I have a lot of answers to this, but mainly, I have a cache of pump-up helpers.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll make an  attempt to share the staples of my pump-up treasure chest with y’all.  But beware… it will pump.  You up.  Yeah, I did.

Ok, here are a few pump-you-up items.  A virtual grab-bag of fantastic.

First up, Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother.  He reminds us that awesomeness is a choice.

Also, you can judge me all you want, but I find LMFAO super-inspiring and I can count on them to always get me pumped up, no matter how tired I am.  Their music can be silly and sometimes a little dirty, but never negative; these guys are livin’ life and always have a positive outlook.  Personally, my LMFAO go-to to get pumped up is Party Rock Anthem…
Every day I’m shufflin’.

Ok, that might be enough pumpage for now.  I don’t want y’all to break your fist from too many fist-pumps in a short amount of time.  I’ll post again soon with more of my go-to helpers for getting super duper PUMPED UP!!!!  Whooooooooo!!!!!

WARNING: the following video (and story) may not be appropriate for young children; the video is VERY graphic.

This video is a PSA from Australia and I have to say it may be the best anti-drunk driving promotion I’ve seen ever; it’s 5 minutes but please do it justice and watch the whole thing.   Click here to go to the video on You Tube.

I cried the entire second half of that movie, both from remembrance and gratitude.
I remembered the bright light as his jeep rounded the corner and the explosion I saw in my head before waking up almost 60 feet from where I was hit, not able to move my lower body, tasting my own blood in my mouth, and wondering if anyone in our group was dead.
I was grateful to still be here, walking and talking, despite terrible odds.

I don’t talk a lot about the accident; it was over ten years ago, my sophomore year of college.  Some friends and I were walking home after a party to the apartments right behind campus.  We looked both ways and began crossing the street (a small campus street with Greek houses and student apts).  Two guys, other students, were driving home from a bar just a couple blocks away; they were going between 60 and 70 miles per hour when they rounded the curve in the street and, without once hitting the brakes, plowed into our group.  They hit the two people in the middle, myself and my friend Jackie, and kept right on going.  We were each thrown about 60 feet.

Jackie skidded on the pavement and tore her scalp off from her eyebrows to the back of her head.  She fractured her hip as well as an arm and had to have reconstructive surgery on her face.
I broke bones in my knees and my pelvis snapped in multiple places, one of the shards tearing through my bladder and causing significant internal bleeding.

Jackie and I were taken to different hospitals and it was the longest night of my life.  I couldn’t move my legs and there was excruciating pain everywhere.  When I arrived at the hospital, I was rushed into the ER where my clothes were cut off of me and I was stuck with so many needles I felt like a pincushion.  Before I could be medicated, xrays and CT scans had to be made, so I had to be moved onto cold, hard tables while different scans were run (all with a pelvis that was completely broken in multiple places); I couldn’t stop from screaming from the pain.  Finally after being returned to the ER, a friend was allowed to come sit with me.  Jordan picked the gravel out of my hair piece by piece and stayed with me, even after I, from major trauma to my body, threw up on her.  And so my healing journey began.

my lip was busted up and face bruised; this pic was taken during a physical therapy session a few days after the accident

the assignment was to use the walker to stand and then sit down in a chair about 3 feet away

It is a miracle that not one, but both of us survived that night.  The survival rate of a pedestrian being hit by a vehicle at that speed is less than 2%.  We were both hospitalized and underwent a lot of medical treatment.
I was in a wheelchair for 3 months and suffered intense nerve damage that kept me up almost every night for months literally screaming in agony.  I underwent a lot of physical therapy and a big victory was the first time I could go to the bathroom by myself.  There are still patches of my body without much feeling and I have metal screws in my pelvis that look like carriage bolts.
And we were lucky.  Most people don’t survive.

That night, my mom got a call at 2am from the school dean asking if she was the mother of Katherine Gordon and that there had been an accident, a call that every parent dreads.  But it could have been worse; that same weekend another parent got a similar call from the dean, but the news was much worse.

Please don’t drink and drive.
Call a taxi; seriously, it’s $20 to take a taxi just about anywhere in Memphis.  Save the number in your cell phone: 577-7777.  Or call a friend or a parent or a son or daughter to come pick you up.  Don’t jeopardize yourself and someone else.

Who knows whose life you might save.

My dad, Wake, LOVES a good pecan pie.  However, he also has very high standards for it. 

Dad’s Rules for an Excellent Pecan Pie:
-Filling must be sweet and a little gooey, but not overwhelmingly so.
-Crust must be buttery, yet flaky, thick enough to support the filling and a pleasing taste contrast, but not so thick that it is at all doughy
-Pecans must be ample but the pie must also slice easily (a difficult task with all those nuts!)

About 5 years ago we were all discussing who was to bring which dishes for Gordon Thanksgiving and I got dessert.  I was looking forward to perusing cookbooks and choosing what to make when my dad did the unthinkable… he specified WHAT KIND of dessert he wanted me to bring.  What??? I’m not a store where you walk up and order! (or I wasn’t, at the time)  Also, I’d never made pecan pie.  I was a bit nervous about being required to show up with this fearsome dessert (see Dad’s Rules for an Excellent Pecan Pie above).  What to do?

