box. Then the entire kitchen is scoured top to bottom. First is a wipe down on hot, soapy water. Once that dries, we break out the Clorox Wipes. Everything gets cleaned. Once the Clorox dries, we take a wet paper towel, wipe off the counters, then dry that with a paper towel. The nut shirts get washed on their own.
Gluten Free Day is much more intense. I don't work on gluten day. I mean, there are things I would never have thought was a problem until Gluten Free Day was explained to me. GF items have their own....everything. Shirts, towels, dishes, mixers, measuring cups and spoons, etc. All of the Gf items are kept in a bag, which are kept on a cart, which is kept away from everything on a daily basis. To avoid any confusion as to what is GF and what is not, all the GF items are red. I mean, bright red. You can't miss it. You cannot wear a red shirt while you are making non-GF items. The smallest amount of flour can contaminate an entire batch and can make people sick. The cleaning process after GF baking is just as thorough and intense as cleaning up after Nut Day. It has to be. Since I don't have those allergies, I never gave them a second thought. I can eat nuts. I can eat wheat. I never thought about using different baking utensils or different shirt. I still have a tiny problem with remembering it. I would go from packaging chocolate chip cookies to packaging the Irish Oat Cakes. Those have coconut. I always catch myself before I move on to a different product and let BR know so that she can get me a different color shirt. I put my regular shirt back on only when I am leaving.
Some of the goodies that and particularly partial to are the Irish Oat Cakes, Brownies, Sugar Cookies, and, of course, the Chocolate Chip Cookies. I love baking day. I really do. I have learned so much about baking from BR.
So how does a day of baking usually go? Like this.
Arrival and coffee
Labeling the nut cookies
Baking
Baking
Baking
Packaging cookies
Labeling cookies
Baking
Baking
Packaging cookies
Labeling cookies
Baking
Baking
Baking
Baking
Lunch!
Baking
Baking
Baking
Packaging cookies
Labeling cookies
Baking
Baking
Baking
Labeling
Labeling
Labeling
Cutting up the brownies
Packaging the brownies
Labeling the brownies
Change my shirt to a Nut Shirt
Break up the Irish Oat Cakes
Packaging the Oat Cakes
Labeling the Oat Cakes
Change shirt
Decontaminate the counter from Oat Cake
Packaging the last of the cookies
Labeling the last of the cookies
Say hello to Kate
Dinner
That is about it. Cookies everywhere! I'm ever hopeful that Kate is able to open an actual bakery. That would be awesome. One day.....

Whew! 

That is really all I have to say about November. It was a hell of a month for me, with several things happening all at once. 

First and foremost, November means NaNo. I had a good NaNo this year. I finished in two weeks with around 52k. It was really cool. It seemed that many of my friends struggled this time around. Usually, it is me fighting to keep up with the daily word count. Poor Jules had to write around 15-20-ish thousand to catch up the final weekend. I dunno. It was just a good year for me. The characters were cooperating, the plot was working, everything went well for me. 

