Back to Baking

Seven years ago I decided to leave teaching and start a coffeeshop and bakery.  It took me   another year to save up the rest of the money I needed to open the business and live on until (it hopefully) started making money.  This was a very DIY project with lots of assistance from my family.

The Old Drum Coffeehouse and Bakery in Warrensburg, MO.

I loved filling this cabinet up with fresh baked goods every morning.

I loved it, everything about it, even the bad parts where I had to immediately learn plumbing skills from my phone and the friendly people at Ace Hardware.

There were a lot of great things too. I love a little one-on-one banter, and serving coffee every day let me meet so many interesting people.  I turned into a townie, reconnecting with friends I’d known when I was 10, people from the local University, and the nearby Air Force base (one AF guy I decided to marry).

We enjoy watching baseball games (Astros and Royals), going to concerts, hanging out with our cat Twix, and all the while taking terrible selfies.

Then life just happened, I’d been focusing so much on the business I didn’t realize how many other parts of my life were put on hold.  There are a few more dreams I have, and some of them don’t really fit with owning a business.  In a very short time period my husband found out his job was changing and we would have to move, I sold the Old Drum Coffeehouse and Bakery to one of my employees and we moved to Kansas City.  Not too far away, but living in the Northland and having a weekday job feels like a completely different life.

Baking and sharing my treats while chatting with customers from a variety of backgrounds, from the children, to the college students, the University professors and staff, those associated with the Air Force, those who lived most of their lives in Johnson County and those who just arrived is what I miss the most.  Although I can’t share the actual baking results (unless you live around the KC area, let me know and I’ll bake you something), I hope this blog is a way to share knowledge and chat with others about their baking stories.

What I plan on including is some recipes that are my own or one’s that I’ve altered to fit my liking, and other recipes that I’ve tried and any new skills I’ve learned (as a person working on her second masters I’ll always leave citations, gotta give credit where credit is due).  Part of this blog is about expanding my baking abilities.  As it grows I plan to include suggestions for how you can alter basic recipes to your liking, do you have allergies, are you vegan, do you like to turn sweet recipes savory, are you looking for ways to bake deliciousness with less sugar?

The secondary goal for my blog is to force me to use all the food I buy, to cut down on buying food with unnecessary packaging, and to compost as much as I can.  This means I’ll be including some cooking items as well.  First off I’m a super frugal (or cheap depending on how you look at it) person.  Grocery shopping is what I spend the majority of my non-bills income on each month, and it makes me sad every time I throw something away that spoils.  Even more so if I cooked it and spent time and money on it.  Second reason is environmental.  In the reduce, reuse, recycle circle, reduce is first because it’s the most important.  Yeah I can recycle that cardboard and maybe the plastic clamshells but if I could do with out them, I’ll try to do without.

Now on to the good stuff, I decided my first official blog post should be about the recipe I love most to bake, share, and eat.