Business and Entrepreneurship

The Eye For Detail

/ The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

There are reasons I call myself a “baker,” and not a “pastry chef.”

Beyond the respect and station that I think comes with the “chef” title that I personally don’t think I’ve earned just yet, or the argument that “a chef is a cook who leads other cooks” and I haven’t had any cooks under my command for longer than a couple hours, there’s the fact that… well… I don’t think I’m quite crazy enough yet.

Let me explain- when I say “not crazy enough,” I mean that I still stand in rapt awe, wonder, and a little fear, of people who possess the meticulous attention to detail necessary to do certain things. Not just do them once or twice, but REPETITIVELY, and CONSISTENTLY. No cutting corners, no shrugging things off as “rustic” or “it’s meant to be like that”- if whatever these people do isn’t looking pristine, it’s unacceptable.
While I’m not exactly envious of the perfectionism these individuals have (my grandfather’s saying “Don’t let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘good’” comes to mind- and he was a brain surgeon) I am constantly in wonder of the level of PERCEPTION involved in noticing minuscule details.

Like many things in this world, an ideal case study for it comes from a certain mouse.

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What I Get Out Of Baking

/ The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

I’ve been looking back over my last few entries here and, frankly, it seems like I’ve been a bit down recently. Especially after that last one. One of my old poetry teachers, Peter Murphy, would often tell us that if what we were writing wasn’t surprising or scaring us about ourselves, we weren’t doing it right. If that’s the case, after this past week I suppose my Pulitzer is lost in the mail.

In general the past few weeks have been a bit of a bumpy road emotionally, and while I stand by everything I’ve written, it can’t rain all the time. Yes, I am WELL aware of the usual winter weather in Portland by now.

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“Bakeshop Changes a Man…”

/ The Black Hat Baker
Good evening, friends and neighbors.

I got up before my 5 am alarm clock again the other day- thanks mostly to my cat. It’s a little hard to sleep through eight pounds of furry, purring lump flopping itself on to your chest- even if your alarm isn’t supposed to go off for another half-hour.

Ugh… fine. Covers off. Slippers and house hoodie on because the heater has yet to kick on. I use my phone and watch as a flashlight to find my glasses- Emily doesn’t have to be up for a few hours yet. Best not to wake her.

Shuffling through the dark apartment on the way to a lightswitch, I almost trip over Cleo twice. She’s weaving in and out of my legs and purring- thrilled as all get out that I’m awake to feed her, even before I fix my own breakfast.

“Yes, cat, I’m coming.”
“Yes cat, you’re getting fed.”
“Jesus Christ, you act like we never feed you. Keep your fur on.”

As I tip out half a can of weirdly uniform, monochromatic glop that claims to be turkey with sweet potatoes and gravy into her bowl, watch her take a few sniffs and walk away, I reach over and shut my alarm off.

“This is my life.”

Yes, yes it really is. I asked for it to be this way.

Break Time

/ The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

It never feels like there’s enough hours in the day.

The days when I could feel content crashing out on my bed till late afternoon, gaming or watching cartoons are long over. Since getting my body into a shape that, to be blunt, I WANT to do things with, I’ve had way more energy and interest in life than I ever had before.
That can sometimes be a curse, though. When my interests are pulled between homebrewing, writing, playing guitar, gaming (still kept that up a bit), reading, and exercise, I find myself unable to be satisfied with a day where I feel I didn’t accomplish something. Simply put, I’ve lost the ability to enjoy a lazy day- much to the frustration of my wife.

 

Well, it beats just spending all day in the kitchen, right?
A cook rubbing his eyes in a kitchen stressed

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