July: The Crazy Month that Passed in a Blur.

I've kind of fallen off the grid this past month. At least I'm sure that's what my ward thinks, seeing as how I haven't been to church there in the past five weekends. They tried to introduce me as a visitor this past Sunday....

So here's what's been going on:

(I'm going to list events by date since that's the easiest)

June 29th - Park City - My friends and I had planned a weekend getaway to Park City, because why not? It was a grand adventure where we spent our nights on the town and our days at the market. Super, super fun. A breakdown of the weekend is as follows:

Park City, Home of the Moose

Saturday we arrived at Park City. After walking around Main Street and feeling like underdressed tourists, we got dinner at Collie's Sports Bar & Grill where we all tried the Warzone Burger. It was a deliciously thick burger topped with bacon, guacamole and onion rings. What more could you want! After this, we checked in at The Yarrow Hotel. We wanted to go bowling, but couldn't find the bowling alley since it had apparently gone out of business even though the website was still up and running. So instead, we went to the grocery store for popcorn and rolos (try them together!), then got back to the hotel and watched Space Jam, jumped on the bed, got yelled at by management. It was a pretty typical Saturday night.

Like father, like son?

Sunday morning we woke up bright and early so we could check out of the hotel on time. After this, we went to church - the closest building was 20 minutes away and almost everyone left after sacrament! I've a feeling we aren't in Provo anymore, Toto. Following sacrament meeting, we drove back to Main Street to check out the Silly Sunday Market where we got some AMAZING bread that we munched on for breakfast. Then it was time for the Olympic Park Aerial Show where off season ski jumpers launched themselves down the smaller ramps and did some amazing flips into the pools below. It was way cool.

Check out those ramps!

We returned to Park City Mountain Resort (I know, I know. We drove back and forth like twelve times. But everything was time sensitive!) to ride the Alpine Coaster and the Alpine Slide. I heard they were pretty rickety so I was getting pretty sketched out. I had convinced myself I didn't want to go after the lady in the ticket line was being all pushy trying to sell us package deals.

Moose Statues EVERYWHERE.

After some Dippin Dots to cool me down (the first time I've ever had them!) we went for the deal and had a grand time racing each other down the side of the mountain. I'm glad I was bullied into it ;) Eventually, we were running out of things to do, so we hit up the Outlet Malls before they closed and then went to dinner at the Wasatch Brewery (as recommended by my father-in-law for their fish and chips - He was right! They were dang good!). By the end of this weekend that seemed to span two weeks, I was completely sunburned and broke, broke, broke! Definitely worth it.

July 3rd - We drove up to Logan right after work to spend the Fourth of July with Kolby's family. Mama Falor had hot dogs and snack food all ready for us when we arrived. Immediately following stuffing our faces, we watched some fireworks at a safe (and uncrowded) distance. We decided that the fireworks made us thirsty and went to Walmart to buy every flavor of Mountain Dew. When we got back, we decided to watch Cat in the Hat (the one with Mike Meyers). I promptly fell asleep because movies are like lullabies to me nowadays. The rest of the gang apparently stayed up talking late into the night, but I was dead to the world.

'Murica

YUM.

July 4th - Logan - We woke up pretty early so we could have breakfast and get to Kolby's grandparents' house before the parade started. After we ate and before we left, we dyed Christopher's beard, a strip of Ashleigh's hair, and the underlayer of my hair blue. We also donned our fabulous Fourth of July shirts from Walmart. We were ready to celebrate America! The parade was pretty fun, seeing as how parades were never a big thing in my childhood (either because its too hot to do anything in Arizona or because my dad hates crowds, I'll never know.).

The conclusion of the parade meant that it was time for a HUGE potluck lunch and Grandpa Long's famous homemade root beer! I drank so much. It was hot outside, and the party was dying down, so we decided to go back to Kolby's parents' place and go swimming. The final event planned for this patriotic day was to shoot off more fireworks at Kolby's sister's house. Her son totally fell in love with me and now I'm pretty sure we're best friends because I played dinosaurs with him non-stop. Little kids are fun :)

July 5th - Provo and Lindon - We drove back to Provo bright and early so Ashleigh could go to work. While she was gone, Kolby and Christopher and I went to Center Street to check out the Provo Freedom Festival. We soon found out that the milkshakes we had consumed and the heat did not mesh well and didn't stay that long. We somehow ended up checking out the Colonial Fest where everyone was dressed up and we felt like we went back in time.

