Thinking About My Morning

wingin' it: bing cherry scone with coconut-almond glaze

Even when I am dead tired, I often lay awake in bed at night when I know I should be sleeping. As I stare at the ceiling, my mind is consumed with the impending a.m. baking session, because this is one of my most treasured times spent at work.

I arrive at the cafe before the sun is up. The world feels tranquil, as though I can sense the calm of our collective consciousness, as it slumbers deeply during those last few hours prior to waking. After turning off the cafe alarm, my first three movements are always the same no matter what I have to do: first I turn on the oven and hood. Next, I go to open the window, the kitchen's sole connection to the outside world (thank god our kitchen has a window!). Last, I turn on the power strip to which our Internet and stereo connect. My musical selections vary depending on what I am baking. Bluegrass if I have a lot to do in a short amount of time, reggae if I have all the time in the world, jazz if I am in a creative mood, and some heavy Grateful Dead if it happens to be Sunday, my favorite day to bake because I get to produce four to five dozen buttermilk biscuits in addition to scones, French puffs, and savory muffins.

My calm is usually shattered when our first delivery arrives sometime between 7:00am and 7:15am. The energy of the entire cafe feels like it shifts as soon as someone else, with their own frantic morning agenda enters my space. "Until tomorrow," I whisper in my head as a bid goodbye to my cool, relaxed self. There is truly nothing like getting lost in all that dough. The feeling of cold, soft flour against my rough hands is enough to make me forget even my biggest concerns, if only for a short while.

Enough words. Time for bed. At least, time to surrender to gravity...as I'm sure your quite aware my mind has already begun to drift into scone-land.

Goodnight.