My Life as a Shopkeeper in Metamora

It has been awhile since I wrote anything for this blog because life has been so busy for my bride and I.  But, as several people have told me recently that they liked the writing I put on here, I figured I'd better get off the dime and write something.

My wife, Brenda, and I live above our shop in "downtown" Metamora.  It's our home and our life, and we love it, but that doesn't mean everything is always perfect.  It is a very busy life with little time off.

We open our shop five days a week, year 'round.  Opening time used to be 10:00 am, but since it seemed we were always 2 or 3 minutes late opening, and not wanting to mislead potential customers about our opening time, we changed our official opening hour to 10:04 am.  We almost always make that on time.

The other two days of the week when we do not open the shop (Monday and Tuesday) were/are supposed to be "days off", equivalent to 'normal' peoples' weekends.  Yet, when you run your own business, and live upstairs in the same building, it seldom seems to be anything like "time off". 

In our case, I bake all the bread for our panini sandwiches. I have to make my own bread in order to serve the type of sandwich I want to serve, and I could find no bread at any store or bakery that worked the way I wanted it to.  So, for better or worse, I came up with my own recipe and that’s what we use.  And it doesn't bake itself.  So, frequently, the better part of one day a week is devoted to bread-baking- averaging about 30 loaves every two weeks in the summertime.

Fortunately or unfortunately, my caramel corn is a big popularity success.  But, it too does not make itself.  Since it takes an hour and a half to make one batch, and that batch produces 9 or 10 bags, frequently another day is used up in making caramel corn. 

Neither the bread-baking nor the carmel corn making can be done very easily during slow periods when the shop is open, because both operations take up a lot of space in the kitchen, which would then make it difficult to make our panini sandwiches when hungry customers come in and order food. 

Then there is the cheese slicing- 20 or 30 pounds a week of cheddar, swiss and provolone cheese logs must be sliced up and wrapped and labeled, then another half hour to get the slicer clean.

It takes hours of advance preparation for the various sandwich items on the menu.  Today it was roasting, cooling, then slicing and portioning out the eye round roasts for the Philly Cheesesteak grilled cheese panini.  Last week it was cooking up 10 pounds of ground angus and turning it into our Sloppy Joe panini filling.  Before that it was 20 pound pork butts- which I really enjoy, because I let 'em go all night in the oven 12-14 hours, then get up in the morning and the house smells wonderful! (Plus, I get to eat some of the profits by having fresh roasted pork for breakfast!)

Most of one day every week or every other week is a shopping trip.  With the restaurant supply house and other stores where we buy most of our food, its over a hundred mile round trip, and thus, a full day.

But we are not just about food here.  We also sell a lot of gourmet popping corn grown locally by my nephew.  But it comes in big bags from the farm, and we have to package it all.  Since I have established a reputation for having a lot of cool packages for the popcorn, like wine and liquor and beer and pop bottles, as well as plastic bottles and Ziploc bags, and more than a dozen varieties of popcorn, that's a lot of packing going on.

Evening and morning hours whether the shop is open or not are filled with little things that keep our business going or keep the IRS off our back- printing, bookkeeping, ordering supplies online with a not-very-good internet service, cleaning the store and equipment, making more refrigerator magnets (I've got more than 400 different designs) printing T-shirts, etc. etc.

Brenda keeps herself very busy too, what with making her bath and body and home fragrance products, preparing and cleaning the Banes Suite for the next guests to rent it, doing laundry and cleaning the house, and a trillion other things that need doing.

Being open five days a week, it takes one of us in the kitchen preparing the food and keeping the kitchen cleaned up while the other of us is out front jabberjawing with our guests and making the best cappuccino this side of the Atlantic.  I know she gets a little frustrated when I run out of the store because of a fire department emergency (I'm a volunteer fireman.)

And that all makes for a full life!  Even if you didn't take into account my playing guitar with our local bluegrass band, and serving on the local Sewer Board.

So, I'll try to write more about Metamora in the future.  It is a fascinating and beautiful village in  a gorgeous valley.  Just an hour ago, we were driving home from a Batesville grocery run and I was marveling at God's artistry in the beautiful colors of the fall foliage- the trees seemed aglow with every shade of orange yellow and red. Breathtaking!