Let's see if I can catch you up on my week. I see I haven't written since Tuesday!
I had a doctor's appointment Wednesday morning (new doctor) then came home. I finished my "Cake Truffles" in the afternoon. They turned out pretty good! Once you get the hang of dipping, it can go fairly quickly. It is messy though! I've included pictures so you can see what I've been working on. Packaging has been a headache. How to package, what it looks like, is it appealing, how hard is it to get the goods wrapped up to be delivered. I want them to look good because people eat with their eyes first. If food and it's packaging does not look good, people may think the food inside the package does not taste good or is not worth buying. And it needs to look professional. I feel like I've spent hours online looking at packaging and trying to find packaging that is affordable, especially on a larger scale (which I hope to achieve!).
Wednesday evening, I went out to dinner and a movie with my sister, Janell and her friend, Janice. We had Chinese food for dinner, then saw the last Harry Potter movie. Janice's son works at the movie theater in Sparks so she and her friends (up to three other people) get in free. Free is good, lol! Really liked the movie. They did a good job.
I took my finished "Cake Truffles" to SCOR Thursday morning and got an order for a still to be determined number of 1/2 pound boxes (each 1/2 pound box olds 8 truffles). Those will be due in September. It was nice seeing some old friends too. From SCOR I went shopping as my personal chef day this week changed to Thursday. Had to go to two stores to find everything! Kinda crazy! I made Lamb Ribs roasted in rooter and soy, Portuguese rice, a watermelon, heirloom tomato and feta salad, Greek salad, East African Braised chicken thighs (yummy sauce!), wine poached figs, roasted figs filled with Gorgonzola then drizzled with honey, and a fresh pasta roll filled with ricotta and spinach served with a marinara sauce. A couple things were labor intensive, but well worth it (although my client will likely be the judge of that, lol).
I came home from cooking all day, then baked two batches of cookies (chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin) to take with me to the airport meeting. Finally stopped cooking/baking at 10:30pm!
Today, Jordan and I met with Linda, who works for SSP. They are the (UK based) company who takes care of all the food at the airport. The Peet's coffee (although that is still owned by Peet's), La Brea Bakery and Maxine's among others. SSP is always looking for new products and promote local artisans when they can (I guess I now fall into the artisan category-who'd have thought??). She was really nice and very excited. I also took some savory palmiers I made this morning so she could see I make some savory as well as sweet treats. She liked the savory palmier. The meeting took about an hour. We thought we were going to talk to her about potentially providing cookies for airlines, like Southwest, but she deals mainly with the airport. She took my samples and said she would talk to the "Brand partners" that have space in the airport to see if they would be willing to carry my products. Linda did ask that I come up with a breakfast cookie they could sell as well as some kind of granola/snack bar that perhaps would not be as sweet as a cookie. I'll be working on that over the next few days.
I came home afterwards, worked on finding good breakfast cookie recipes (and now will come the baking and trials), then went to lunch with Janell. We headed over to Sparks because I decided it was time to visit "One World Kitchen", the commercial kitchen over on Spice Island off of Greg Street. We met the owner, Sam. He opened last year and has two kitchens to rent and also a prep space. He charges $25 an hour to rent the kitchen so unless I can come up with some big business, sticking with NTI for now is good. Jay has given me the opportunity to work at NTI for free for a time, until I can build up my business. That has been very nice of him! But if I do get any big contracts, I will need a bigger kitchen as well as better hours for availability. Gotta check out options!
This afternoon, I heard from Mindy at Thunderbird. Apparently cookie sales were really good this week and they want FOUR boxes on Monday. Twice their usual order. Mindy also said the samples helped quite a bit so I will give them more samples Monday.
After talking to Linda, I have continued to look at packaging online, looking at self-sealing bags, different sizes, cheaper bags, etc. The expensive part is going to be the tab on top of the package. Still working on perfecting that. But now it's time to make dinner (steak, brocolini and baked potato).
Tomorrow I get together with Jan to talk about our "Farm to Table" dinner. I guess it's a go!
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