Baking – #SixKidChaos

Post Valentine’s Day Blues

So as a single guy a day like yesterday kind of sucks. Everywhere you turn love and happiness is being thrown in your face, to make matters worse I was also trying to capitalize on this day by pimping my sugar cookie business to anyone that was interested. To spend the day before (all day) baking, icing and decorating, then packaging up all these tasty treats was a lot of fun but just drove the point home even more.

It was a perfect storm of life events as well, both little kids went back to their mom’s house as it was Wednesday. The eldest two wanted to spend time with their friend and boyfriend so I had an empty house.

Honestly sitting home alone was not so much fun, and it allowed my mind to wander into some rather dark places. I didn’t like where it was going, and I was questioning a lot of the decisions that I have made over the last few months. I immediately recognized this as the beginning a what could have been a very nasty negative cycle. These patterns of thinking have been very self destructive for me in the past, and it is so easy to fall back into them and let the nothing just carry you away.

Good thing for me I have learned a few things these last few months about myself and how to handle this negative energy. As it was February 14th most of my support circle was busy last night having the most wonderful time (I hope), so I had to look at the man in the mirror for some guidance and help. I fired up Titanic on the big screen, grabbed my trusty journal and wrote a bunch of pages to purge my mind of the evil thoughts stirring around in there.

Those thoughts are now out of my head and will be translated directly into actions today which is a great thing. These intermittent thoughts that I would argue we all have from time to time can be self destructive when allowed to take hold, its comforting knowing that I can now recognize the onset and not allow myself to get trapped, but even more so be a source of energy and inspiration to drive me forward.

Today we have 80 sugar cookies to bake this morning for a client tomorrow afternoon, and some for my daughter and her class tomorrow as she is star of the day, then it will be some quality kid time tonight with swim lessons and some family fun at the YMCA followed my Marvel movie night!

https://www.northwestbakery.com — North West Bakery is based in Barrie, Ontario serving Simcoe County and the Greater Toronto Area, all of our products are homemade with love. We can hand deliver to your business, party or special event. Visit **https://www.NorthWestBakery.com** for details!

Valentine’s Day Cookie Rush…

It was a baking kind of morning, as the bananas from Sunday’s grocery shop were finally ready to be turned into some delicious loaves of banana bread, my children like to gobble down. They were bright green when I bought them and have patiently waited for them to turn…

And while those bad boys were baking away in the oven it was time to decorate some cookies for the Valentine’s Day cookie rush of early next week…

I have learned that decorating a sugar cookie is definitely a learnt skill, and one that can be greatly improved upon with a whole lot of practice. And that is what this morning was dedicated to with a fresh batch of icing, learning the correct consistency for both flooding and writing, drying times, etc…

I will also say that also with the strength training that I have been doing recently, it has increased my upper body strength and allowed me to hold that icing bag with a steady head. Results posted below, my only issues is that I like to sample a lot and eating sugar cookies is not a great part of the triathlete’s diet!

Why Do I Blog?

Interesting question? And one I was forced myself to ask this past Sunday. I woke up around 6am to get ready for work, and as usual I pick up my phone to see if there is anything important that may need my attention. I see a message from FaceBook messenger from an old girlfriend from about 10 years ago, definitely not the normal notification I would get on my phone so I gave it a read.

72C32DD7-8E1D-4CB0-9BC3-38DD06E0DA66-3215-00000534C50B752A.jpg — The Ying and Yang of life… Star Wars style!

Not the way that anyone would want to start the day. While I believe the underlying reason for sending this message was concern the wording and overall tone of the message was just plain wrong. I don’t even care to cut and paste it here as it basically was calling me out, my actions, this blog in particular were all BAD THINGS for me. That I was in serious denial about my anger, mental health issues and depression and if I continued down this path I would be broke, homeless and unemployable.

She of course then blocked me so I couldn’t send any sort of reply. Since I know that she is stalking me online, and will eventually read this this reply will have to do.

I am living my own life, and the choices that I make (while you may not agree with) are mine to make. Spending this time now with my son is my driving force in life, the day to day interaction that I get with him (and my other children), I wouldn’t trade for the world. I was a miserable nasty who hated his job, and hated the person THAT I WAS. I walked away from all that life to save the future of my children, had I continued on that path I would have been broke, homeless and unemployable.

