BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02754 Today was Andy's last day of Culinary Camp. This year each of the kids in the teen camp got their own knife. They got to keep it, too. Andy is pretty excited to have their own cooking knife. They had the usual dessert showcase this ear with a lot of great items to enjoy. The teens did not decorate cakes this year but rather some cupcakes. They also had a monster cupcake competition where they decorated their cupcakes with monster themes. Andy did Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. This is funny because Andy often Mike Wazowski's themselves in photos meaning covers their face accidentally. After the dessert showcase I went over to Warwick to pick up a comic book from a fellow reader of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. They had left it on their porch for me to pick up.  In addition to the comic they also gave me two stickers. I put one on each of my water bottles. I should have swapped where I put them because the one with the straw is one I take to the office an...

Photo-A-Day #02753 I now have a key to The Pretzel Factory. My boss was telling me that tomorrow he has to prepare for a softball tournament where he's got a high school kid selling products. So, he was talking about coming in early and I offered to come in and start the burner on the oven and get things ready so that he could bake when he arrived. I was going to get there to start at 6 but he said 7 would be okay. so later in the day he gave me a key to the building so that I could come in at 7 and take care of it. This will come in handy since I'll be closing from time to time and maybe even opening. Or both.

Photo-A-Day #02752 I didn't have to work until the afternoon today so Allison and I took Andy to camp and then on the way back we stopped for breakfast at First Watch. The place just opened so they are just getting their feet under themselves. The kitchen staff is new and so they did not want to overwhelm them and are accepting less people than they have space for until the staff can keep up. so our wait was like 30 minutes. We should have signed in to the line through the app but that is okay. Allison had a free side and so we got the Million Dollar Bacon. It was very tasty with a slight kick to it, too.  I opted for the traditional breakfast with home fries and bacon and eggs plus some multigrain toast. It came with an excellent strawberry jam. After breakfast we went shopping at Target for some things for Eva for college and also some stuff around the house. I can't believe that one month from today Eva is off to school.

Photo-A-Day #02751 I made a special dip today at work. I had gone to Michael's and picked up some Orange Extract and orange food dye. The extract was actually an emulsion and I used that with some of our buttercream to make the Orange Dream dip. I wanted to call it Orange Dreamsicle like an Orange Creamsicle. My boss didn't get it so said shorten it to dream. I do like that I ave a bit of leeway to make some other items from time to time.

Photo-A-Day #02750 I worked the weekend so today was a sleep day. I went and got Andy from camp in the afternoon and after dinner Allison and I went for a walk around the block. There was a house with some beautiful sunflowers out front so I snapped this shot of one. Andy started their week of cooking at Johnson and Wales. Today was Italian day.

Photo-A-Day #02749 Dunkin Donuts put out a special Cape Cod themed tumbler. Allison and I have been searching for it since the start of the Summer. Today Allison and Andy went down the Cape to pick up Eva and their friend, Max to go and see the Hadestown Pro Shot. A Pro Shot is professional filming of a broadway play. Allison and Eva both love Hadestown and andy enjoys Greek Mythology so everyone wins.  Allison went to about five Dunkins today and finally found the tumbler at a small shop. She was quite excited to finally have it. It is a cute one. Lots of fun Cape Cod details on it, too.

Photo-A-Day #02748 Allison and I went to the Attleboro Farmer's Market. We picked up a few things like empanadas and Foss Farms sauce as well as a couple of Jerusalem Bagels form NAVAD. It was nice to walk around and see what they had all around the market. I haven't had one of the Jerusalem bagels in a while. They are so tasty. I think I'm going to try and make a pretzel like this next week at work. We have the sesame seeds there.