day 15: 28 is good

I know it's been nearly a week, and I've put off this post long enough, but I've got a not-so-secret blog secret that I have avoided sharing here because it's been both a wonderfully time-consuming change and also a perspective altering one. It's needed time to settle.

This past summer, I became the Executive Pastry Chef at 28 Springs, a new restaurant just blocks from our home in downtown Siloam Springs.

I never thought I'd become a pastry chef. I have no formal training. But it turns out, all of my cookbook-reading, home bread-making, and ingredient-obsessive baking was foundation enough. And my boss thinks it's great that I'm not afraid to disagree with him. Developing and improving desserts and breads is one of my favorite things, the perfect blend of creativity and OCD details. Oh, and my Pastry Sous Chef is my friend and neighbor, Trish Lynn. It's wonderful.

My work schedule flexes around Gabe's school schedule, which means one of us (and sometimes Grammie) is always home with the boys, but I still manage to work 50+ hours a week. It's a lot of late nights, but there's not a moment that I don't love it.

These pretzels for bread service were worth all of the testing and development that it took to get them just right. 

They're ridiculously good. 

Being at 28 has been incredibly empowering for me. I didn't realize just how badly I needed it until I got swept into the kitchen world. 

And being 28 -my birthday was the 15th- also feels really good. For most of my adult life, I've felt like I was trying, and often-pretending, at being a grown-up: our early start at marriage, a house, and kids something to prove. But 28 feels so unashamedly-adult. There's no denying it or pretending: I'm a grown-up, and I like it.