It was meant for elementary school kids, but we really enjoyed ourselves.

When Ashleigh was done with work, she convinced me to dye my hair, so I picked up some Ion Brilliance in red. There was only one problem...

It didn't turn red.

Instead, it turned an insanely bright hot pink color. A color that was not Honor Code appropriate at all, so I got temporarily fired from my job at the Info Desk at BYU. That was an adventure...

It ended up fading really quickly and then washing out completely at the ends of my hair. It's been exciting. :) I'm pretty sure I've dyed my hair half the colors of the rainbow now...

After I dyed my hair, we went to Paula and Larry's house (Ashleigh's aunt and uncle) where we watched American Ninja Warrior and I promptly fell asleep (as usual).

July 6th - We started off the day at noon and then grabbed a late breakfast at Tangy's. I recommend the Sweet Roll! It's a huge cinnamon roll with lots of ooey gooey icing and melty butter. A tribute to Paula Deen, I'm sure. After we had satisfied our appetites, we had a massive water balloon fight but didn't roam much farther than the driveway (too impatient to pelt each other with balloons I guess). We drove our soaked selves back to Provo to change and have dinner. We finished up our night by lighting off our remaining fireworks from the Fourth of July. This started off innocently at first since we only had TNT brand fountains and cheap-y ground fireworks. We did, however, have one Phantom aerial firework left that we decided would be our finale. We set up the box and lit it, then jogged back to our viewing area. The first 4 shots went off without a hitch. Then, the firework took a turn for the worst. Or rather, it took a fall and ended up pointing into the crowd next to us. The very next shot bounced over a girl's lap and exploded in the crowd!

Everything seemed to be in slow-motion and high-speed at the same time. This was something out of Fail Videos - nothing that could ever happen to us! And yet, I was frozen in shock as Christopher decided to be a hero and ran back to the firework and tried to tilt it back up before the next shot went off. He only managed to tip it back the other way before it shot it's next two rounds into the cars parked in the parking lot. Thankfully, the 2 minute moment that felt like an eternity ended after those shots. A guy setting off some bigger fireworks across the parking lot felt the need to educate us on aerial fireworks by telling us that he kept his big ones balanced by placing the boxes of the used ones around it. Too bad we didn't have any big used fireworks to help us out. Christopher asked the group we almost killed if they were alright, and then we got out of there super quick. That was enough adventure for one night! This Arizona girl was pretty shaken up since anything with the word "fire" in it is pretty much banned in my hometown. Aerial fireworks are only a thing of dreams (and Disneyland)! 

July 12th - 19th - Family Reunion in California - My only vacation for the summer.

I had been looking forward to this trip all summer; and it did not disappoint! Christopher and I took a massive roadtrip (11 hours) to Grandma and Grandpa's house the weekend before the reunion was supposed to start. We had a fun time playing cards with the Williams, trying to prep Christopher for the reunion. The Monday we were allowed to check in to the beach house, Christopher and I left mid morning to get our car's oil changed at the nearest Walmart (an hour away, but on the way to Oceanside) and then meet my parents for lunch. My mother screamed when she saw me. I'll let you guess who's the favorite ;)  The beach house was beautiful! And surprisingly huge. It was fun to see all the family together in one place. Christopher handled it pretty well and only escaped for some peace and quiet like twice. He even won some 1 High games, proving himself worthy of joining the Miner clan. The last night we were there, us older cousins walked all the way to the pier and found a shark washed up on the beach and carried it back to the beach house like a trophy. Ah! Memories!

July 24th - Pioneer Day - This holiday was filled with more fireworks of course, only this time we were prepared! Actually, we didn't have any aerial fireworks but lit a bunch of smoke bombs and bees and army parachute men. Flamingthingsflyingintheair, Woo! We did have front row seats as the self-named "Provo All Stars" as they lit off thousands of dollars of fireworks. Bits of burnt cardboard rained on us all night. It was almost comforting to see that two other groups around us had firework mishaps - one shot into the dumpster and the other exploded right behind us.

I've concluded that fireworks are dangerous.