I have spent considerable time resolving the issues that I had been dragging around with me, I have sought out help and found it in the most incredible and unexpected places. The friends that I have met and made are of such quality they won’t let me fail, they hold me accountable and I have such a network now that I can lean into when times get tough, to bounce thoughts and ideas off of, to lift me up when I am feeling down. The MasterMind course that I am doing had taught me how to be a better man, father and one day again husband. The community of support in these “FaceBook groups”, which I understand are closed for a reason.

And lastly exercise and triathlon are a bad thing? Seriously? I have learned more from the sport of triathlon about myself, self confidence, a healthy lifestyle and showing my children a way of life that they will learn from watching their father participate in. A lifestyle that will allow me to stay active and keep up with them as they grow into their own lives.

So thank you again for your concern, I’ve taken away the underlying message and adjusted my course with a few things, so thank you for that. The rest I am going to leave in the past, with you and the memories of our relationship. I will continue to focus on the positive things that are in my life and that I can control, you , your thoughts and feelings I cannot and I will not your fears and concerns become my own.

I have three coaching calls to look forward to today, each with a slight different area of focus, a bike/run brick workout to get in, a cookie order to bake decorate and ship, some website updates to do while the boy naps, and then an afternoon of fun and games with my children when they get home from school.

The only person I need concern myself with is the man that I see in the glass. Have a great day everyone.

PS – this is why I blog, to clear my mind, to set my focus for the day and then crush it.

Hustle, Hustle, and more Hustle

Time flies when you are busy running, baking and playing with kids. That could best describe the month of January as I cannot believe is already over, I have noticed that life has both sped up and slowed down all at the same time. Again, allow me to explain…

In an effort to be more productive I needed to go back and follow a schedule for the week with each day laid out, with tasks that I wanted to accomplish. I found that during January I spent far too much time thinking about what I wanted to get done instead of actually doing things. The biggest distraction? Old movies that I have seen far too many times already, and quite frankly I didn’t need to see yet again. There is something comfortable about an old favorite movie, it just makes you feel good. We all like to be comfortable, but to live an extraordinary life you need to push beyond what is comfortable and really challenge yourself.

I’ve done my best to place that mindset into my head for the month of February, as I have set for myself some Wildly Important Goals! I created my own online baking company, as advertised below with a focus only on Valentine’s Day options, to be honest sales have been pretty much non existent to this point while I remain optimistic that as inch closer to February 14th sales will increase. The website only featured options for the Holiday directly ahead, I have over 170 different Cookie Cutters (Thanks Amazon!) and wanted to offer options for the entire year. I believe the biggest opportunity for sales growth will come from word of mouth, and one event will lead to three more, etc…

The biggest season in my old world, the restaurant business was Communion, Baptism season at the Keg (next to Christmas) all that is quickly approaching. So I want to have pages dedicated to these cookies with wonderfully decorated cookies already laid out for potential customers to view, to plant the seed for future purchases. I spent much of yesterday, and most of today dedicated to that task! I have an old colleague that is having a baby shower this weekend and I am going to surprise her with some Baby Shower themed cookies, both for the website (pictures) and word of mouth advertising.

The other half of the hustle, hustle, hustle equation is my triathlon training plan alongside the 100 Day running challenge. So the month of January is in the rearview mirror and I successfully ran all 31 days, putting my total at over 200 kilometers for the month that comes with a great sense of accomplishment. I have learned so much about myself, about how to be a more effective runner, how mental discipline plays into all this, and what drive and determination can accomplish.

The month of February comes with another 28 runs in which the run total will push past 50i n a row, it’s more base building where I am basically just running and increasing my cardiovascular base for the upcoming Ironman 70.3 race that I will be completing in this coming July. In March we will start to transition into some specialty training as we get closer to race date and the weather warms up here in Canada.

I have also successfully incorporated strength training into my training plan and so far have really enjoyed the workouts and maybe a bit more so the results. I can see the changes when I look into the mirror and I like what I see. I was worried that this additional training would tire me out more so than the cardio workouts themselves, however so far that has not been the case. My triathlon buddy is a big believer that strength training will help the overall swim, bike and run times out of the course this summer. I cannot wait…

Well this post has been a bit of a ramble, kind of like where my head has been at recently. Lot’s going on… and I didn’t even mention that I am going back to work part time starting this Saturday. Hustle, hustle, and more hustle!

