BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02769 Another weekend, another realization that things are not at all better with time. For my companies' 57th year in business they gave employees an ice cream social. They did not forget about the night folks. There was ice cream for everyone ... last weekend. So this weekend when I came in I found a half gallon of rubbery, frost burned ice cream. Gross. And in my Facebook memories there was a photo of the very last company picnic from four years ago.

Photo-A-Day #02767 This morning we took the kids to First Watch for breakfast. They were not impressed. The place was really loud, they didn't quite enjoy their meals and that made for a rather poor experience. While we were there though we talked about the things that we'd like to watch together (movies) before Eva goes off to college. We settled on watching Stand By Me as the first of a series of movies we'll watch over the next few weeks.  I worked at The Pretzel factory today until closing. Then I ran a bunch of pretzels over to America's Best Defense. I had put out a call earlier in the week for people who might want a delivery of pretzels. Sensei Howard replied and I got him on the list for tonight. Last night I went to the North Attleboro Fire Station and they practically tackled me for them. Both nights someone did not pick up their 2 Good 2 Go order so I had multiple bags of pretzels to share.  When I got home we watched Stand By Me. I think both kids really en...

Photo-A-Day #02762 I saw this pin online that says "Not The Worst Employee". I thought it was really funny so I picked it up and pt it on my pretzel factory hat to see how long it would take for my boss to notice. He noticed towards the end of the shift and started laughing. I explained that I had put it there just to see when he'd notice and that it was really for my other job. I love working at the Pretzel Factory and am not as in love with my full time job. But, I'm not the worst employee there.

Photo-A-Day #02759 Tonight I closed the Pretzel Factory with one of the teens. My boss had a makeup softball game to go to and since I know how to close and also have my own key it was up to me and Malia. Malia is a high school sophomore who is one of the best workers. She is super thorough in the cleaning and was really helpful talking care of the customers while I baked. The one thing I cannot do is open the safe so we keep the cash register open so that if the place gets broken in to then  they will see that there is no cash. So, I had to get creative and sneaky to hide the money.

Photo-A-Day #02758 Today is national chocolate chip cookie day and I got an idea to add chocolate chips to the pretzel dough and then cover it in butter and cinnamon sugar then bake it to make some pretzel cookies. I was going to try and roll everything and make the cookies look more like the cinnamon buns that my boss makes. Either way this came out really well.

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 #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 #02747 I finally smartened up and froze some of my pretzels so that I could enjoy them throughout the weekend. By freezing them I can pop them into the air Fryer for 5 minutes and have nice hot and fresh soft pretzels as intended. If I leave them on the counter they start to absorb the salt and get gummy. One night is fine but beyond that, no good. When I went into the Pretzel Factory today for my shift 11:00am - 3:00pm I was greeted by my boss frantically making trays and trays of rivets (Pretzel bites) because he had an order going out at 11:15 for 4 large Rivet trays. The oven wasn't up to temp yet and he wasn't even sure if he had enough stock for the order. It was chaos for the first hour but we got it taken care of and he even put in 6 heart shaped pretzels because this order was for a wedding. The bride is a big fan of The Philly Pretzel Factory and wanted a bunch of our branded stuff to have at the reception including a ton of cups and other things.

Photo-A-Day #02745 It was back to the Pretzel Factory today. They have a new item on the menu. It is their take on a Cinnamon Bun. I had seen a post on social Media about them and it was titled a Cinnabon which is a brand and come to find out the bosses wife put that up and then had to fix it because Cinnabon is a brand. the way they make these is that they take the raw dough, put it in the butter and then the cinnamon and then spiral it out and put it in the walk-in. Then they bake it for the 7 minutes per usual and top it with a dip. I suggested that they show one with dip and one without and let people decide to put a dip on it. when that happened the next person to come in bought one with no dip.

Photo-A-Day #02740 Tonight we had a group get together to say goodbye to my supervisor, Ben. Ben is heading to days and as with all things here we celebrate with some food. I decided that I'd be bringing pretzels. I also decided to try out the Too Good Too Go app and get the pretzels that way. I got it as early as possible and did pay the highest price but that is okay I felt kinda weird doing that then just buying an actual item so I bought 3 large dips to make up for that. The Too Good Too Go bag had 15 pretzels as well as a bag of rivets and two bagels. Seemed a little lighter than we normally make it but that was because Tim wasn't there.  People seemed to like the pretzels and I was happy to have some once again after not having any for two weeks. Could also be why I'm back under 200lbs. So, I'm going to have to watch that now that I am back.

Photo-A-Day #02716 Today at The Pretzel Factory my boos made these twice dipped cinnamon pretzels. He takes the pretzel and coats it in the butter and cinnamon like we normally do then he bakes it again and then dips it in the butter one more time and also in the cinnamon a second time. It gets an almost creme Brule type of crunch to it.

