Week 13

Nov 18

Sunday, November 11th Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, probably because it’s centered around food. When I was a student at the University of Florida, we only had Thursday and Friday off. It wasn’t enough time to return home to Maryland so I stayed in Gainesville. I invited my friends who were also holiday orphans to have dinner with me. I cooked the turkey and everyone brought a side.

One year my grandmother Jackie, who lived in Gainesville, joined my friends and I for the big dinner. It was one of my vegetarian years but I still cooked a turkey. Jackie was kind enough to bring a Tofurkey, only she pronounced it Tofu-Curry. A couple people were really disappointed when they didn’t get to eat Curry.

When Jackie arrived, she met a homeless man in the parking lot. She thought he was one of my friends and she invited him in for dinner. My father has never missed an opportunity since, to remind me that there was no discernible difference between my friends and the homeless population in Gainesville. I guess he had a point. Half of our meal that year was made with produce procured from grocery store dumpsters.

***

Working in the baking industry, I’ve never had a Thanksgiving off. It’s one of the busiest days of the entire year. When I was baking at Amy’s Bread in NYC I worked with a diverse team. The bakers hailed from South Africa, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Columbia, the Bronx, Seattle, San Francisco, Maine, Brooklyn, China, Michigan and more. Since all of us had to work the holiday, we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner at the bakery together after we finished with the breads at 4am. We cooked a turkey and we used the leftover breads to make stuffing. Everyone brought a dish. The table represented the multicultural team: pork dumplings, tamales, three different kinds of bean and rice, coquito, vindaloo, lamb, ox tail…you name it, it was on our table. It was the greatest feast there every was.

I’ve never been able to completely recreate Thanksgiving at Amy’s Bread but I have hosted a Friendsgiving every year since. Today was the first Fueled by Doughnuts Friendsgiving. I have so much to be thankful for from this group. It just seemed fitting that we gather to celebrate each other. There have been potlucks in the past where there is more to drink than to eat. I tried to steer everyone in the right direction with a guided sign up this time around. The meal did not disappoint.

Before long, the bakery was filled with runners and their families. There was barely enough space for the food as dish after dish came through the door. It was an outpouring of friendship and love between people from all walks of live. The evening encapsulated everything that’s great about this club. It doesn’t matter if you’re young and single, married with three kids or retired. It doesn’t matter if you’re a surgeon, a teacher, a carpenter or an accountant. Your religion doesn’t matter, your skin color doesn’t matter, your gender, your political views….everyone joins together because we all love to run and, as it turns out, eat! I know this community we’ve built is a special kind of bubble but it gives me hope for the future generation. I am so thankful I am raising my kids in this kind community that has become my family.

Monday, November 12th - The focus of PT this week is impact. Today, Dr. C asked me to jump of a box and land on both feet. The box was so tall, I needed a stepping stool to climb to the top of it. Even if I had a perfectly normal, injury free, hip, I would have stood on the top of the box with the same amount of trepidation before I jumped off. I nailed the landing and kept a slight bend in my knees, as instructed. I repeated this process 20 times.

I thought that was difficult but it was nothing compared to the single leg jumps I completed next. Balancing on my left foot, I hopped forward 20 times. Then I had to jump up, turn, and land facing a different direction, 20 times. When the jumping was over I was treated to side planks, squats, lunges and the balance board. It was an hour jam packed with activity.

At the end of my appointment, Dr. C told me I could progress my run/walk to two minutes running, two minutes walking on Tuesday morning. If I don’t experience any pain, Thursday I can run for two minutes and walk for one minute and on Saturday, I will be up to three minutes of running and one minute walking. I made it the whole 3 miles.

Tuesday, November 13th - This morning, I got up to run with the group. It was pouring rain. I was concerned the road might be slippery but I reminded myself I’m supposed to be taking it easy during my walk/run. As long as I pay attention to where my feet are landing, I should be fine. I have a hard time going back to sleep after my alarm goes off anyway.

