Follow Your Bliss .... and Learn in the Process!

In my pursuit of raising money for homeless kids while experimenting to discover a business I can do from home, I decided last week to do a bake sale at church. I brought samples of carrot bread and of my grandmother's herb biscuits (well, I added the herbs!), thinking I would get 3 or 4 orders. I got 13 orders - which will buy a lot of socks for homeless kids! And more importantly, make people aware of homeless kids.
After pacing myself all week, shopping one day, mixing the dry ingredients the next, mixing wet ingredients with the dry ingredients the next, and finally, baking today, I filled all the orders in my tiny kitchen with very little equipment! Here are some things I discovered along the way:

Carrot Cake Bread



 1) My first strength in baking is recognizing good recipes and improving them to make them taste better and make them healthier. As far as the recipes I used, I knew they would be good because they called for real butter! As far as making them healthier, I thought of adding flax seed to both the biscuits and the carrot bread, using organic eggs, and using 1 part wheat flour to 2 parts white flour instead of all white flour. The recipes didn't call for any of these ingredients!  Also, I thought to use 1 part brown sugar to 2 parts white sugar for the carrot bread for a richer flavor.

2) My second strength in baking is figuring out how to get ingredients frugally. I used herbs that I am growing in my garden, I know the best places in town to buy organic eggs (down the street from a local farm or from Fresh and Easy if the farm is out!), flour, sugar, etc (most of the bulk things I bought from Costco!) . I also know how to make my own baking powder (corn starch and baking soda) and brown sugar (white sugar and molasses), so I can make really good baked goods really cheaply!  And a dear friend gave me 100$ as seed money to buy more ingredients in bulk so we could raise even more money for homeless kids, so I was able to get things like 3000 square feet of plastic wrap for 10 dollars, and a few big mixing bowls (turkey basters from the 99 cent store!)

Garden Herb Biscuits

 3) My biggest area to grow in is efficiency in actually baking! Part of this is because I have never made myself learn how to be efficient - with just Pete and I, I am quite content if it takes me extra time to mix biscuit dough with a wooden spoon instead of an electric mixer - in fact, I enjoy the sensory experience! But with baking in bulk, this just won't do! I learned a lot of little tricks for efficiency I never thought of before, which to most people may seem like common sense, but I never cared about before! Like instead of forming each biscuit by hand (wearing gloves of course!), roll out the biscuit dough and use the edge of a cup to cut it out.

4) This is related to # 3 - I learned the importance of having the right tools to bake efficiently!  I've decided to start looking on Craig's List, or garage sales and thrift stores, for a good deal bread machine, and for an electric mixer, the kind with a bowl connected. Also, I am going to borrow a bigger kitchen, with more than one oven!

5) Pete and my friends were right - I need to raise my prices!

My Conclusion - At this point, I am not efficient enough and don't have the equipment to make much of a profit off of baking to do it as a regular business.  Also, if I am going to start a for-profit business, I want to invest little or no money (and I don't want to invest in a baking license at this point). But I still love baking for people and I want to help homeless kids, so as I can aquire some basic equipment and find a big kitchen to borrow, I'll do occasional, maybe monthly, bake sales with friends, as I am up for it. As far as making any sort of real supplemental income to help us get out of debt, I think I will pursue teaching Greek to homeschoolers, as a blogging friend suggested.

What is your bliss?

Simple Living and Entprenurial Experiments

When I was a kid, my 3 younger sisters and I (I have four sisters, but the youngest was born right before I went to college) were constantly trying to start little "businesses". We sold everything from "coloring book calendars" that we put together ourselves, to flower bulbs, to wrapping paper, to popsicles, to chocolate bars. The business I remember the most was an "art sale" we put on in our front yard when I was seven years old. We drew pictures of random stick people and very sloppily glued together popsicle sticks and called our creations "bird houses". We also were selling an assortment of rocks and pinecones we had collected. We made a grand total of 25 cents! Ha!
       Since "coming home" a month ago, I've been toying around with different entreprenerial ideas.  On the top of my list are:
1) Calligraphying Wedding Invitations
2) Baking Healthy Breads with organic ingrediants/ veggies from my garden
3) Tutoring women in Greek (women communicate better with women!)
I am not sure which, if any, of these enterprises will turn into a real business.  And I have a lot of research to do on how to start a business, getting a license, etc. I've been feeling a bit stressed, a bit panicky, not sure which route to pursue, which one will be a success, and how to even go about doing everything legally, not "under the table". 
       But since my main reason to have quite my job was to focus on my health so we can have a baby, I've decided that this stress-laden attitude will not do, but neither do I want to just give up. After a lot of  praying and thinking, I've realized something huge - THERE IS NO RUSH! We don't need the money to live on, the profits would just go in part to paying off extra on student loans so we can be more financial stable for our future children, and in part to helping children in crisis. This doesn't have to be done tomorrow! Or next month! I ... can... take... my .... time.... what a relief! I can take all the time I want to think, to pray, to research, and to experiment! I do not have to prove my worth to the world by bringing in a big paycheck tomorrow - as a stay-at-home-wife, I am FREE to put God and my husband and health and ministry first, and pursue what brings me joy instead of feeling pressure to make lots of money now!
           So I am experimenting. Today I baked some biscuits and carrot bread to give away as free samples at church tomorrow - maybe I will get some orders, maybe I won't, but if not, at least I have discovered in the process a quicker way to make carrot bread (cook and puree the carrots instead of grating them) and got my Grandma's recipe for biscuits.  Maybe I will get some orders, but not a huge amount - thats OK! Even if I only make 20$, I can use that money to buy socks for homeless kids I couldn't otherwise afford. But maybe, just maybe, it could be a business that could grow, and I could afford to get a baking license and pay off thousands of dollars in student loans!  And if that doesn't work, maybe I will pursue calligraphying wedding envelopes. I may find that I hate calligraphying that many envelopes, and not do more than one order (this fear is holding me back!), but maybe I will find that I love the practice, that my calligraphy just gets better and better, and the balance on our student loans are going down so fast, so why not take the practice and make money at the same time! And if that doesn't work, maybe I could advertise for tutoring women in Greek at the seminary Pete teaches at, and could really be motivated to keep up with studying Greek that way (this would be my dream job but the one I see with the least chance of making a profit).  Or maybe I will get occasional work in all three of these enterprises, and will just take it as it comes. We will see! But there is so much joy in there being NO PRESSURE!