Croissants for the Ages

One of the favorite local breakfast places, Rise and Shine, is also home to excellent baked goods. Who'd have thunk, in one of the tiniest towns I've seen?

Today was my second foray into this gas station strip mall gem. Last time, grabbing a take out breakfast sandwich (on an East Coast-worthy bagel), I noticed the plethora of house made breakfast goodies in addition to the ski bum diet offerings of eggs, meat, and cheese. Muffins, giant cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, and croissants all obviously home made by their imperfections yet irresistibly enticing. Not much of one for heavy sweets in the morning, I decided that a croissant would showcase their skill as a patisserie and satisfy my craving for real food.

I went in this morning with my eyes on the croissants. In addition to my delicious three-egg, veggie-stuffed omelette and potato-chunky hashbrowns, I opted to pay a little extra and add a croissant instead of the offered toast or bagel. Now, I know I am spoiled by Standard and having almost unlimited access to croissants that have been lauded as better than those of Paris. But rather than turning up my nose, I used that as a measure by which to judge this new, unknown croissant quantity. As expected, these mountain croissants were not as good as Standard's. But it was a pretty damn good croissant. Puffy, flaky, crumbly in all the right ways, and distinctly buttery, the croissant could certainly hold its own in a croissant-off. It's a keeper, and only encourages me to keep returning to Rise and Shine until I have blown all my money and tasted their entire menu.

Like A Fish Out of Water

So I just went for my first 9,000 ft. run. It was a cloudy 20˚, so nothing out of the ordinary temperature-wise after nine years in Maine, and there is a 2.29 mile loop right out my front door. But the altitude. My goodness. Either I am way more out of shape than I should be, or there is zero oxygen up here. Running on flat ground is like trucking up a hill at sea level, and running uphill...well, let's just say I came way closer to throwing up than I ever have going SO SLOWLY. It's all you can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other, breathe, and not pass out.

But I made it! Maybe next time it'll be easier. If there is a next time.

'Tis A Season

Christmas is now officially over and done with, the extent of celebratory festivities being "family" dinner, team gift opening, and a soak in the hot tub. Although the latter happens more often than not, it occurred on Christmas, thenceforth will be considered a "festivity." I worked all day yesterday, and although 80% of customers wished us a Merry Christmas, none of us could figure out what they were talking about. Christmas? What's Christmas? We don't have holidays. We don't have weekends. We don't even know what day, let alone what month it is.

As a gesture towards the holiday we all assume has passed though none of us have experienced it, I currently have a batch of the family heirloom cinnamon rolls set to rise in the oven. (The warmest place I could find in our -100000˚ temperatures out here. No kidding - windchills yesterday were down to -55˚F, the wind at the base was blowing directly sideways. I felt like I was in an Antarctica scene out of Plant Earth.) Yes, I know I baked a fresh loaf of bread and a dozen muffins the other day, but no harm in even more homemade goodies, right? It's a holiday after all...kind of.

Miss Manners Would Hang Her Head

Now that it's getting into busy season (aka Christmas break), we've all been working crazy hours, including a 10.5 hour day for me this past week. Fun! Not particularly, but hopefully the paycheck will be worth it. (Yeah, right. It's not like we get holiday bonuses.)

Not only are we slammed almost every day, but the customers are for the most part some of the most obnoxious, worst mannered people I have ever encountered. I don't know who their mother (or father) is, but I was taught to clean up after myself. When I unwrap a straw, I throw the wrapper away. When I'm done with a drink, I get rid of my cup. That does not mean I leave it on the table. I throw away my napkins. I wipe up spills. I bus my own table. I always think about a sign I saw once at an eating establishment, years and years ago.

"Your mother does not work here."

Subtle, but succint. I am not your mother. I don't want to clean up after you like you are a one year old who cannot be held accountable for your mess. Because chances are, you are not one year old. Not if you're reading this, not if you're drinking Starbucks coffee.

You are not entitled. I'm not here to clean up your mess; your mother isn't writing me a check.

When Worlds Collide

I went into the little gourmet food store around the corner from my house just to see what they had, and to my amazement a dazzling array of Stonewall Kitchen goods met my eyes. Jams, sauces, jellies, mixes, and mustards were scattered throughout a collection of delicacies originating all over the world and the country, but it was the Stonewall Kitchen products which threw me for a loop. I associate Stonewall with the Old Port, with free snacking while wandering downtown, in a word, with home. To see a jar of Wild Maine Blueberry Jam tucked onto a bottom shelf alongside apple and pumpkin butters from Colorado and Italian fruit sauces seemed supremely out of place. Wild Maine Blueberry Jam (personal feelings on wild Maine blueberries aside, DAD) is a hallmark of summers in Maine. Our blueberries are like our lobster and our moose; world famous, probably overrated, but the underlying reasons for many Mainers' livelihoods nonetheless. While it is an honor (and a feat of Stonewall's marketing, I'm sure) to Maine that its blueberries are so well renowned, it is an affront to my own philosophies on eating and to my escape from Maine to see jars of Maine jam on a shelf in a tiny gourmet food shop in the middle of nowhere in Colorado in December. It just seems absurd to me to buy Maine blueberry jam out here. Colorado should have their own fruit to make a jam out of. Leave the blueberries to us Mainers, and let me live my new life in peace without such interjections from the old.


On the brighter side, I did buy my first cookbook out here: The Bread Bible. (There are two of them...this now means I'll have to get the other also.) I'm psyched - if only I hadn't just used the last of my flour on the loaf I made earlier.

From Ice to Ice

Since my latest ski incident (Tuesday), I have forced myself to again take a few days off from the slopes. Needing a replacement activity, I went ice skating on the "skating pond" in the Village at the resort yesterday morning. Skating through falling snow as it accumulated on the ice was tranquil enough, although it felt a little weird to be skating on a powder day. People walking by were giving me weird looks which could be instead attributable to my lack of coat or gnarly skating skills. Speaking of which, it took a few laps of the miniature ice (I'd say approximately the size of one zone; blue line to goal line for the uninitiated) to get my legs back under me - although I'm still waiting for the lungs (darned altitude). It definitely made me miss playing. As small and oftentimes crappy as the ice is, it would be a fun spot for a little 2v2 pick up. Now, if only I had my stick and some lung capacity we'd be all set.

For Leah