AJ, the man and the cookie

If I could, I would clone Aaron and have him here in the bakery all of the time. I mean, you have to be pretty special to get a cookie named after you, right?

look at that winning smile

Aaron is our front end manager. He is also a one man band called Camping Party, and another band that I think is still nameless. He’s just an all around good guy, with endless enthusiasm for coffee, and tea, and music, and bikes.

His favorite cookie is Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, which he hinted and hinted at until Katie finally made it for him. Now the AJ is one of our most popular cookies, and we named it after him.

nibble nibble

He has also spent quite a bit of time in training at Stumptown, and knows a fair amount about coffee. Ask him what he likes, or how coffees compare to each other and he will have a good answer.

one of the 10,000 resumes we get a day in the background i think

Aaron also shows up to work way too early every day. He’s an old person in a young man’s body, going to bed at 9pm and waking up at 5am. Drop by at 7am, when we open, and he’ll be here, wide awake and ready to go.

-Lisa

Useless Information

We’ve been working on having some old friends back in our pastry case lately, and the cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing are killing me. I have an internal argument every time I see them, with the devil on my left shoulder saying “Eat one! You can skip lunch, and have a salad for dinner, and you’re going to the gym tomorrow anyway.” And the angel on my right says “That’s what you said about the bagel yesterday, and then you had four $1 corndogs at the Hungry Tiger for dinner, and haven’t been to the gym in a week!” I used to not worry about food, but since I passed 30, the food seems to stick around longer, and I have less holes on my belt that are usable.

i would like to climb your icing peaks

In my contribution to adorable things on the internet, I give you this picture:

eeeeeeeee! kittens!

This picture is from my phone, and was taken in a barn, so it’s a little rough. My neice, Meredith, graduated from high school last week, and so I went to Oklahoma for a few days, where, lucky for me, my sister’s barn cat had just had kittens! I ended up with more pictures of them than of my family.

Were you expecting some substantial information from this post? Too bad! Kittens and cinnamon rolls. xo

-Lisa

Closing Early and opening early.

Today is Memorial Day, and we will be closing at 1pm. We have lots of bagels, so get out of bed and stop and eat one before you go for your bike ride in this lovely weather! Or, if you’re like me, you can eat one and go home and get back in bed with your cats. But the windows are open, so it’s almost like being outside.

And now, on Saturdays, we will be opening at 8am, so you early risers can stop giving us puppy dog eyes outside the door at 8:30. We still won’t have doughnuts until 9am though, because we draw the line at getting here at 5:30 am. Don’t care what you say about baker’s hours, we aren’t doing it.

-Lisa

I Jinxed John

Right after I said in the last post “no one else gets this covered in flour” this happened.

first you batter, then you deep fry

This guy makes your soup

In the ongoing theme of employee introductions, let me introduce you to Jesse.

bronut highfive

This photo is known as the bronut photo, and is one my most cherished bakery memories. Back in the day, Jesse made the doughnut dough, and he was really really good at it.  This was one of those delirious early mornings, and we were giggling for no reason, and Jesse tossed the dough in the air and high-fived it. Katie captures it with the camera, and Jesse’s amazing grin is remembered forever. Also, no one else gets this covered in flour.

Nowadays, Jesse makes all of our savory food. He’s the mastermind behind the soups, sandwiches, salads, sauces – all of the s-words. I get to take credit for the bacun scallion cream cheese recipe, but Jesse’s first week working here I said “make some flavored cream cheeses” and he came up with the rest. We were all so excited about the chipotle, and the now defunct caramelized onion!

He also makes our delicious focaccia that comes with our daily soups.

knife skills 101

All of this savory food really helped us get through this “ecnomic downturn” and has made the cafe busier every day. It wouldn’t happen without Jesse’s ability to produce delicious recipes on the first try, with very little instruction or help. He’s one of those rare people that you can always count on, will always show up early, and (even if he’s grumpy) is always willing to take on a new task.

I know someday he will go open an amazing restaurant, or write the best cookbook ever, or be a chef on the food network and I will be his biggest supporter! When is the food network going to get some vegan chefs anyway? They need to get on it.

Summer means pie

just out of the oven, a strawberry rhubarb pie.

hello new pie dish!

I’m pretty happy with the crust, but the pie is still a bit watery, although we were anxious to try  it and it was still pretty hot. And I may have added way more strawberries than I was supposed to.

Hi Hon, what can I Getcha?

I was talking a walk down memory lane today in iphoto, and came across this photo of my Halloween costume last year.

i couldn't handle the support hose

I even had a nametag on that said Flo.