July 26th - 28th - Lehi - We spent this weekend watching the Wheeler kids. They are cute and silly and full of way more energy than my sleep deprived brain can handle :) I hope they aren't too mad at me for making them watch T.V. all weekend. I managed to get all the meals in, bathtime done before church, AND we got to church on time! I think I could totally rock this watching-kids-full-time-thing. However, that probably won't be for a while. ;) 

July 31st - Harry Potter's Birthday Party

One of my friends from work threw a Harry Potter Party and it was EPIC. She has apparently been doing this for years, because her decorations were INCREDIBLE!! The food was fantastic as well - She had cockroach clusters, pumpkin pasties, Fire Whiskey shots and Butterbeer! Christopher and I dressed up as Lupin and Tonks and almost won the contest for Best Couple Costume. We bought some Amortentia (Love Potion) and Felix Felicis (Liquid Luck). I think my friend promised me a Chocolate Frog too! This has more fully convinced me that I need to go to Harry Potter World before I die.

Wizard's Chess! (Stef is dressed as Dobby the house elf.)

Friday August 1st - Sunday August 3rd - Milo's Visit - Christopher's friend from Colombia has been in Utah for the past couple weeks and texted Christopher to meet up for their long talked about reunion. He became one of Christopher's closest friends from his mission. Milo doesn't speak much English so it was an exciting weekend.

• Friday - We went to the Rooftop Concert, only this time it was a hip hop show. We saw this group called the House of Lewis which was made up of a guy with an afro, a guy who wore a flower suit and then changed into a yarn suit, and a fat guy. It was hilarious. When we got back home, we played Mario Kart (in Spanish!) and I went to bed. Christopher apparently stayed up til 3am catching up with Milo.
• Saturday - Christopher made breakfast then we went to Walmart to get stuff for patacones. Patacones are fried plaintain slices that are a common side dish in Latin America. We went to the rancho market to get good plantains and then watched Captain America with Spanish subtitles when we got home. When our stomachs started rumbling, we went to El Salvador Restaurant and got pupusas. This place is a super yummy, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that is always crowded. When we were finished stuffing our faces, we drove to Santaquin for Orchard Days, but apparently it was already over by the time we got there. So we ended up going on a random adventure and driving all over the place. From the Payson temple to a trout farm to Sip'N drinks. Sip'N could rival our current soda place, Sodalicious.
  
  Too bad it's not closer. Milo wanted to see the Provo Temple and take pictures there so we did that and then made patacones. We finished off out night by going to the Velour to see VanLadyLove, a band we fell in love with at our first Rooftop Concert. Turns out, one of the sister wives was there too! (https://twitter.com/MeriBrown1/status) I was exhausted by this point, but the gang decided to go to Paula and Larry's again where we watched American Ninja Warrior and I (inevitably) fell asleep. (Does anyone sense a pattern here?)
• Sunday - We went to church at 1pm then went with Milo to the Spanish speakers Sunday school. We must not have been to our ward in a while because they thought I was a visitor in Relief Society. It was my hair color I guess. We ate Sushi after church, played some more Mario Kart, and then drove around to look for apartments for rent for Kolby. To end the night, we drove up the mountain to show Milo the Y. He enjoyed his stay here I think. Christopher liked catching up with his friend.

And now I'm caught up!

I've turned in my two weeks notice to the bakery. August 12th will be my last day. I am SO ready to sleep in! (As you probably noticed from my play-by-play of the month, I'm exhausted ALL THE TIME.)

For those of you wondering, here's what my hair looks like now:

I've got more exciting things planned for my summer:

ONE WEEK until Monumentour (Paramore and Fall Out Boy Concert)

16 days until Wicked

27 days until School Starts

August just might be more of a party than July was.

Here's to hoping.

Just a girl who loves flours.

**I actually wrote this post at the end of June but apparently never posted it....

Sorry, better late than never. **

It's been a month since the last blog post and I'm sorry. I think there's a lot to fill you all in on, but thinking about that stresses me out so I'm going to talk about bakery things.

I've been itching to blog about all the different types of flours we use at the bakery, so today's the day. Prepare to be educated.

I won't be offended if you don't wanna read about flour.

Okay, so first off, the breads we make in the bakery are gluten free. Some people, especially those with Celiac Disease, are placed on a gluten-free diet because their bodies cannot process the gluten. Gluten is a protein composite found in wheat, barley, rye, and triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye). Gluten is formed when wheat flours and water mix, creating a strong, sticky, and stretchy protein that gives structure to baked goods and helps wheat flour morph into many different foods.
When you see flour in a recipe, you know gluten is going to be involved.
And that's why we don't use regular flours in the bakery.

According to Wikipedia: "Flour is a powder which is made by grinding cereal grains, beans, or other seeds or roots."

