Launching a Business

I've officially launched my home-based bakery.

While it doesn't affect most of you because you don't live near me, and as of yet I don't ship pies, I am beyond excited for this development. I've been working on it since July, building my repertoire and becoming more comfortable in the kitchen. The best experience came from making pies for a local restaurant where I also wait tables.

I'm quitting my waitress job so that I can focus more on my pies.

I can't believe I made my first pie just two years ago. Something crazy took over after that, and I love doing them. I have a pie crust sitting in my fridge, just waiting to be rolled out and turned into something. I can hardly wait to peruse my recipes and figure out what I'm going to experiment with this time. Really, why did it take me 30 years to find my niche?

Of course this isn't the end. Until I have a commercial kitchen, I can only make non-perishable pies (the kind you can leave on your stove for five days after Thanksgiving). Someday I'll have a second kitchen and I can make cheesecakes and cream pies and all those especially wonderful things. And someday after that, I hope to open an actual bakery.

Not just a bakery, of course. A bookstore too, where I will sell the very best of indie and small press books, the ones you can't find at Barnes and Noble. And I won't do consignment. I would never do that to the poor author.

My home-based bakery is called The Reading Kitchen, in honor of that expectation. Though I'm not yet operating a bookstore out of my house (and probably never will), I'm already giving book recommendations and hopefully pointing people in the direction of authors and titles they've never heard of.

And check out my webpage! Newly created, just a week old. I'm on facebook too. I'm so excited! And if you're ever passing through Arkansas, give me a call. I'll bake you a pie.