Calling all Crafters

A little birdie recently told me that the Byron Center Farmers Market is going to open a new section for Arts and Crafts this fall. I, for one, am very excited. I enjoy going to craft shows and seeing what people make to sell. From what I understand Sept. 8th is going to be the first week and they would like to have it an additional 4 – 6 times this fall. If it is successful they hope to have this addition frequently all season next year. SO if you are a crafter and what to have a booth contact me and I will give you the information. OR if you enjoy shopping for crafts mark Sept. 8th down as the day to come to the Byron Center Farmers Market.

Holiday Weekend

Today is Thursday, but for some reason I keep thinking it is Friday – maybe because I am looking forward to the holiday on Monday? The market will be open on Saturday as usual, so consider stopping by if you trying to beat the traffic by heading out of town Saturday morning instead of Friday afternoon or if you are going to any BBQ’s or other gatherings. :) I do anticipate it being a slower day, so I am planning on making a bit less then my peak amounts, but I have discovered that it is hard to predict what will happen. The forecast for the weather is wonderful, around 80, sunny low humidity, and that is for the whole weekend. If you are traveling or have big plans I hope you have a fun, but safe weekend!

C is for Cookie

Wednesday is our Family Fun Night at church. I offered to make some cookies for the event - my agreement with the church is instead of paying rent for the use of the kitchen I will provide goodies for our after church coffee time. The problem has been that since I have moved over to the Byron Center market I have pretty much been selling out. So I feel like I have not been living up to my end of the agreement. So I figured this would be a way to help out.

Here is one tray

As you can see I made three kinds, chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chunk, and my favorite Oatmeal Scotchies.

Here are all of the trays. :)

I hope every one enjoys them. My job for the evening will be running one of the games. I hope it is not the dunk tank.

All that remained

I took some pictures of my refrigerator and freezer after I cleaned out all the food ruined from the power outage.

Here is the refrigerator door

The bottom half of the refrigerator
The top half with the lone survivors - some Zucchini I had intended to shred on Wednesday night. Technically they are not mine, as they were bought to use in the Zucchini bread.The Freezer Door
The inside of the freezer.

Not a whole lot left!

Wild Week

Whew what a week it turned out to be. As previously noted, my home electricity went out on Wednesday night as the storms passed through. Initially they projected restoration time of noon on Thursday. In the past I have found that they usually beat their projections, so I was not too worried. Well Thursday noon turned into Thursday midnight which turned into Friday noon, then Friday 2 pm, 3pm, 4pm, 11 pm… The power was finally restored around midnight on Friday. Needless to say I had to rough it a bit – no lights, cordless phone, internet, computer once my laptop’s battery died, TV, laundry facilities, iron, air conditioning, fans, hair dryer, curling iron….. I am extremely thankful that I did have hot water – so I could shower – although showering by candle light is not something I will continue to do. Thursday night I had planned on going to sleep at my Mom’s house, but her electricity went out with those storms. Crazy! Because of the length of the outage I did lose all the food in my refrigerator and freezer – even though I had not opened my freezer at all, once the power came back I opened it and the food in there was pretty soft. So I have had the fun task of cleaning out and documenting everything I lost. Plus I can honestly say, I have no food in the house. :)

Another huge thing I was thankful for was that the kitchen where I bake never lost its power, so I was able to do my regular baking. As predicted it did rain Saturday morning, for about the first two hours at the Farmers Market. Then the sun came out and it was a beautiful day. With the forecast I made a little less then last week, but not too much less. Over all the day was pretty good. I sold out of my congo bars, all the bread except a few small banana bread loafs and just had a couple brownies and cookies left. I actually made more then I did 2 weeks ago, rain and everything.

This week is going to be another busy week – tomorrow night is my Condo Association Picnic – so I am sure I will hear all the details of why the power was out for so long. I am planning on bringing the pumpkin bread I am looking to add to my bread for the fall. Then Wednesday we are having a family fun night at church and I am going to be contributing cookies.

I hope to get an order form finished this week so people know what I currently make, how much I charge and how to place a special order.