Every day, I prepare the pre-mixes we use for the bread. Because of this, I handle a lot of flour.
To illustrate this, here are the ingredients in the White Bread that we make:

White Bread Ingredients:filtered water, cold milled sweet white rice flour, cold milled sweet brown rice flour, egg whites, tapioca flour, palm fruit oil, sugar, potato flour, yeast, xanthan gum, psyllium husk powder, sea salt, calcium propionate

White Rice Flour, Brown Rice Flour, Tapioca Flour, Potato Flour.
Flour, Flour, Flour.
And of course, flour-like ingredients such as Xanthan Gum, Psyllium Husk Powder, and Ground Golden Flax Seed (in the multigrain loaves).

Right off the bat I can tell you that tapioca flour and xanthan gum are difficult to work with. They act almost like a fluid and get powder everywhere. The white and brown rice we grind ourselves at the bakery by using food processors and the flax seed is ground using a Blendtec blender. I pretty much have the pre-mix recipes memorized now. Of course we weigh out everything because that's more accurate.

((Here's where I got sick about writing about flour...))


Now for the DL on my life.
  I learned (during a cookie baking venture) that I have CostCo sized butter in my fridge. It is one whole pound of butter. There were four 1lb. sticks in the pack. Paula Dean would be proud. I had to find out how many sticks 1lb. was equal to for my sugar cookies. For the record, 1lb. is four sticks of butter (or two cups)

Another baking tidbit I had to Google was about how to make cake flour out of regular flour (because who purchases cake flour regularly anyways? Here's how it's done:

Step One:  Measure out the all-purpose flour that you’ll need for your recipe.

Step Two: For every cup of flour you use, take out two tablespoons of flour

and return it to the flour bin.  Throw the cup of flour

(minus the two table-spoons) into a sifter set over a bowl.

Step Three:  Replace the two tablespoons of flour that you removed

with two tablespoons of cornstarch.

Step Four:  Sift the flour and cornstarch together.

Sift it again, and again and again.

The cornstarch and flour need to be well incorporated and the flour aerated. 

Sift the flour and cornstarch mixture about five times.

You're Welcome.

Calendar time!

June 6th we went to the Rooftop concert series that Provo has the first Friday of every month. We're definitely going to keep doing this because it was so much fun! There's some great local bands out there. We enjoyed listening to Van Lady Love a ton. And we got a bunch free stuff from the Google Fiber booth because we have Google Fiber :)

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Sometimes I can convince Christopher that we should try a new food place. We usually end up really enjoying our meals and our time together. June 14th we wandered into a place called Gloria's Little Italy (after driving around for half an hour because I'm indecisive and didn't want ANYTHING fast food. It was a quaint little joint off of Center Street and ended up being super good and a lot more food for your dollar than we were expecting. Check it out!

Chicken Parmesan Sandwich

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June 20th we went with our gang to Strawberry Days which is apparently a big thing in Utah. We had some delicious strawberries and cream that we waited in line forever for and rode all the crazy, insane, and rickety carnival rides. Man I love carnies.

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Another random food place we visited was Parley's Place in Salem. We were looking for a wedding reception on June 21st that we never found and became thoroughly frustrated. We were also hangry, so I yelled, "FOOD!" at Siri and this was where she took us. It was a little diner in the middle of nowhere that had some delicious food and milkshakes. I'm bummed we don't live closer! It ended up being a fun little adventure for us :)

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Also, I think I'm going to dye my hair red.



Brace Yourselves.



There's never a dull moment.

Trust Me, I'm a Baker

 *Warning: Grisly pictures ahead. Not for the faint of heart.*

So I became part of a Tim Burton movie recently.

Many of you probably know already from Facebook and such that I sliced my hand open recently and had to get 16 stitches. It was the unfortunate outcome due to a mixture of frozen fudge, an awkward cutting angle, and my own impatience. I now adhere more closely to knife safety.
And I strongly recommend CutCo knives. They really work!


Here's the timeline of my healing process in pictures:

 

This is what it looks like now.
Still have some healing to do.

I've mostly kept my hand wrapped up in bandage tape and gauze and then wear a latex glove while I'm at work. Those gloves don't breathe at all. It's pretty miserable. Now I'll have to be extra careful to make sure the cut doesn't split again. I don't know how to take it easy :p


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


As for all this work I've been busy with, well, I started working at a bakery at the beginning of the month. My major (Food Industry Management) requires that I spend one semester working on the production side of a company. The company that I am at is called New Grains Gluten-Free Bakery.

