I'm trying to keep my business, my triplets, and my waistline under control. I excel at one of those, fail at another one of those, and one is a work in progress. Which is which is day dependant.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

A Crisis Of Tiny Proportions


My most favourite cake toys these days are not toys at all, but rather cake bling. I've gotten right into all the edible glitters, shimmer dusts, petal dusts and all things shiny and pretty and ooohhhh- would-you-LOOK-at-the-sparkle! Central to this love of all things shiny and cake is cachous (pronounced 'cashews'.) I adore these freakin' things, and usually have several pots of several colours and sizes. They are an easy, relatively inexpensive way to "zhuj" up a cake or cupcakes.

For weddings I tend to use a heck of a lot of silver ones, so I keep a pretty hearty stock. Several weeks ago I noticed I was running low so I ordered a bunch. I got back a "not in stock" slip from the supplier. I waited a week, ordered again, and again got a "not in stock" list. Hmmm. I ordered them from a second supplier, and then a third. ALL of them had no silver cachous for me. After copious complaining, one of my suppliers said that apparently the importer (of whom there is only ONE in Australia...) "forgot" to put silver cachous on his last shipment. As a result, there is an AUSTRALIA WIDE cachou shortage while we all wait for this moron to get his next shipment. There are no cachous to be had. NONE.

I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. I made half a dozen phone calls to suppliers as I watched my cachou stash grow ever smaller. I spent a lot of time yelling (nicely) at NN to, "Stop being so wasteful with the cake bling!" as she threw them onto cupcakes with gay abandon.

Desperation has start to set in, as I've got 2 weddings and about 10 other clients this weekend alone. I NEED my shiny balls, people. NEED. NN suggested I go to my local supermarket, since they often have small (hideously overpriced) cachous in the baking aisle. I tried two supermarkets and only managed to get ONE little lonely tube. FOR SEVEN DOLLARS. To put this into perspective, I usually pay about $3 for a big pot of them (like the one in the middle of the photo above.)

Lucky for me NN lives and works in a neighbourhood where these things are under appreciated, and her supermarket had plenty. AT SEVEN DOLLARS, but plenty.

I nearly had a heart attack today, over the country-wide shortage of silver balls. Who the hell knew that something so small could bring a grown woman to tears? You know your obsession is bad when you're begging your "supplier" to give you the number of his "dealer" so you can go and break his kneecaps for forgetting to put the order in.

4 comments:

cupcaketastic said...

I have some, but I am in South Morang. If you a desperate!, but not big pots, just bags of the mini and middle side.

Anonymous said...

Hilarious Michelle,

Why do so many strange thing/encounters happen to you? You tell a great story (or spin a great yarn - to go all Baz Lurman's "Australia" on you)!

I will get to your meme at some stage, but I am soaking up the quilt love at the moment, and trying to look all visually exciting with every post. I am working my creative fingers to the bone, trying to create blog fodder in other words, no time to write smart ;-)

Anonymous said...

Did you know those (called silver dagrees here in the States) are outlawed in California?

emzeegee & the hungry three said...

Seriously? Illegal? What the heck makes them illegal? If I was licing in California I'd totally have to start my own dragee drug ring!!

Thanks for the South Morang offer (hey, I was really desperate!) - crisis averted but let's hope like heck the shipment arrives this week (as it's meant to.)

Claire: A HUGE congrats about getting your quilt published, you clever girl! The meme can definitely wait. As for why these things happen to me...well...*eye roll* Just lucky I guess!

M