Define Early

Currently all the weather reports are calling for showers and thunderstorms early on Saturday. I wish they would be a little more specific with what they could consider “early.” Is it just after midnight? 4 am? Or 9 am? Obviously I am hoping it will not be during the Farmers Market. Plus it is only Wednesday and this is West Michigan weather changes in a flash. But with this forecast, which has not changed all week, I will have to take it into consideration when I decide how much to bake.

On a weather side note, I was drive home tonight as the edge of the front was rolling in, and as I was entering a construction zone on 196 a large sign, one of the ones that displays electronic messages literally blew across the road right in front of me. Thankfully I was able to swerve in between some barrels to avoid contact.
Update after posting last night I lost my electricity. While sitting around in the evening reading by candle light can be relaxing, trying to get ready in the morning by candle light is significantly less fun. Hopefully they are out there working right now and I will have restored power by the end of the day!
Update 2 - 11 pm Thursday night and still no electricity. I was going to go to my Mom's but she lost hers with tonights storms. Hopefully it will come back on sometime in the next 8 hours before I have to leave for work. Are we having fun yet? Thankfully the church kitchen was with power and I was able to get some baking done tonight.
Update 3 - as of 7:00 am still no electricity. Burnt my thumb trying to light a candle this morning while my alarm was going off.
Update 4 - My electricity finally came back on around midnight last night - after 52 hours of it being off. Needless to say I lost everything in my fridge and freezer. Dealing with these issues this afternoon, will post update on today at the market later.

Splendid Saturday

Saturday was another great day in Byron Center. The weather was crisp, but sunny. I was located in a new location, further away from the coffee booth, but sales continued to do well. I did not quite sell out of my bread, but I had increased my amounts by quite a bit. Over all it was a nice improvement over the previous weeks. For the sake of comparison on amounts sold

21 small loaves first week - 30 small loaves this week
11 large loaves - 14 large loaves
18 packages of cookies - 17 packages of cookies
24 congo bars - 31 congo bars
16 brownies - 16 brownies

So while I did not sell out I did sell 12 additional loaves of bread and 7 more congo bars. I have noticed that my banana bread continues to be a big seller and is the first thing to sell out. So I am going to continue to increase the number of banana bread I make.

Research and Development –

Saturday afternoon I spent some time looking through recipes and making a trip to Meijers to price out the new ingredients. I am planning on adding pumpkin bread for this fall, but still need to figure which recipe to use – I do not have a tried and true recipe for this. I am also trying to decide if I want to make my Apple Strudel bread as bread or muffins – I have made it both ways. If I decide to go with muffins I would like to add a second type of muffins. Once potential is Morning Glory muffins – which I love, but I also discovered there are many, many variations on these muffins and again I will have to do some experimentation. I will keep you updated on new products.

Back to Baking

I admittedly digressed a bit this week on this blog. Another busy week baking to get ready for Saturday at Byron Center. I again increased my amounts of bread – if everything goes as planned tonight I will have around 50 loafs of bread – both big and small to bring. 3 of them have been specially ordered, so they will be delivered separately, but still it will be a lot of bread. I am hoping for a good day at the market. The weather tomorrow is forecasted to be a bit cooler, but sunny. After all these weeks of hot weather I am looking forward to needing to wear jeans. Hopefully others will want to go out and enjoy the weather with a stop at the Farmers Market.

Location Update - I am going to have a new spot at the Byron Center Farmer's Market this week. I am not sure where yet, but if you have stopped by before I will not be in the same place. If you have not stopped by before, I have the tan canopy.

Tropical Storm Erin Forms - Gulf Gets Ready for Lashing

This was one of my favorite headlines today. I have to admit I still get excited about Erin being chosen as one of the official tropical cyclone names. I blame some of this on my childhood, my older sister had the most popular name of decades and everywhere you turned her name was the example – named stickers, pencils, embroidered bags, blankets, characters in books, movies, songs… Meanwhile my name as never that popular and I was at the beginning of it being a female name. Plus technically “Erin” is not my name, mine is “Erinn” which meant it was impossible to find anything with my name on it unless it was specially ordered. Nevertheless I will accept this alternate spelling for this purpose. I also claim that I missed my calling as a meteorologist. I love weather. So this culmination of a major weather event being called by my name is thrilling to me.
Currently the lists of names used for these storms are rotated on a 6 years basis with names being retired if they reach a monumental or catastrophic level i.e. Andrew, Katrina. So far pervious storms named Erin have not been significant, although in 1995 Hurricane Erin did make landfall around Gulf Shores, Al. I joking said I need to make up t-shirts that said “I survived Hurricane Erin.” Maybe in 2013?

