11.10.08

So, I sat down to do some work this afternoon and was reminded of my need to blog. I have neglected this blog over the past several days, not intentionally you see, I’ve just been very, very busy, and the blog for some reason always comes last. I’ll try to do better I promise…

I ended up working twice at Jonesboro Road last week– once on Monday night while they had a store meeting. That was with Eagles Landing employees and it was very, very slow [not so much fun] and then again on Saturday night. I was scheduled to work at our store on Saturday from 5:45 to close I think it was. My running partner and I ran 10 miles at the Rock on that morning so standing on my feet another 8 hours wasn’t looking like something I really wanted to do. SO, when the opportunity arrived for me to work at Jonesboro Road just until 8:30 instead of close I was elated! + I was working with their employees this time and they are the BEST! Very friendly and welcoming and not so much moody like some I work with at my store.

Somehow I got all my work done last week. The football program was a learning experience! I printed 100 in color on the inkjet — will NEVER do that again. Then, when I delivered them they said they were expecting like 500 people and needed 300 programs. I delivered them the morning of the the game and there was no time to print more on the inkjet — it’s very time consuming and the second side has to be hand-fed one at a time. So, we decided on only 100 more and I had them printed at P&D on their color copier. Those printed on the color copier looked SO much better– the color just POPPED and the print was so crisp and clean. + the night of the game was drizzly and rainy so I’m sure those printed on the inkjet were bleeding all over the place I’ll never do color on the inkjet again — NEVER!

Like I said, my running partner and I ran 10 miles at the Rock on Saturday a.m. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!!! We were planning to do 15, but 10 is all I could do. Hopefully, I’ll be OK for the 1/2 marathon on Thanksgiving Day — it’s not quite as hilly as the Rock. We made a Starbucks stop afterward — of course. 🙂

This week I have the usual to do + 2 Christmas items– one a flier, the other a program. Just proofs to do this week. It’s a good thing because I work almost every day including Saturday. Tomorrow and Wednesday I open and will get to do the pastry case– my favorite. 🙂

Funny: A lot of times when I hand out drinks at the drive thru I will say, “You enjoy that.” It’s so funny because about 1/2 the time customers will say back to me, “You too.” he he he he I just want to say, “OK, give me a sip of it and I’ll enjoy it too.” Of course I never would.

Last week an impromptu weekend in the mountains was planned for the weekend before Thanksgiving. Can an impromptu weekend be “planned”? I don’t think so. Anywho… Eight of us are going to the 3-story cabin in Ellijay that overlooks Carters Lake for the weekend before Thanksgiving and I can hardly wait!!! OH I CAN SO HARDLY WAIT!!! That place is so gorgeous and just to be together with family on a weekend at this most beautiful time of the year– did I say I CAN HARDLY WAIT?!? + when you get together with MY family the food is ALWAYS like TO DIE FOR! Can’t wait to see what goodies we get to gobble the weekend before Thanksgiving. 🙂

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Starbucks fall menu: Lotta pumpkin, lotta calories

So we’re talking about calories again today – this time it’s a startling [read – depressing] bite of Starbucks nutrition news that we would never have thought possible, and may never have discovered if not for the Bloomberg calorie-info-posting mandate.

This Urbaniter has been a long-time fan of the autumn pumpkin menu items: scones, the loaf and the delectable cream cheese-filled muffin. But no more. The love affair is over, effective immediately. Today we discovered that one muffin contains 1500 calories – nearly the total number of calories recommended for an entire day.

Can’t decide whether to thank Bloomberg for saving our waistlines, or curse him for robbing us of a pumpkin-filled fall.

source: urbanite

BTW, I’m really thinking that the muffin is only 500 calories. I can’t imagine how they could possibly pack 1500 calories into a muffin! And it looks to me like that might be a ( in front of the 500, not a 1. I’ve checked the Starbucks website for the nutrition details but can’t seem to find any info on the new muffin. I’ll check at work tomorrow.

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1.02.05

World’s Largest Ice Cream Social – Sept. 25, 5-8 p.m.

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1.02.05

9.19.08

GREAT game last night! Couldn’t have been any better. The moral of the story: If you can’t control the refs, whine about the line judges and if that doesn’t work, question the score. Enough said…

Two coffee tastings today: Yukon and Gold Coast. Both are multi-region blends from the regions of Latin America and the Asian Pacific.

Yukon Blend is a medium bodied, hearty and well-rounded blend similar to Caffe Verona. Yukon goes well with cinnamon, raisins, oatmeal and chocolate. But all that doesn’t really matter because it is being discontinued. That’s OK, I really didn’t like it at all.

Gold Coast Blend is a complex full-bodied, intense blend. It’s one of the finest Latin America/Asian Pacific blends. It too is similar to Caffe Verona and goes well with maple, chocolate, caramel and cheesecake. This so far is my favorite blend. I truely enjoyed it!

Tomorrow I will have a coffee tasting with French Roast and Italian Roast and then my coffee passport will be finished.

As a Starbucks employee you are encouraged to complete one of these coffee passports every 90 days. I have done it in a month. WHEW!

A 3-mile walk through the city with my bff early afternoon. So nice when your bff comes home early from work and drags you away from your work to take you on a long walk through the city on such a nice, sunny, breezy, clear blue sky of an afternoon 🙂 so nice!

Tonight, Sari Beri made the Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies with 1 lb. of butter and 1 lb. + of chocolate and they are OUTRAGEOUS!

