Anxiety
Late last week, we accomplished the improbable by holding two pie tastings on two successive nights. And while it doesn’t sound like much, pie tastings are WORK to get ready for and then an evening event to boot, making two solid sixteen hour days in a row. All that said, both events were tremendous successes. The favorites from the dessert pie tasting included an Apple Butter Pumpkin pie and an Apple Cranberry Streusel pie, both of which are clear additions to our fall menu once I figure out if our food broker stocks apple butter and dried cranberries, and if so, the minimum quantity required (primarily because we don’t have the room to store 50 pounds of apple butter OR dried cranberries).
And from our savory pie tasting night, everyone pretty much loved everything. The favorite was a Goat Cheese, Bacon, and Onion pie. It disappeared from the tray within the first 15 minutes of the event. And in full disclosure, it was so delicious that I made it for dinner at my house on Saturday night. (Also, in full disclosure, if loving goat cheese is wrong…then I don’t want to be right.) Other items on the menu included an Irish Potato pie, a Sweet Corn & Cheddar pie, Taco Pie, and Tomato, Basil, & Feta pie. I’m pretty certain that we’ve never had a group leave so well fed from a tasting than on Friday evening.
One unexpected repercussion from the event was the interest in ordering the new savory pies for pickup during just an average week at PJP. And that immediately makes me think of our space limitations. And our space limitations makes me think of what to do about our current space. And that makes me think that I didn’t call back the person from Maly Commercial Property about our lease and the potential of the lease next door because I was baking and creating new savory recipes late last week and I fell off the grid on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday…which is basically how all of my weeks work out.
That is all to say that I’ve got enough low-key anxiety going on to last us all well into 2019. On both Saturday and Sunday nights, I woke up in the early hours of the morning from nightmares about far flung scenarios at PJP, like someone puts the banana cream pies in the cubby where cherry pie goes and the whipped topping melts off it and creates a mess. Or the one where I fall asleep on the front baking table and miss our food brokers incessant knocking at the back door, so we have no ingredients to bake with despite a huge deadline looming ahead us. I KNOW. HELP ME.
I attribute this all to the roller coaster of events that lay ahead of us over the next several weeks - the Roots and Blues, the $5 Friday, the 2400 Jelly jars, the Hartsburg Pumpkin Festival, and more. And when someone asked me earlier this evening about what they could do to help me, I couldn’t even find an answer…and I’m never at a loss for words. After some reflection, here are five ways to help:
Don’t remind me that this mess is all my doing. I already know I have serious skills at pushing us to our capacity at PJP.
Don’t remind me that if we can conquer Thanksgiving, then we can conquer these few weeks. Because then I think about Thanksgiving and I’m not mentally there yet.
Don’t put the banana cream back in the cherry cubby because if my dreams become reality, I’ll panic.
Do remind me that if Britney Spears could get through 2006, I’m good through the month of October.
Do stop by and check on us, if anything to keep us updated on what’s going on in the world that we will drop out of for the next few weeks as we focus on pie.
#WorldPieDomination.