It was epic

Hello crazy weekend! I have never been so glad to see a Monday. This was one of those times when I didn’t really think through everything that was going to happen, and all of a sudden I realized we had back to back events and we were going to be shorthanded! I found an amazing deal on craigslist on a new mixer that we really really need. So I bought it on Wednesday and the guy said he would deliver it at 10am Friday. I was excited and told everyone in the kitchen, and someone said “Where’s it gonna go?” and then I realized I was going to have to rearrange the whole kitchen. This mixer, you see, weighs 1200 lbs, and is almost as tall as me. I decided it would go in the corner by the walk-in, which made me think, I should paint the walk-in (which, by the way, is named Christopher Walk-in). It was given to us by Ota Tofu when they got a new, bigger one, and it was old, and dirty and the paint was flaking off. I ran out and got paint, and I spent Thursday quickly priming and painting the cooler. I chose Turquoise. Friday morning, the mixer arrived.

queen of the bakery nerds

Oh, its amazing! The bowl is so big it has to have its own cart, which we named Carl. Carl the cart. Katie is taking a break from decorating cakes for Mother’s Day – OH MY GOSH, it’s Mother’s Day weekend! How did I not notice that? We had something like 20 special order cakes for the weekend, and Katie was going to be off because her mom is in town. And my day was already pretty booked up with two wedding cakes, and John was in Florida visiting family.

It was hectic, but Kim managed to crank out cakes which Katie decorated, I helped out as much as I could while doing wedding cake prep, and in the meantime the weather was beautiful and the retail bakery was BUSY!

everything looks better on turquoise

The first of the wedding cakes was actually just a topper, for a wedding that wanted a gluten free option for the bride and groom. I really like it and was excited to make something so simple and modern. I can’t resist posting this picture of it.

that smile just got creepy

We have a lot of mugs at the bakery, but the frosty mug is mine. I like the weight of it. I always think of him as happy, but somehow this photo made him look like he might have an ulterior motive. I also always talk about him like he is a person, which I know everyone thinks is weird but they don’t want to tell me.

John came back Saturday and we made doughnuts, then I finished the wedding cake that I had worked on until 1am the night before, and delivered it. This wedding was also gluten free, and it was at the Viewpoint Inn in the Columbia River Gorge. It was an absolutely perfect day out.

marzipan + chimpanzee = marzipanzee

I didn’t do a good job of getting pictures of this cake, and I think they added flowers to it after I dropped it off. All of the leaves were made of marzipan, which is almondy and delicious. The cake itself was GF Lemon Raspberry, Banana, and GF Almond with Chocolate.

After that I desperately needed a break, so I drove down the Scenic Highway and went to some of the falls and soaked up a little bit of sun.

latourell falls

I forget how amazing it is to live so close to things like this! There was still work to be done though, since Sunday was Mother’s day, and also brunch! I was too busy to take picture of the brunch, but it was delicious! It was a special request by a regular customer named Dave, for Tammy’s Birthday. Biscuits and gravy, chick’n fried seitan, greens, potatoes and scramble, and a berry shortcake for dessert. And, moms got half price brunch! It was a really hectic morning.

When it was finally over I got to go home to a netflix dvd waiting for me (The west wing, season 6!) and relaxed on the couch with George Michael.

named after arrested development, not the singer

Like I said, hooray for Monday! Almost makes me wish I had an office job. Ha!

-Lisa

sometimes being an intern works

You may have seen this guy running around in the kitchen here and wondered to yourself, is that the singer for Les Savy Fav? Well, it’s not. It’s John!

this cookie is a microphone

You should feel lucky if John is covering a break up front and helps you with your bagel or coffee, because he is the nicest person who works here. He’s that guy who you’re always kind of jealous of, because he is never in a bad mood, never causes any drama, and never has a bad thing to say about anything. And it’s not in an annoying goody-two-shoes kind of way, he’s just rad. He’s our production baker for retail, and he cranks out cookies, and charlie browns and cupcakes like crazy.

this is only a small batch

This is actually his first job in a kitchen, and I think he is in love with baking. He started here as an intern with no training, he just really wanted to learn to bake. He is also in love with dance parties, and weird french pop music. If you can make him really laugh, his laugh is amazing. And when you see a pecan butter cookie in the pastry case, try it out, its the first recipe he worked up on his own. Delicious!

Please direct all comments to the manager.

Several people asking for comments added to the blog. Sure, it’s mostly my mom and sister right now, but I’m sure there will be more readers soon. I’ve never really had a good experience with blog comments (remember food fight’s blog?!). They usually go like this:

BLOG: blah blah blah, then we wrote happy birthday in blue icing, blah blah

Comment 1: oh, cute!

Comment 2: Blue food coloring is made with horrible chemicals that causes massive damage to the environment and cancer! i’m never coming in your *$%#* bakery again!

Comment 3: it was probably a boy’s birthday right? that’s why you use blue? you support a patriarchal system that has oppressed women for hundreds of years. even the term happy birthday is a male invented term that keeps women down by blah blah blah

Comment 4: hey guys, its just a cake! chill out!

Comment 5: Can you make that cake sugar free? oh, and soy free?

Not that I don’t appreciate people’s input. I really like to try to get things right, and make people happy. But I get STRESSED about stuff like that. I’ve already admitted I’m a sore loser, and might I add, over-achiever, so these things make me feel like I have to work harder, and more, and better, and faster, and ahhhh we will never be good enough for everyone! I guess its a personal issue, and I’ll try to work that out in therapy.

So yeah, Jared added the comments for you, and comment away, but please remember, we can’t make your cake sugar free.

-Lisa