Outrageous Brownies

1 pound unsalted butter
1 pound plus 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, divided
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate
6 extra-large eggs
3 tablespoons instant coffee powder
2 tablespoons real vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided (1 cup for batter and 1/4 cup in the chips and nuts)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 cups diced walnut pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 13 by 18 by 1 1/2-inch sheet pan.Melt together the butter, 1 pound chocolate chips, and unsweetened chocolate on top of a double boiler. Cool slightly. Stir together the eggs, instant coffee, vanilla and sugar. Stir in the warm chocolate mixture and cool to room temperature.

Stir together 1 cup of the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to cooled chocolate mixture. Toss the walnuts and 12 ounces of chocolate chips with 1/4 cup flour to coat. Then add to the chocolate batter. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until tester just comes out clean. Halfway through the baking, rap the pan against the oven shelf to allow air to escape from between the pan and the brownie dough. Do not over-bake! Cool thoroughly, refrigerate well and cut into squares.

Click here for the recipe from FoodNetwork.com.

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1.02.05

9.17.08

Sari Beri and I went on our weekly breakfast outing to Starbucks this a.m. I shot a pic of the “breakfast table” I set up yesterday morning. Not nearly as impressive in the photo as in real life. Well, it’s actually not all that impressive in real life either. Oh well…

Sari Beri drove to Starbucks and from there to school and did pretty well. Much better than last week– we avoided all potholes today 🙂

I’m working at home today and it is oh so nice! The weather is cooling off, Fall must be just around the corner. I’m actually sitting in the sunroom with all the windows open sipping the last of my Gazebo [from breakfast in my insulated stainless Starbucks mug] and thoroughly delighted with the cooler temps outside. Without a doubt, this IS the life! Fall is my favorite time of the year followed by my second favorite time of the year — Christmas. I love all of the wonderful colors, flavors and smells of Fall– pumpkins, gourds, turning leaves, cinnamon and nutmeg just to name a few.

This is what breakfast at Starbucks looks like for me & Sari Beri.

I keep telling her that a Java Chip Frappacchino does not compliment a blueberry muffin but you just can’t tell teenagers anything these days As you can see, my Apple Bran muffin is long gone…

This is the cacti that BIGGER Tom brought me back from a missions trip out west several years ago– he wasn’t BIGGER Tom then, just Thomas. I’m so proud of myself for keeping it alive all this time! I’m horrible with houseplants. Ok… so you can’t really tell if they are alive or not, they may have just died and dried that way. And yes, I have replace a couple of them that died with plants from Wally World… Oh well, I’m doing the best I can here Anyway, it cost him A LOT of $$ and he’s so tight with his $$, and it was difficult to carry back on the plane I’m sure. That’s why it really means a lot to me and I think about that every time I look at it. It makes me smile 🙂 That’s also the trip that he lost his airplane ticket in the airport on the trip home 😮 and he amused the gate attendents with his ever-so-real looking fake snake– so I hear…

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1.02.05

Steal your FREE Cookie from Kashi

go to: kashi.com

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1.02.05

9.16.08

Well, the Arabian Mocha Sanani is out of stock so having completed all of the Africa/Arabia coffees in my passport I moved on to the Asia/Pacific and had a coffee tasting this a.m. with Sulawesi [Sula Way See]. I really like this coffee and think it’s probably my favorite so far. It’s a full bodied BOLD coffee grow on Indonesia’s largest island and is considered Indonesia’s most elegant coffee. Sulawesi has an earthy aroma with a complex flavor and herbal notes. I like the way it moves in the cup.

Now I have only the blends to taste to complete my coffee passport– 6 of them to be exact:

• Cafe Estima
• Serena Organic
• Yukon
• Gold Coast
• Italian Roast
• French Roast

Will do 2 on Thursday, 2 Friday and 2 Saturday– assuming they are all in stock.

This a.m. I set up a “breakfast table” in the cafe complete with a fall table cloth, real dishes, coffee cups and saucers, a French press with coffee, bagel and butter, banana and the guest of honor– our Perfect Oatmeal along with the available mix-ins: brown sugar, nuts and dried fruit. It was a work of art! Wish I had taken a pic. We had several customers comment on the inviting appeal of the table setting. Makes you just want to sit down and have breakfast all over again. Maybe I’ll take a pic tomorrow. Sari Beri and I will be there for our weekly breakfast outing 🙂

Customer Recovery: Customer recovery is a BIG deal at Starbucks! If for ANY reason a customer is not enthusiastically happy, you go into “Recovery” mode. Today, one of my customers ordered a Tall coffee, another drink and a pastry. He wanted to pay for the items with his Starbucks card, but knew he didn’t have enough money on the card to pay for it all. So, he also wanted to re-load the card, and do this all with a $20 bill. The card was a registered Starbucks card so the customer would receive a .40 discount on the second drink he ordered [the cost of the syrup in that drink]. Of course I didn’t know all this until after I had rang the order. Had I know all of the circumstances up front, I would have first put the $20 on the Starbucks card and then in a separate transaction rang the order and paid for it using the registered card. As is turned out, I rang the order then he gives me his card telling me there’s not enough money on the card and a $20 bill and wants to pay for the order and re-load the card and this is where it gets very confusing. I was going to just start over and do it right, however, another Barista steeped in and she ended up completing the transaction in an odd way that prevented the customer from receiving his .40 discount for the syrup. He was not happy and made some complaint which she ignored– after all, it’s just .40, right? NO! It’s an unhappy customer. It’s not at all about the .40. SO, instead of giving him a Tall coffee, which he paid for, I promptly turned around, poured him a Venti coffee, and apologized with a smile asking him if he’d like to have the Venti coffee instead since he didn’t receive his .40 discount. He was enthusiastically happy 🙂 That’s Customer Recovery as I understand it. Whatever it takes to make sure the customer leave with a smile on their face.

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1.02.05