Photo-A-Day #02706 I was in Target today and saw a new flavor for gruns. These are vitamins in a gummy form. Usually it is a cherry flavor but they partnered with Popsicle and now have the Firecracker flavor. I misread the price and ended up buying these to try them out. See if the vitamins are any good. In the background I have a USB-C hub because I got a new computer at work and it has less inputs than it used to have. I was having trouble using two screens at work and also having other important things connected. Now I am all set. This is pretty useful overall. I can get back to using the setup that works best for me. It looks like no one ate any more of the pretzels through the day. So I can have a few later.

Photo-A-Day #02705 Today at The Philly Pretzel Factory we had an order for a large rivet tray for 2:!5pm. I made it and got it all ready but no one came to pick it up. I called the customer at 2:45 and they told me that they ordered it for tomorrow at 1:30pm. That was really far off from what I had for info. I let the boss know and updated the slip. So, with no one to take it I took it in to work. We are going to start making pizzas, too and Tim had me make one as an example. Tim has been making Mushroom melts so we had mushroom and pepperoni and so I used that. I have an idea for a future pizza and I'll see about making it next week.

Photo-A-Day #02684 I worked at the Pretzel Factory again today and later int he afternoon before I left for the day we got an online order for a large party tray of mini hot dogs. We made them up and got things ready. Then my boss noticed that the order was for Sunday. We already had 72 of these things baking. So, I ended up taking a whole giant bucket of them to bring home for dinner. I also had a bag of them so we ate dinner and ended up with a still full bucket of these little guys. Crazy.

Photo-A-Day #02683 When I came in to work today the owner was making some pretzel bagels. He had picked up some Everything seasoning and added it to these. I brought a couple of them home for Allison to try. I thought about them a little and suggested that if we prepared this the same way that we prepared our cinnamon rivets we could essentially make donuts. So we tried it. My boss actually had a donut cinnamon sugar because the cinnamon sugar that they normally used was missing. It had not been ordered. They came out really good. Tonight we watched The Outsiders as a family. We've been reading the book, Allison and Eva saw the musical, I listened to the audiobook and Andy is studying the book at school. I had never seen the movie before. Eva watched it with Aviva and Andy saw the Drive-In theater scene and trailer at school. 

Photo-A-Day #02677 Today at The Pretzel Factory they were twisting pretzels while I was there. When it came time to clean the Stringer they were finishing up and there as a a good pile of dough. I asked if I could try my hand at making something. I tried to make a mortar board for a graduation. It came out looking like a fat stingray.

Photo-A-Day #02670 I brought a mess of pretzels in to work tonight. I also brought in one of each of the dips. Yesterday I was saying that I had to try them out and today I gave each a shot. A small amount on this pretzel so that I can speak better of the flavors that I actually like and can recommend to people. I brought them in for my cousins, Shaun. We also shared them with everyone who is upstairs in the building. There are still a ton left for him to take home.

Photo-A-Day #02669 This is our Dip Zone at The Pretzel Factory. I try and make sure that it is always filled with all the correct items. We needed to make a bunch of them each day and I like to organize them in the walk-in when I have some time. There are many flavors. I have not tried them all because they are very sweet. I do recommend the Salted Caramel one and Cinnamon is good. I like all the mustards, too.

Photo-A-Day #02647 Work this week for The Pretzel Factory has been interesting. Last week I worked mornings so I twisted pretzels and cleaned the stringer. This week I did clean the stringer once but doing a closing shift. This means cleaning the whole place at the end of the shift. I'm starting to get everything down. I've learned that there are two ways of doing things. This place is run by a husband and wife. The husband does things a specific way that is more loosey goosey and the wife wants things a very particular way. Since I'm being trained mostly by the husband I find myself being re-trained by the wife.  I'm fine with either way, whatever way they want it done is the way I'm going to do it. So, with that being said I'm making sure to do things the wife's way since if I do it her way I'll get no complaints. I know that much is true.  I photo graphed my work shirt and pants since I only have two work shirts and I work 3 days in a row. This means ...

Photo-A-Day #02646 Had a regular day at work with my new schedule. I'm doing 1:30-6:30pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. that means closing up and that means taking pretzels home. I can't be eating these and there are only so many that the family can eat. Allison took two bags to school and I tossed the rivets into the compost. Eva took a few for her friends as well.  Today at the end of work we had a bunch of stuff that had been baked and Tim, my boss, had me take a bunch home. I was planning on having one of the pepperoni pretzel items, it was baked almost right before we left for the night. I had it in the bag of all the big pretzels. On the way to the car I saw a UPS driver eyeing me and my big bags of pretzels. I asked him if he wanted one. I said, take whatever you'd like and he saw the pepperoni and grabbed that. I had not specified that I had wanted that but it is probably for the best since that has a lot of carbs. He was very grateful and happy so that is good.