Here it is in the Macey's grocery store. It's cool to look back on this picture and recognize all the work that goes into it all. We bake, cut, package, seal, and label everything by hand. Those black bags are pre-made mixes that we weigh out and bag and seal on a daily basis. The sugar cookies are frosted by hand.

So what is a day in the life at the bakery like?

Well, first I wake up at 5am. Yup. It's rough. When I get to the bakery I have to put on a hairnet and an apron. Then thoroughly wash my hands.

After that we start the bread making process.

One of the supervisors is usually running the mixing process and keeping track of how many batches of bread we have to make. One batch is equal to... you guessed it, 13 loaves of bread. As the supervisor weighs out the dough into the loaf pans, some of us are in charge of smoothing the dough into the pan, because guess what, gluten-free bread doesn't rise the same as regular bread. We literally have to shape the loaf to make it look normal.

Once the batch is all smoothed, we put it on a cart and place it in the proofer (20 minutes for white, multi-grain, sourdough or egg-free loaves). After it's done in the proofer it goes into the oven. 60 minutes for sourdough, 40 minutes for the rest of the breads. We have 6 ovens. There's usually 3 carts in the proofer at a time and the whole process continues until we've finished the amount of bread we need for the day. Once the loaves are out of the oven, we place them on shelves (see below) to cool.

 

We usually make dinner rolls and hamburger buns the same time as the bread (one person is in charge of that while the others are smoothing). The same goes for tortillas and pizza crusts at another table. We have to wait until we've almost finished with the bread to start the English muffins though because those have to bake at a lower temperature.
Once we've finished baking the bread, we start packaging the dinner rolls because they don't have to be cut and they cool down the fastest. Then one of the supervisors starts cutting the bread. We put it through a slicer that cuts it all up like sliced bread should be. Then we bag and date and twist tie the bread (with the correctly colored twist tie of course).
Meanwhile, someone is getting together the orders as everything is getting bagged. Some orders are double bagged for shipping and others are placed in boxes. Personal orders are usually double bagged, the grocery store ones usually are not.
Also during this time, someone can be grinding flax seed or coconut for later or they can be measuring out pre-mixes for use the next day at the bakery (that's usually what I like to do). Some pre-mixes are also weighed out into individual bags to sell in stores.
Cookies are usually made on Saturdays when I don't work so I don't know much about them except that we flatten them ourselves and push the chocolate chips into the cookies that have them. This prevents them from streaking the bags when we put them in. For the cookies and macaroons and pecan caramel bars, we seal them all individually. The Pecan bars are cut in precise squares (like we literally measure it and cut along a yard stick - I did that once) and the edges are left over for us to snack on :)
We usually wrap up the day around 3pm. Although lately it's been around 1pm.

All in all it's a pretty good job. I'm learning a lot and I know it's information I can use despite everything being gluten free. My only complaints are that I don't have a lunch break (only a 15 minute break) and I've yet to be paid (I've tried convincing myself that this is okay because many internships aren't even paid anyways, but let's face it, I'm poor and I need the money!). Despite all this, I think the week before the family reunion is going to be my last because I've got a lot of days I want to ask off in July and I could really use more sleep. Plus they're increasing the hours the Info Desk is open at the Wilk so I'd rather not be working 6am-2pm at the bakery then 3pm to who-knows-how-long at the Info Desk. We'll see what happens though.



As for other exciting happenings in my life:

1. Friday, May 16th: Brigitte got married! I'm so excited for her and everything was so nice. The Manti Temple is beautiful and I was so glad I got to go. She looked gorgeous!
It was also cool to see a sealing from the other side. Brigitte and Seth are pretty fun to talk to too. They have this whole story about why their wedding rings are significant. It was adorable to see Seth at Brigitte's side the whole evening, holding her hand. Super cute :)

2. Friday, May 23rd: We found a random carnival in the parking lot of the mall. Of course we went on all the spin-y rides and made ourselves sick. It was so much fun! after this we were going to watch the meteor shower, but could cover prevented us from seeing anything. Bummer!

3. Saturday, May 24th: We went to the Hispanic/Latino Market so Christopher and Kolby could get all trunky and so I could try some of the things that made the especially nostalgic. We decided to get really culturally diverse and went to the Asian Market as well.

These were our spoils of war:

They were pretty good. We apparently made some popular choices.

I, like a nerd, had a blast reading all the ingredient labels.

Life is Good.