Shady Wake pie slice

It turns out, Thomas’s mom also had to make a pecan pie, so Thomas, Nan, and I carved out an afternoon for experimentation.  Nan’s kitchen became our laboratory.  We rolled pie dough and tried multiple recipes for filling.  We baked, cooled, then tasted the pies.  We took detailed notes… “A has a good consistency, but flavor is a little lacking”  “B tastes great, but oozes everywhere” etc.

Armed with my notes, I studied the recipes’ methods, ingredients, etc and formed my hypotheses for round two and then did it all again, using recipes I’d constructed, much like Dr. Frankenstein, from bits and pieces of the first set.  A third round of baking (and many pies later) I had developed a real winner.  This pie was PERFECT!  The crust was buttery, delicious, and flaky.  The filling held its shape without sacrificing flavor.  I’d discovered that breaking the pecans into smaller pieces made it possible to use lots of nuts AND slice it easily!

I proudly used my recipe to make the Thanksgiving pies and everyone loved them.  More importantly (to me) Dad said it was the BEST pecan pie he had ever eaten in his whole life, including his own recipe.  It’s still one of his favorite items at Muddy’s and every single time I make or eat a Shady Wake pie, I think of him.

If you’d like to order some Shady Wake pecan pie for YOUR Thanksgiving celebration, just give us a call during business hours* or shoot us an email at orders@muddysbakeshop.com

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Preston, Wake, Kat, Kip

*Muddy’s business hours are Tues/Wed/Thu 11am-9pm and Fri/Sat 11am-11pm.  We are closed Sundays and Mondays.  We will also be closed Nov 24-26 for Thanksgiving holiday.

The cocktails and couture event will be hosted by Lexus and Verizon and featuring food from Felicia Suzanne, Sweetgrass, Chocistry, Quality Wines and Liquors, and of course, Muddy’s Bake Shop!  There will be an auction for items like hotel packages, a signed Tony Dungy book, and event tickets.

Nicci B will be there representing Muddy’s, so be sure to say hello!

Go HERE to get your tickets!

I have a couple of her prints now but I’ll definitely be getting more.

Here are a few of my current favorites; please visit her shop.  You’re bound to find a lovely print for your home or office that will surround you with happiness and you’ll be supporting an independent artist- WIN!

We are looking for a full time server/cashier to join us some day shifts, some night shifts on Tuesdays through Saturdays.
We’re looking for an energetic, dedicated, mature individual who absolutely oozes POSITIVITY!  You gotta be a happy person who likes to make other people happy too.  You have to show up to work on time, work well on a team, and be awesome.

Get ALL the info here:  careers at Muddys!

Perks include working with these people…

Cons of the job… working with those people.  They’re INSANE and everyone knows that insanity is contagious. 

As y’all may know, we at Muddy’s make kind of a big deal out of Valentine’s Day, but not in the usual way.  We divide the selection in two parts: one half for the lovey-dovey shmoop-saturated people who celebrate Valentine’s Day and the other half for those who are bitter, enraged, or just sick to pieces of the (fake) holiday which is VD.

The big news is… we will be OPEN!  It will be our first time to be open on a Monday EVER.  We’ll be open from 2-8pm, so please come by!  You can also place a pre-order; check out our menu HERE (open the orange link).

Here’s a preview:

Top row: muchas smuchas (chocolate + strawberry), love potion (strawberry + chocolate), and true love (strawberry + raspberry)
Bottom row: woman scorned (chocolate + rosewater), bitter with baggage (chocolate + coffee + bittersweet chips), ashes of old lovers (chocolate chip + chocolate + skull)

Top row: voodoo doll cookies, sugar cookies, cherry heart cookies
Bottom row: cherry 4″ pies, cherry 7″ pie, baby pies, conversation heart cake

So whether you’re happy in love or bitter with baggage,
come visit us and get something for your sweet tooth!
xoxo/snarl, kat

So anyhoo, I like to make a sport of finding the grossest things advertised or recommended in these publications and I thought “hey, my readership enjoyed being grossed out by Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa cake, I bet they’d like this too…”  So here are 5 gross things I found advertised or recommended in a bakery trade magazine this month, in alphabetical order:

1. Bases/Mixes: Dough, Batters for Cake
Yes, a lot of bakeries actually just use cake batter from a tube or sack.  Maybe I’m just weird, but I got into this business because I LIKE to make cake.

2. Bulking Agents
I’m not really certain what bulking agents are, but I’m picturing a powder that would turn mild mannered Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.

3. Icings, Ready-to-Use
Just re-read my thoughts on the pre-made cake batter.  Come on people, if you didn’t want to make this stuff, why do you work in a bakery?

4. Marshmallow Powder
I’m sure this isn’t the most terrible thing on this list, but for some reason the idea of dehydrated marshmallows is just kinda ick.

5. Mold Inhibitors
Oooh, just what everyone wants.  To be able to sell really old stale items because customers can’t see MOLD on them… sign me up.  Ugh.

Yeah, that stuff should totally make you HURL!

Rest assured, we at Muddy’s did not feel the need to whip out the credit card to make any of these highly questionable purchases!  I’m pretty glad my life is as simple as flour, sugar, eggs, butter. 

CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE HERE

So anyway, we have MORE peppermint bark (in both white and dark chocolate) as well as more “Grinch” bark (key lime and white chocolate) for those of you who just didn’t get enough at Christmas.  Once winter is over though, we’ll stop making it and you’ll have to wait until next winter!

And if you want your daily dose of hilarious, check out local food writer Angela’s tale of peppermint bark woe; I guarantee you’ll be in stitches!