BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02852 You'll notice that the warming cabinet is empty. That is my fault. I added water to the little reservoir and it overflowed. I thought I had cleaned it up well but apparently I did not. A while later it shut off. The register also shut off. Water had gotten inside and shorted it out. My boss had to take it apart and we dried it as best that we could. However, it kept shorting out. So, we waited for an hour or so and tried again. Luckily the case finally dried out and we were able to put everything back in it.  I now know how very small that reservoir is. I also know how easily water can get into the electronics of the unit. It was not a good day at work. 

Photo-A-Day #02831 We've been working on Halloween themed stuff at The Pretzel Factory. We have pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns and now these Spiders that are on display. These aren't for sale but more for decoration. We also have pumpkin dip and special versions of our brownie batter and buttercream. Essentially they have Halloween colored sprinkles added to the top of the dips. Festive.

Photo-A-Day #02823 We've been making some pumpkin themed pretzels at Philly Pretzel Factory. Some look like pumpkins and others look like jack-o-lanterns. We put out a special of 4 of these and some pumpkin dips. We made some cinnamon style and some salted style, too.

Photo-A-Day #02817 I had seen some photos from another Philly Pretzel factory where they made some pumpkin and jack-o-lantern pretzels. I showed my boss and suggested that he run a special on them with the new seasonal  pumpkin dip. Like 3 pretzels and pumpkin dip for $3 or something like that. Not sure if he will do it but he did make a bunch and I took three home today.

Photo-A-Day #02815 Special dark pretzels or my boss has wicked ADHD and so he often forgets to hit the button on the timer and we know the pretzels are DONE when we can smell them. These weren't burnt, burnt they were very very dark and still tasty inside. I had one of them and it had some decent crunch.

Photo-A-Day #02809 Yesterday at The Pretzel Factory we got the new pizza prep station. This means that we can now list pizza on our menu and people can order them. So I now make pizzas as well as pretzels. The one above is what I made today. Not too bad, I think.

Photo-A-Day #02796 I created a new dip flavor at The Pretzel Factory. This one is Caramel Coffee. I used some salted caramel topping that we use for ice cream and also some of the espresso flavoring that we purchased, plus a pump or two of the Autocrat syrup. I mixed that with our buttercream to create this new flavor. We'll see if people like it.

Photo-A-Day #02793 We've been making pizza at The Pretzel Factory lately. My boss has been perfecting the dough and the cooking method to make some excellent pizzas to sell in the store. I am also making pizzas. We need additional people besides my boss who know how to make the pizzas. I'm there often and so I am also making pizzas.

Photo-A-Day #02788 I took some spare dough and rolled it flat through a pasta maker and then sliced it into triangles. They puffed up a lot when they baked and were hollow inside. They were really good with a garlic butter that we use for the pizza crust. I may try these again.

Photo-A-Day #02787 I made a new dip flavor for The Philly Pretzel Factory. I had asked my boss to pick up some Wild Strawberry and blue raspberry flavors. With that I put together a mixture of the two flavors with a themed for the Dungeon Crawler Carl book series. My sign features Princess Donut, yes that is supposed to be a cat. It look smore like a groundhog. There is a running gag where Princess donut says something to the effect of "Carl, you know how I feel about [blank]" and each time it is something she's never mentioned. I also thought that the colors represented Mongo the raptor that is her pet. So this flavor is called Mongo is Appalled (another thing she says often).

Photo-A-Day #02780 I was at McDonald's before work and I had parked my car and when I came back out there was a white care parked right next to mine and it had a Decepticon sticker on the front and one on the window. I had to laugh because of my Autobot stickers and other items. I sat in the car reading my comics and waited for the driver of the Decepticon car to come back. When he did he looked about my age, wearing a Top Gun t-shirt and I shouted over, "I had to wait to see the Decepticon driver." He looked over and then realized that I had Autobot stickers on my car and laughed. Today at work we got a new kid that comes in twice a week. My boss and his wife signed up for a program where a local high school student who has special needs comes and works in the store to get some experience while they are evaluated to see if they are able to handle working in a real world scenario. Our last kid had zero personality and needed guidance for everything they did. Nice enough k...

 Photo-A-Day #02772 Each day that I come in for work at The Pretzel Factory there is something new happening. My boss is always trying out new things to see what will sell. Today I was washing some donut pans because he made donuts in them. I personally don't think that he needs a pan and could just twist the dough to a donut shape. His are the two up in the top of the photo. I made the two on the bottom. I used one of his roll shapes and baked it, then put it through the cinnamon sugar we use for rivets and then baked it again so the cinnamon sugar could caramelize a bit. Then I dipped it back into the butter and this time covered it with the cinnamon donut sugar that we had when we were out of our normal cinnamon. They came out great.

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.