Last Tuesday started like any normal day… slowly. Savoring my first cup o' joe, I watched the hilarious and witty cats at Q13 repeat the weather and traffic ad nauseum and distractedly snacked on a flaky and delicious blueberry hand pie - breakfast of champions, yo! That was when the phone rang. After weeks of waiting, the State was finally on the other end of the line!
Of course the State of Washington was not actually reaching out to touch me, but a representative from the Department of Agriculture was. Said representative who I will now refer to not as “
my” representative but "
Pie" representative was calling to schedule Yippie-Pie-Yay’s kitchen inspection. "Pie
" representative informed me that the inspection would be the next day. Yikes and Eeek!
Now, as you might know, we have day jobs. Admittedly my day job hours are afternoon through evening, but still... lots to do and not a lot of time to do it!
Alright, alright! Full disclosure… it was 9:45 a.m., barely morning according to early risers the world over, a group to which I (proudly) do not belong. While the YPY kitchen is always sparkling and in TTPS (Tip Top Pie Shape!), there was a short list of extras that I had planned on completing prior to the inspection which included scheduling the carpet cleaner and figuring out a better storage solution to the huge, heavy, unwieldy case of unassembled bakery boxes currently parked in the middle of my living room floor. Also, there was no time to whip up a batch of hand pies that may or may not be construed as bribes for "Pie" inspector.
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| Molly's attempt to hide in order to avoid housework |
My brain clicked into domestic-superhero speed. As I said before, the YPY kitchen is always in TTPS
but would it pass a white glove test? Will there even be a white glove test? Again, yikes and eeek! I figured better safe than sorry. I spent the next few hours furiously vacuuming, scrubbing, wiping, cleaning, and reorganizing.
Cottage Food ingredients and equipment have to be stored separately, which means dedicating two entire cabinets and one drawer of my teeny tiny kitchen to Yippie-Pie-Yay stuff. Reorganizing took most of the morning. If you're like me, you can never have enough kitchen gadgets and toys, so a pile of pots and pans found itself migrating to my closet, along with a waist-high stack of cookbooks.
Believe me; I am thrilled to be making pies in a legal and honest way, truly! But frankly, my kitchen is small - really small. This means those pots and pans and cookbooks will likely be living in my closet for a while. This portends a problem for my future as a mid-morning riser (unorthodox for a baker, I know) because my husband already knocks over at least one thing in the closet on a daily basis. Now I have substantially increased the obstacles he must face at his ungodly wake-up time of 6 am, and the crash of metal on metal is no way to wake up - or to secure a hit pop song - but that’s beside the point.
Let’s move on to another issue. I have now and always had a rather unhealthy fear of authority. This probably results from a childhood riddled with my half-Sicilian mother's fiery and unpredictable outbursts. Regardless, after years of therapy and martini-spiked family "discussions," people no longer make me nervous, unless they have a badge or a uniform or save us all, both. Then all bets are off. The morning of the inspection, in preparation for my clash with authority, I limited myself to two cups of coffee. No need to be excessively jittery in front of "
pie" inspector (the man with the badge and the stamp and whatever else official Department of Ag swag he carried with him.) Still… my coffee deprived, martini-free imagination pictured "pie" inspector passing or failing people with sanctioned capriciousness.
Fortunately, my imagination didn’t get to run wild for long. Exactly on time,
"Pie
" inspector arrived with a colleague being trained on Cottage Foods inspections. Both "pie
" inspector and colleague were incredibly nice, incredibly knowledgeable, and incredibly fast. My hours and hours of prep work paid off! Those guys were in and out the door in about 10 minutes, I kid you not. A short two hours later, (drum-roll please!), Yippie-Pie-Yay received its license via email! The previous 24 hours had given me insane heartburn along with other digestive maladies (worry not, I'll spare you the gory details), but it was worth it. I can't believe that after months of waiting for the DofA to approve our application, the final step happened so quickly.
What does this mean for Yippie-Pie-Yay and for you? We can happily - and legally – share our pies with the world. Well, at least the part of the world that resides in the metropolitan Seattle area. We are super thrilled to have Washington State's 23rd Cottage Food License, and we are preparing now for an official launch! Pie will take over the world if it kills us!
Linda: The decision to deliver our scrumptious pies was a
big part of our concept from the start. Great idea, right? You, the customer,
stay nice and dry, hair perfectly coiffed, munching on a tasty treat at your
home or office! But, dry customers means wet Linda and Courtney.
Despite the nonstop downpour, we had A
LOT of fun. The lucky people at the companies that made our short list received sample
boxes packed with buttermilk, apple, and peach-bourbon pies and were both surprised
(because of the rain) and thrilled (because of the pies) to see us. 
