My Christmas tree is up, menorahs decorate the mantle and the house is lit with twinkling lights. We are doing all that we can in our home to bring the light in.

I’m jumping on here quickly to let you know that we are so busy here at the bakery preparing all of your Thanksgiving pie orders. We have been working the dough sheeter non-stop all weekend to roll out all of the pie dough, browning potful after potful of butter, and bubbling cranberries as they transform into our compote. Even my kids are headed here to jump in on the action -- this is really a labor of love.

The busiest baking season has arrived, and with it the bakery is swirling in scents of butter browning, spices toasting and sugars caramelizing. Today marks the very deliberate march to the bake of our Thanksgiving pies. In recent days, pie dough production has been ramping up, and it took off with a vengeance this weekend. Our mixer and dough sheeter are in near constant motion as bakers run the machines day and night to mix, turn, sheet and shape dough into pie shells. The bakery is warm and the windows steamy from all of the activity inside.

Today, I woke in the wee hours of the night with a renewed sense of energy and hope.

I begin my week ready to push forward, to continue my work through challenges and towards growth and stability.

Running a bakery is not a one woman show. The stronger the team around me, the more we accomplish. I am proud and grateful to have two managers who work every day to help hone and uphold my vision.

“Ah stupid Americains,” he mumbled under his breath in the long drawn out insulting sneer that the French have perfected. He was always frustrated by us, whether he perceived we weren’t working fast enough or didn’t have enough dedication. He had recently arrived from France to run the pastry department in the high-end restaurant in Los Angeles where I worked as a pastry cook. His name was Christophe.

Our friendship began with a fortuitous meet one afternoon in Portland, while each of us was on a tour visiting a potential preschool for our children.

A few months before I was to move up from Los Angeles, the IACP, an annual cookbook conference, was being held here. I jumped at the opportunity to meet with friends and peers and to get a jump start on figuring my way around the town that I would soon call home. While attending the conference I spent one afternoon touring a local preschool, and while there met a woman. She was in book publishing, and knew who I was from my cookbook, but was looking for a career change. We exchanged numbers and promised to meet again.

As a kid of the ‘80s, I loved watching Oprah. After school my friend Melissa and I would come home, pop a bag of Pop Secret microwave popcorn, grab a Dr. Pepper from the fridge, settle into her back TV room for the next hour, and fall into someone else’s world. For whatever childhood reason, it was a dream of mine to someday appear on Oprah’s show, and once my cookbook was published I figured that was how I would get on. So it was to my great dismay when I heard that the Oprah show would have her last show shortly after Good to the Grain was published, and my dream would not be realized.

Today I honor friendship, and my friends who are my chosen family.

Today I woke to a crisp morning and blue sky dappled with clouds. The arrival of cooler weather marks the first day of fall. The transition of season brings a natural shift from the bright, juicy flavors of summer into deeper, spicier flavors. Baking techniques shift as well. Summer has us baking minimally, letting the fruit speak for itself, while fall asks us to slow down, tend the stove and build layers of flavor into each pastry.

I’m a little short on words this week. The challenges that we collectively face grew to a nearly insurmountable level this past weekend. At times I wondered if we would even open, with the air quality so poor and the fires creeping closer. I was touched to see each of you, and felt comforted by the kindness and concern that you extended to me and the bakers. The fires and the smoke brought us to our limit. With reserves and mobility already limited, I decided that we needed to take a break and take care of ourselves. After the last of the orders were picked up Sunday morning, we temporarily closed shop.

A chef is nothing without their team. Kitchens are tight, stressful spaces and people that gravitate to them have exacting standards and high expectations of themselves and others. A successful kitchen is one where the team works together toward a common goal, carrying one another if someone needs help, realizing that we are as reliant on one another as we are on ourselves.

A few years ago, a handsome man with kind, sparkling blue eyes walked into the bakery. It was early fall in Portland, when the air was crisp and the sunlight streamed in through the window casting it’s warm, golden light through the middle of the bakery. The day was late and the pastry counter was nearly sold out. He came for an almond croissant—a mutual friend had sent him—and not having one on the counter we told him we would bake one fresh. Oh, and he wanted to say hi.

While working in kitchens in my early twenties, I worked my way up from the ranks of entry level pastry plater to head pastry chef. I worked in some of the best fine dining restaurants in Los Angeles and for some of the people that I admired most in the industry. I went from executing my chefs’ visions to creating and executing my own. Working at that level allowed me access to the very best ingredients, often using the very best equipment, and also afforded me the opportunity to travel the United States and the world participating in cooking classes and learning things I otherwise would not have.

Go...now. She pointed up the back stairs to the walk-in refrigerator. That is where you will work!

She was revered in the kitchen, first one in and last one out. She was French and word in the kitchen was that she was a princess who inherited millions. She drove a Porsche back in the days when even head chefs did not yet, smoked cigarettes and spoke rapid fire sentence in broken English. She was my introduction to the professional kitchen at Spago. And she was only an entry level pastry plater!

On November 7, 2007, I opened an email and was surprised to read a note from a literary agent telling me that she had recently seen an article that was published about me in the Los Angeles Times featuring recipes that I developed using whole grain flours. When we met she asked if I had ever considered writing a cookbook, for which I hadn’t had the previous bandwidth. Without skipping a beat, I responded that it would be the perfect time to do so; three years into motherhood, caring for a baby and a toddler, I needed a creative outlet.

Once I began my work in kitchens, I fell hard for jam making; both the process and the outcome. The beauty of perfectly ripe fruit tossed in sugar and cooked until translucent and suspended in its own sauce is kitchen magic. 

Last year, my youngest daughter went to visit a local farm to learn about agriculture. The kids planted pumpkins and at the end of their visit they each skipped away with a young tomato start. As soon as she came home she promptly and enthusiastically nestled it into our empty garden boxes. Getting to the garden was always an “I should” thought, but in reality my time was short and I wasn’t really interested in taking care of one more thing so the seasons went round and round and nothing was ever planted.

I could always count on three things when I went on a summertime visit to my grandparent’s house deep in Southern California: An angel food cake was cooling upside down on a wine bottle, there were plans to visit cousins, aunts and uncles, and jars of my grandma’s Blenheim apricot jam filled the refrigerator.

In the process of refocusing my business, I’ve often asked myself what’s most important to me. One thing on top of that list is being able to go to the farmers market, where I let the produce be my guide. I carefully select whatever looks the ripest and juiciest, and from there I decide which flours best match each particular fruit. Every pastry is created in tandem with the fruit and the flour.