Wildly Important Goals

How are you ever going to get somewhere if you don’t know where you are going? ANother example, going for a drive without having a destination in mind. Sure you might see some nice things along with way, and there is something to be said about going on instinct and feel and at times this can turn out to be the most awesome adventure.

My time away from a career and spending all this amazing time with my children has been like going on that long drive without a destination in mind, and yes I have seen and experienced some pretty amazing things over the past several months. Time that I would not trade for anything, but now that we are a good month into 2018 I’ve started to feel the call back to work, being productive and being a little social as well.

My exercise for the week in my men’s mental health group is creating a wildly important goal, and leads you through the process of getting it accomplished within a certain time frame. We will be doing this exercise twice, the first time through as kind of a test run if you will to completely understand the process, and then again over a longer period of time. I’ve decided to use the first run through for my side hustle as advertised below, my online bakery.

The past week I have been using Facebook and Instagram to advertise, and the business has gotten some great exposure. One of the ads has more Instagram likes than I have ever gotten before, but this has not yet translated into any orders. The site only has Valentine’s Day cookies for sale, as this is the next holiday I am looking to capitalize on but there are many other special days throughout the year, and countless baby and bridal showers, birthdays, special events, you name it… I would very much like my website to reflect all the cookies (with photographic evidence) that I can make. When I counted I actually have about 180 different shape cutters to use.

I honestly believe that some Valentine’s Day orders will be coming, and us men are notorious for waiting until the last minute to take care of things, I would like to be ready for repeat and referral business after Valentine’s Day has come and gone with products ready for the rest of the year. I believe that one sale leads to two more, and then five and so on, I really do and I want to be ready for WHEN that happens.

I am sending out my first package through the mail today to see if the product survives, I have packed them safe and secure and now it’s on the post office shoulder not to destroy my work’s of art. Years in the comic book business should help with this! But over the next four weeks I will be baking and decorating a portfolio of cookies, and I really look forward to it! A month from now I will have an awesome website, my decorating skills will have improved ten times over and I will be ready to turn my side hustle into a full blown business. I cannot wait… well two more minutes anyways before the timer in the oven goes off. Hmmmm, delicious!

The Push Up Challenge & 24 Hour Fast

One of the trendy things to do in some of the Facebook groups that I am in has been a pushup challenge, one guy is working his way up to 100 pushups in a row. A few others have gotten on board with doing them in public places and getting there family members involved. So I decided to join in on the fun!

The kids really enjoyed climbing on Dad’s back and going for a ride, and I think I will continue this each time that I am doing push ups. The extra weight will certainly help in the development of the chest, shoulders and biceps…

While it’s great getting in all this exercise, and running I will openly admit that my diet sucks. Somewhere in the back of my mind it’s okay to eat whatever I want, whenever I want as I am burning off most of those calories throughout my training. However I have recently started to notice that while my breakfast would be a three egg omelette filled with peppers and onions, a small slice of banana bread, orange juice and coffee. Lunch would be a turkey sandwich with turkey bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion and marble cheese, it was dinner time when I would struggle with. Lots of chicken wings, homemade and baked in the oven, I am one of Domino’s best customers and have racked up several free pizzas over the past few months. And I openely admit to having both a sweet and salty tooth, with bags of chips and cheesies or dollar store chocolate bars being my favorite.

My latest indulgent is the “extra” Sugar Cookies that I have been baking and decorating, as I have been making some orders and some promotional cookies to photograph and I have a hard time unloading them on the kids and putting them in the food waste bin as I hate wasting food. What is a guy to do? My freezer is already filling up with extra treats the kids couldn’t quite eat…

So today I decided to have a day of fasting, after my morning coffee and the two extra sugar cookies (breakfast of champions indeed) that I would drink nothing but water until 8pm tonight when I am sure that I will eat an entire pizza…

The Side Hustle

In the effort to stay at home with my now four year old son I have started to feel the need for some extra income. I recently applied for and got a job back in the culinary industry to bring in a few extra dollars on the weekend when I am kid free. Ideally not what I was looking for but it’s one of this foot in the door and a chance to prove yourself moving forward. A classic case of walking before you can run, and after thinking about it now for a few days it’s absolutely perfect.

