Mid-Week Holiday.
Really, for the better part of today, I thought it was Thursday…which just supports the idea that mid-week holidays are BRUTAL for any sort of normal routine. Since last weekend, we’ve baked hundreds of pies, taken a two and a half day break from PJP, and then went back today and made more things. It’s all very disconcerting to someone who likes to keep things on schedule. (Hint: That’s me.)
But whatever. Here’s a brief catchup as we roll into our last few days of 2019:
PJP looked like a legit war zone on Thursday morning when I spied a familiar face that I couldn’t immediately recognize…but then my mind put it together: health inspector. And for whatever reason, the health inspection always strikes fear in my heart, even though Jeanne runs the tightest ship in the commercial kitchen industry. We had hundreds of pies on order and a line to the door, so we were fairly distracted and the inspector did the complete review on her own. Thankfully, we passed with ZERO violations (both zero critical and non-critical). So I hereby proclaim Jeanne to be responsible for that success. She sets the expectation high for Team PJP and it makes experiences like an unplanned visited from the health department 100% less stressful.
And if you want to know if I made any passive-aggressive comments about the overabundance of handwashing sinks in our space, the answer is no. But I totally thought them.
I challenged myself to NOT look at email once on Christmas Day because my anxiety has been a monster lately and email just seems to feed it. But I broke down and looked early afternoon to find Square feedback - one negative and one positive. One said their chocolate mint had too much mint and one said that their chocolate mint didn’t have enough mint. From the sales tickets, I could tell that both of those pies came from the same mixture. GOODNESS GRACIOUS. Anxiety = 1. Me = Zero.
But whatever I felt this week, I keep thinking about the massive UPS traffic jam behind our building earlier this week. On Tuesday, we spotted SIX UPS trucks and one U-Haul full of packages parked behind our storefront, all packages being transferred around in what looked like a stressful logistical nightmare with a rush to the final Christmas Eve delivery. Sometimes when we are working so hard at PJP, we lose focus of what else is going on in the world. Watching all that gave me some perspective.
And speaking of traffic jams, tomorrow we are releasing the date for January’s Epic Pie Tasting…our first in this new space. People have been asking since we moved and the holidays made it impossible, so we are super excited to host our first event and see how pie tasting compares. (Speaking of old space, the windows are covered now with paper but just before that, I saw a camping tent set up in there. Huh.)