The next biggest things that happened were all not so good things, in fact, they were outright terrible. Our cat Bert had to be rushed to the vet one night. He just wasn't acting right. It is hard to explain. It is one of those things where you know your pet and you know they aren't okay. He let me pick him up and hold him like a baby and just rested on my chest for the entire 15-minute phone call to the vet. (a) He hates being held like a baby and (b) even when I hold him like a baby, he swishes his tail and fights to be let up. He stayed there the whole time. We took him in and it turns out he had a tumor that had collapsed his intestine and blocked his urethra. They thought he was just blocked again, like before, and wanted to keep him overnight to see if it passed. We got the call the next day that it was a tumor and they needed to do immediate surgery. I freaked out. Rightly so. I mean, this is the second time we have done this with this cat. Thankfully, the vet is working with us on payment. This happened on a Thursday. Friday we had to take in post dated checks. We do everything online so, we had to wait for the bank to open. (Mind you this is the second time this has happened. We ordered checks. Thank you for everything, Nicole!). The surgery was scheduled for Saturday. When we dropped off the checks, we asked if we could see him. They kept him there to stay quiet and medicated. Boy was he medicated. Poor guy. The tech was trying to bring him back and we heard, “Bert? Where are you going silly cat?” We started to laugh. Yeah, that was our cat. He apparently heard us and tried to hop out of the tech arms to get to the door. He was so happy to see us. We spent a good 20 minutes with him before they took him back. Pender is always amazing. His surgery went well and we picked him up. He was ready to go. We were asking the vet questions, and he was in my arms purring. He had to wear the cone for a good 14 days. We locked him up in my office because he needed to stay quiet for a bit while he healed. He was on some really good meds. He had a patch on his back leg that released pain meds. I could always tell when they kicked in. He was so loopy and seeing things! I swear that cat was growling at ghosts! He had a bad trip one night. He stood next to my chair and poofed up. I thought he was growling at me, but he was just looking at the wall. I could not calm him down. He even hissed at me. I had to wake up Brian to help me calm him down. It was hilarious. Poor cat. His cone came off early since he healed very quickly. Then we started letting him out during the nights when Brian was home and then in the office with me. We were just making sure he was okay. He healed perfectly  and back to his old self. 

Kinda......
​
The vet had sent the tumor off to a lab to a pathology report. It took a week before we knew anything. The vet was hopeful that it was just a benign cyst or something. No such luck. Bert has cancer. But we have a plan. We are taking him back in to the vet to put him on some meds and we will take him in for a check-up every six months or so. We are going to stay on top of it. It is heartbreaking that my poor cat has cancer, but he is a fighter and he knows he is loved. Also, we have pet insurance for this very reason.  On a side note-- I would like to thank the Border's Refugees for letting me sit in silence and digest the news. Pender called me on a Monday night in the middle of our weekly writing meeting. I didn't want to talk about it. I was too upset and said so and they didn't push. That meant the world to me. 

On the day we got the day we got the news about Bert, we got even more bad news. Brian's grandmother, Grandma Mary, had passed away. She was in her 90s and she died peacefully in her sleep. Really we could not ask for more than that. Then two weeks later, I lost an uncle. I wasn't close to him, so it didn't hit me as much as other cousins, but I have very fond memories. 

During this time, I was working on a project for Golden Fleece. Jules was swamped. Like really swamped and I asked to take on the first edition of Fandom Universe. This year it is Star Wars. I didn't realize how big of an undertaking that was going to be. We didn't have enough content, first and foremost. That was going to be a problem. Some of the submissions were on the ridiculous side. One person sent something that had nothing to do with Star Wars, science fiction, or space even. I don't think they actually read what the journal was supposed to be about. Ugh. So I put out another call in a group on Facebook and the group pulled through beautifully. I didn't expect my life to get tossed around for a bit, but I was able to get it out. I was working right up to the deadline. Sorry Jules. I dunno, it felt like a test to me, you know? Like if I can do this big thing I can be trusted to do other editing projects or something. Silly, I know. I already have a lot of freedom when it comes to things. I've put together Deep Waters, I edit Jules' stuff, and, unlike other traditional publishers, I work directly with my illustrator and have a big say in editing the Abby Series. So, I dunno, maybe I am being anxious, but it still felt like a test. I hope they like it. We have gone to press already so........aaahh.....
In other big news, Abby 2 is officially launching. You can already pre-order it. Whoo-hoo! I saw the proofs and it is amazing. The colors came out so much better than last time and it is so pretty. I have an official launch on the 12th and I have my first launch to-do. The local book store, Prospero's, wants to have a thing announcing the launch. I'm so excited. I feel bad since that is my brother's birthday, but I can't really do anything about that. I hope he isn't mad. Well, he's turning 13 so he's going to be miserable no matter what. If you are parents of teenagers, you know what I mean. 

So that is about it. December is for catching up on crafting and holidays. And updating the blogs that I wasn't able to do in November. I hope the holidays find you well!