Downtown Grand Rapids?

Last week I was downtown for lunch with friends and to our surprise we saw this car. Not only was the adornment on the car surprising, but the location – right by the Arena in GR. It would be one thing if we were in Sparta or Hastings, but not in the “big city” :)



While the picture itself is blog worthy the following response from a unnamed source whose job it is to know Michigan laws concerning motor vehicles makes it even more humorous. When asked if this was legal this was the response -
“Why wouldn’t it be? As long as you have two functioning rearview mirrors and they are properly secured to the vehicle, I think it is fine. Tacky yet fine.”
So if I understand this correctly I can mound anything I want to the back of my car as long as I have two functioning rearview mirrors that are properly secured. Hmmm….

Sizzling Saturday

Saturday was another hot day – both the weather and my sales. I ended up only making a little more for this week. I had a very busy week and basically did all my baking on Friday night, I think it was around 2 am when I finally loaded up my car to head home for a very short night. I ended up with a few more loaves of bread and added cupcakes to the mix. Here is what my tables looked like when I arrived.

The market was a bit slower then last week. My theory is the heat – it was a hot one. I usually start out my mornings in a fleece and some weeks I am in it most of the morning. Saturday I never even put it on. It was hot, humid and no breeze – not a lot of fun. By 11 or 11:30 things were noticeable slow. Someone also mentioned this was the last weekend before all the school sports practices and other activities began, so people were taking a last weekend away. Whatever the cause the other vendors mentioned their sales were down. Here is a picture of my tables at the end.

As you can see I didn’t sell out of everything, but just about. I ended up making $2 less then last week – so even if this was a slow week I did great again. My bread sold out again by 11:00 or so, which means I obviously need to make more bread. This week is considerable slower for me, so I will for sure make more bread and see how it goes next week, also hoping for a cooler day or at least a breeze.

Friday already!

Another week has flown by and it is already Friday afternoon. I will be at the Byron Center farmers’ marker tomorrow from 8 am to 1 pm. I am planning on taking a bit more then last week and adding cupcakes to the mix. Hopefully this week with be as successful as last week. I am also hoping to take some pictures tomorrow of the new market – to spice up the blog a bit. J I am hoping for a full table “before” picture and an empty table “after” picture.

Stop by if you are in the area.

SOLD OUT

Yes you read that correctly, I sold out, sold everything I had with me. The Byron Center Market is really nice and busy! I really liked it and I am planning on going there from now on.

I had actually made a bit more then I usually do – so I had 18 packages of cookies, 16 brownies, 24 congo bars, 21 small loaves of bread, and 11 large loaves of bread when I arrived and nothing when I left. :) Money wise I made more today then I have in the past 3 weeks combine!! (I am not at all excited here :) ) I am already trying to decided how much more to bring next week. I am going to incrementally increase. I am also thinking I am going to try cupcakes next week.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by – Joel, Brenda, and Emma, Terri, Beth, Shana and Jason – it was good to see you all and chat for a minute. It is so nice to see a familiar face.

Change in Venue

I am excited to announce that I will be at the Byron Center Farmers Market this Saturday. The Byron Center Market is at 84th and Byron Center from 8 am – 1 pm Saturday. I am really looking forward to this opportunity. They have a thriving and growing market with over 25 vendors. At this time they do not have anyone else selling baked goods. There is some breads, but yeast breads, not sweet breads. So I am hoping this will be very successful. I am planning on my usual, Banana Bread, Amish Friendship Bread, Zucchini Bread, Zucchini Carrot Nut Bread, Congo bar, Turtle Brownies and Frosted Cookies.
If you are in the area, stop by, I would love to see you!!