It was a small group. The rain deters the fair weather runners. Only the stubborn, fearless bunch remain. Or maybe it’s the people who will do anything to get an hour break from the rest of life’s pressures to go for a run.

I used one of our three mile routes to complete my run/walk. Lizzy, Necole and Barbara joined me. When I got back to the bakery, I had run for a total of 20 minutes and walked for the same. It was the most amount of running I’ve completed so far and it was pain free. My muscles were stiff later in the day but not in pain.

***

It’s November 13th and I’m in my 13th week of recovery.

My grandfather, George (I called him Pop), operated a small laundromat in Chestertown, Maryland. After dinner each night, he would tell my grandmother and I, "...time to make the doughnuts." This was his way of alerting us that he was leaving to go lock up the laundromat. Whenever I hear that expression, I think of Pop.

Locking up the laundromat meant that Pop got to sit outside on the park bench in front of the shop and drink coffee with his friends. My grandmother called them the ‘old farts club.’

Pop was my number one supporter from as early as I can remember. He loved food. He was my first taste tester. He never missed an opportunity to stick his finger in the frosting of a cake while I was trying to smooth out the edges.

Pop also loved the number 13. We would celebrate every Friday the 13th. He wore a silver '13' pennant around his neck. I don't know when he got his 13 and he never told us why he chose 13. My grandmother said he wore it when he was in the service.

I was six months pregnant with Josie, his first and only great granddaughter, the night he passed away. Soon after he left us, my grandmother gave me his 13 and I still carry it with me every single day. I carry him with me every single day.

In April, 2012, I was in the process of purchasing the Bread Company from the Reinhardt’s, the couple who previously ran a bakery out of the space on Walnut Street. My family thought I was crazy. "You'll never sleep," they said. "You'll never make any money," they said. I was starting to believe them. I was ready to give up on this crazy idea to have a bakery of my own. Late one night I got a call from Sally Reinhardt. She asked if we could meet on April 13th to finalize the terms of our agreement.

"I know it's Friday the 13th," she said, "but it's always been a lucky day for us because our son, George, was born on a Friday the 13th."

That was all I needed. I knew I could move forward. It was fate.

It could be a date on the calendar or an exam room door, every time a 13 appears, I think of Pop.

Wednesday, November 14th - Ten years ago, in September 2008, I moved from Queens to Milford, PA to help my friend Mark Edmonds open a bakery inside a carriage house connected to the Hotel Fauchere. Josie was three months old. One of Mark’s first employees was Carolyn, a recent culinary school graduate. Carolyn had virtually no experience baking breads. Her strengths were cakes and pastries.

I was always the first one into work. I started between 2-3am. I scaled the ingredients for my doughs and mixed them before Carolyn arrived between 4-5am. I spent the hour by myself, thinking of all the things I couldn’t wait to tell Carolyn. When she walked in the door, I was armed with a million questions while she tried to prepare the croissants and danishes to go in the oven.

Most of the time, I was able to complete the bake on my own. When I made specialty bread that required more finesse, I asked Carolyn to help. In December, I started baking German Stollen. This is quite a process. Days before the dough is mixed, the filling is made. Almond paste, sugar, egg whites and almonds are creamed together and formed into little logs which dry out before they go inside the loaves. The loaves are supposed to represent a swaddled baby Jesus, therefor the logs become hundreds of baby Jesus’s which have appeared on our production schedule every year in various degrees of non-politically correct verbiage.

The final dough starts with a sponge…flour, milk & yeast are mixed and allowed to sit for 30 minutes while the yeast starts to activated. We cream butter, sugar and almond paste together first before adding the sponge and more flour. The dough rests for another 30 minutes before adding candied orange & lemon peel currants and sliced almonds. Once everything is incorporated, the giant mass of dough is divided into 18 ounce portions. It rests for 15 minutes. Then the almond logs are shaped into the dough to form the loaves of Stollen. They rise for an hour before going into the oven.