However it will only slow the bleeding that has been my bank account the last few months, ideally I want to bring that down to a trickle and eventually start to fill up the federal reserves again. Man I am big on the metaphors today! In comes the Side Hustle! I originally heard this term thrown around in some of the men’s mental health groups I have joined, and more recently on commercials for Uber. #sidehustle

Some friends and I had talked about starting a baking company late last year and this January I finally decided to take the bull by the horn and go all in. It first started with the 6 quart MixMaster mixer I ordered for a screaming deal on Amazon. And then it was Wix.com to set up a website, and finally VistaPrint to get some business cards, car magnets, t-shirts and a large banner which I’ve yet to hang outside my house. Tomorrow’s project for sure.

The Facebook page is up, the Instagram account is active and I’ve even started to boost posts on Facebook which has actually helped bring some more visibility to the site. No orders yet, but as men aren’t we notorious for waiting until the last minute? I have received a few orders already and this morning I went about my normal routine of taking the kids to school, and then making an order for a friend that was willing to help me test out the ability to send these delicious cookies through the mail and see what the end result would be.

I was very happy with the results of my efforts as you can see here…

… however when I went to pack them up the icing had not quite hardened all the way and several of them were squished. I did manage to save four of them but will have to redo the other eight, several of which are sitting at the bottom of my stomach as part of afternoon snack.

There has been a learning curve involved with his business venture for sure and at this point I am just hoping to sell enough cookies to cover off my investment and then make a few dollars. If it can be turned into a profitable enough venture to allow me to stay at home full time then I will consider that a Hugh WIN, however there is a lot of work and a lot of cookies between now and then.

If you have a few moments I invite you to look at the site as advertised below. Not looking for orders but rather feedback, ease of navigation, products you would like to see kind of idea. Swim lessons are wrapping up and then it is off the the 25th run in a row. Now that’s Hustle!

North West Bakery is based in Barrie, Ontario serving Simcoe County and the Greater Toronto Area, all of our products are homemade with love. We can hand deliver to your business, party or special event. Visit https://www.NorthWestBakery.com for details!

100 Day Run Challenge Update…

So for the first time in maybe forever, although I know I did some crazy things while Ironman training a few years ago, today I did my second 10 km run in as many days. I had every intention of doing a nice and easy 30 minutes job on the treadmill at the YMCA while the kids ran around the gym downstairs with there hair on fire (not literally).

Perhaps it was the fact that I actually only ran 9.96 km yesterday and not the full ten that kind of bugged me today. I have OCD and I felt I needed to fix that, or perhaps it was the fact that I was wearing a t-shirt advertising my start up baking company for the first time…

North West Bakery

And I figured that the longer I ran the more advertising I would be getting. Is it wrong for me to have parked myself in front of a few out of shape folks sweating away and working hard? And here comes some in shape triathlete running for an hour advertising a bakery company right in front of them.

I ordered a bunch of items from Vista Print including a banner for the outside of my house, business cards, car magnets for my doors and the aforementioned t-shirts… I have high hopes that this business venture allows me to remain at home longer with my younger kids to continue to enjoy he magic of their childhood.

Tomorrow will definitely be no longer than 30 minutes or 5km, which ever comes first!

Does anyone have any tips for muscle and leg recovery that I might use? After all I still have 89 more runs to go!

2017 Top 10 ~ Baking, baking and more baking (#7)

Despite the occasional box cake mix, and lets get the joke out of the way right off the bat, I love to bake. It comes from being my mother’s faithful kitchen assistant growing up and helping her in the kitchen, that love of baking has really blossomed over the past six months. There was a run there for a few years when I was really into making cupcakes, and would often involve Emily and Megan in these projects.

It only makes sense to me to serve up my children delicious creations from my own kitchen as opposed to store bought delights filled with an endless number of preservatives. Jennifer and Austin also love to help out in the kitchen everytime that we make cookies and it is another great way to spend time together as a family.

The one item I seem to make most these days is Banana Bread, and I’ve been slowly perfecting the recipe over the past few months. Most weeks I make at least two, and a few times I’ve made as many as five in a single week. The kids devour them (I give them to neighbors) and even as I type this Megan is asking when I am making another one as it is her favorite snack…

Beauty of a blog post, it can be paused and picked back up (banana bread made, and in the oven!)

