What?

Let me start by telling you about what Jeanne did with her day.  The City of Columbia health regulations require that a retail food establishment have on staff at all times someone who has been to the Serv-Safe class (basically the next level food handler's class but an all-day course).  We couldn't figure out any logistical way to go to the class together AND still bake for Lucky's, so she went today and I'll go to the next session. A few hours later while I'm working away on Chocolate Bourbon Pecan, I get this furtive phone call from Jeanne and she says to me in a rushed whisper "at what temperature do you cook minced cod?"

It pretty much took my brain a few seconds to figure out what she actually asked me.  But no seconds to realize that I DON'T HAVE A CLUE HOW YOU COOK MINCED COD (or actually why you even eat minced cod).  Apparently, the class was a lot of instruction about how to cook foods at different temperatures so they are safe to serve (hence the title, Serv-Safe).  Which is awesome because I'm not a fan of food poisoning.  That said, the city needs to look into some sort of Serv-Safe course for bakeries because the serving temperature of re-heated chili isn't on the top of my worry list.

I need to investigate how much longer I can procrastinate on this course.  Or Google a lot of cooked meat facts in the interim.  (Though I'm not sure I can ever un-see what comes up when you Google "minced cod".)  You actually take a test at the end of the day, so obviously these Serv-Safe people aren't playing games.

While Jeanne toiled away with her textbook, I was in charge.  Before you think that sounds fancy, it basically means I baked a lot of pies, answered a lot of emails, talked to a lot of people, and picked up our food delivery from our food broker, Sysco.

We love our Sysco broker (hi, Janie!) and she always is sure to squeeze in our order despite how late we forget we need something.  The interesting thing about not having a working kitchen is that you have to figure out how to pick up your delivery.  For now, it looks a little like this...

Basically, the Sysco driver waits for me and then I pull up next to his truck.  He unloads everything directly into my Tahoe for me and then I write him a check.  Does that sound odd?  It feels odd.  Of all the things I didn't anticipate about baking out of the Elks Club, it is the delivery and inventory management.  Because we have stuff scattered all about, there has been more than a day where we've had to stop at the grocery store and buy supplies because we've forgotten something somewhere.

All of our boxes and pie tins are being shipped to my house currently...the Buttonwood location doesn't even have an actual address recognized by the United States Postal Service and the City of Columbia.  We store everything at my house and it works well until we run out of pie tins at the Elks Club and remember that the next new box of tins is sitting in my dining room 15 minutes away.

Apparently instead of Googling meat-serving-safety-instructions, I should be Googling "how do you get an address for an empty commercial location?"  Or the city should offer a class on that for $130 bucks because that is a class I wouldn't procrastinate to attend.