When the loaves are hot from the oven, the tiny pieces of burnt fruit are brushed off the surface. Each loaf is dipped in clarified butter while it’s still almost too hot to handle. Immediately after the butter bath, they are dredged in granulated sugar to form a crust. Once they cool completely, they are dusted with powdered sugar and wrapped in plastic. They can stay like this for months without losing their freshness.

Carolyn and I have made Stollen together every single year for the last 10 years, first in Milford, then in Montclair. She has taken over the dough preparation. Last year, we hosted an open house and invited the community to spend the day at the bakery with us while we wrapped baby Jesus in dough. This year, we created a Stollen making class. Participants were able to be a part of the actual production throughout the day, today. After four back-to-back groups and 200 loaves of Stollen, I was exhausted beyond reasonable belief. When Carolyn and I had hit the wall for the fourth time and we didn’t think we had it in us to finish the last batch, Gina showed up with a six pack of Brooklyn Lager to save the day!!!

Thursday, October 16th - In 2015 when I trained for the NYC marathon, I experienced my first taper. Two weeks before the race I stopped building miles, I cut back on my training significantly to let my legs recover from all the abuse and get them ready to run 26.2 miles. Going from running 7 miles a day to 3 miles a day is enough to make any runner go a little nuts. I had phantom injuries. I thought I was getting sick. I thought there was no way I could run a marathon.

The Thursday before the race, I had three miles on my training plan. Anne, in an effort to calm my nerves and make a three mile run more exciting, invited everyone to run to the bagel shop with us at 5:30am. The Fueled by Doughnuts running club didn’t exist yet.

We ran two miles to Sunrise Bagel, stopped and had breakfast, and ran a mile home. Anne dubbed it the Taper Tamer Run.

When the club was formed six months later, we started hosting the Taper Tamer before every big marathon. In the fall, it we have one every other week. The ritual has gotten so popular, we have to pre-order bagels and coffee so we don’t create too much chaos in the bagel shop.

This morning, we hosted the Taper Tamer run for the Philadelphia marathoners. The best thing about everyone’s mileage dropping down is that I have lots of ‘running’ buddies as I build back my strength and endurance. I ran two minutes on and one minute off for two miles to join everyone at Sunrise Bagel. All these baby steps help me to feel more normal every day.

Friday, November 16th - The medals for our 5K Doughnut Run arrived today. This year the ribbon is striped with sprinkle colors and the medal itself has our 5th Anniversary logo. Each year, we carefully plan the colors and designs for every single item we order for the race. The medal must incorporate colors from the shirt design but in a way that it highlights them. We have to make sure it doesn’t blend into the shirt when runners don them at the finish line.

Every aspect of the shirt is custom ordered from the color of the shirt itself to the color of the stitching down the sides. We choose the fabric and the cut of the shirts. This is a very scientific process. Gina and I strip down in the office and try on sample shirts the company sends us before picking the one we like the best. If we’re feeling really thorough, we will run in the sample before making a final decision.

Last year, our beanie vendor submitted several designs for our hats. They were good but not exactly what we wanted. I asked my daughter to sketch a hat for me. What would she want to wear? She did and we had her hat design put into production. It was fun to see 300 kids running with Josie’s beanie at last year’s race and even more fun to see kids standing out for the bus, still wearing them, a year later.

The shirts, the medals, the pom-pom beanies - they all work together to make the race kit complete. We try to keep the signage and branding consistent from the sponsor letters to the notices sent out to residents. Every detail of this race was a decision we had to make down to the stickers on the doughnut boxes. The coordinating colors for the next two years are already in the works.

Saturday, November 17th - This morning I ran with the group again. I decided to use the 5K Doughnut Run course for my three miles. The weather was sunny and cool. The perfect day to run. By the third mile, the three minutes I was permitted to run felt shorter than my one minute of walking. I’m ready for the next step.

Over the years, Gina & I have answered question after question about our 5K Doughnut Run through Facebook, email and Instagram. Here are a few of the highlights from our file as stupid question season is fast upon us with the 5K just three weeks away.

My wife is having a baby sometime in September. Can you hold a registration for me? No