Ahh now I can smell the deliciousness in the air of a banana bread baking away in the oven, amazing. Always a great smell in the house when I have something cooking. The other reason that I love baking so much is that I find it very relaxing and a chance to practice some mindfulness.

I can turn everything off and forget about the rest of the world for a few minutes when I am making a tasty treat. The whole process can be equated down to Love vs Science , a post I have recently written about. I have always been a very scientific baker as it helps sooth my OCD a bit, however I have recently been schooled in the ways of baking with love (not the love ingredient I previously mentioned) but actually LOVE and being slightly less concerned about perfect measurements across the board.

After some debate I had to agree that cookies made with love rather than pure science seemed to taste a bit better when eating them.

Some other items I have been working at perfecting are homemade pies and Sugar Cookies. My favorite pie would be a good old fashioned Apple Pie with a slight taste of cinnamon. Granny Smith apples seem to work best based on their texture and slight tart taste which plays great against all the sweetness of the sugar you would add. I’ve also made my first Peach pie, Cherry pie, from scratch Pumpkin pie and even a Chocolate Pudding pie a few weeks ago.

I am also in the process of working on getting an online baking company up and running with the help of Patrick and Kristi we have had a few orders and I look to dedicate a section of my blog site dedicated to this venture next week. This has been focused around Sugar cookies and Kristi has taught me a tremendous amount about how to properly ice these cookies, as well as continuing to bust my chops about using a boxed cake mix.

Love vs Science

This has become a topic of conversation recently between Tiffany and I, it came about while we were baking chocolate chip cookies on Monday night. Tiffany definitely comes from a place of love, and I most definately come from the view of science and it was perfectly illustrated watching her bake cookies.

My background comes from 20 years in the restaurant business, where it was literally my job to be concerned with food cost and portion control. So with this mindset my baking adapted this philosophy. I am exact in my measurements, I think of the cost of chocolate chips when adding them to the batter. I use an exact .75 oz scoop when dropping the dough onto the baking sheets, using a fork to slightly flatten each cookie. The end results are symmetrical shaped, almost identical looking cookies.

Just like ones (in appearance only) that you would buy in the store… they are all the same. Mine just taste waaaay better!

Tiffany comes from the other end of the spectrum and philosophy with regards to baking, she comes from a position of love. Her measurements were not exact at all, she had an instinct as to how much of each ingredient she added, and then when it came time to place the cookies on the sheet to bake she opted with the two spoon method that resulted in in uneven, very different looking cookies.

We debated back and forth about which method was better and why… honestly I never even considered her method for many years, my mom taught me using the spoon method but my experiences and life over time taught me to adapt the portion control, the scientific method if you will of baking cookies.

Looking at the final results yielded two very different looking and tasting cookies based on the same cookie dough. If you were to actually weigh each cookie they were all roughly the same weight, but the taste of the two were very different.

The love cookies tasted better. It was due to the randomness in each one, the fact that they were slightly thicker than science, and had pockets and clusters of chocolate chips that you could taste when eating. The science cookies tasted a bit more like the dough than chocolate, as the chips were spaced out more so you actually got less chocolate taste in each bite as they were thinner and more spread out.

Just another lesson that Tiffany has taught me over the past week and a half…

Chocolate Chipper Recipe

Butter, softened 1 cup
Brown sugar, packed 1 1/2 cups
Large eggs, 2
Vanilla 1 tsp.
All-purpose flour 2 cups
Cornstarch 1/4 cup
Baking Soda 1 tsp.
Salt 3/4 tsp.
Semi-sweet chocolate chips 2 cups
Coarsely chopped walnuts (optional) 1 cup

Cream butter and brown sugar in large bowl. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Combine next 4 ingredients in small bowl. Add to butter mixture in 2 additions. mixing well after each addition until no dry flour remains.

Add chocolate chips and walnuts. Mix well. Drop, using 1 1/2 tsp. for each, about 2 inches apart onto greased cookie sheets. Bake in 350F over for 10 to 15 minutes until golden. Let stand on cookie sheets for 5 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

That of course is the scientific version, or if you believe in love just wing it.

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Chocolate Chipper Recipe

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