Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Good reason to not have facebook!!

My fave halloween cartoon - theoatmeal.com. Click picture to see whole thing

Its been how long??

Holy smokes! I cant believe its been so long since I have posted on here! I'm a terrible blogger.
Anyway, I am in my last semester of schooling and work watching my nieces and for my brothers law office. I'm going to start looking for a job in a bakery in the next month or so. Im super nervous and excited because my life has been consumed by school and 2 or 3 jobs at a time for the last year and a half. Its going to feel odd to have 1 job again and hopefully not be horribly poor anymore!
The 20th of this month was the 2 year anniversary of dad passing away. Lily and I went to his grave and saw that it was half grown over with weeds! We cleaned it up and left him flowers. It still feels weird that hes gone. One day maybe it will sink in.
I will try to be better about my blogs in the future!!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Hard Work!

School has been in for a little over a month now and I am definitely feeling it. I have a hundred times more studying to do this semester than I did last semester. Chef Satan is horrible, awful, and unbelievably mean. He has actually pushed me out of the way twice. He has no manners at all. If you don't get out of his way he will actually and purposefully run into you. He is ridiculous and I cant stand him. Now, he is a genius as far as it goes in the baking world but that doesn't mean he should get free reign of the world just because he is a douche! The good part of the class is that I am learning to make amazing breads. I brought some home and amber thought that they were professionally done. I can't wait to start trying to recipes out at home and sharing them. Its amazing what a few extra ingredients and techniques will do to a product.
My other chef, we will refer to him as Chef French, is amazing. He is the exact opposite of chef satan. He is so patient and nice and really appreciates people who work hard and try to get everything that he wants done. I hope that he realizes that I work my butt off in that class. I would love to be able to work for him one day. That would seriously be an honor. We will have to see what the future holds. I still don't know if he is teaching more classes next semester but I hope so!! In this class I am learning how to make more fancy fillings, glazes, pies, etc. Its not a ton of stuff that I would use at home but I there are definitely some amazing recipes that I want to make for everyone. I guess thats the benefit of me being in culinary school, all those around me really benefit!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

It Begins Again!

School has officially started and I am already officially ready to be done. Being as how I have another 4 months to go, I need to quickly get over this.
I am taking 5 classes this semester in hopes that I will be done by next summer!!! WOOT WOOT!
I already have mounds of homework and quizzes due this week. I wish that teachers would wait a couple of weeks to get really hardcore but, unfortunately, what I want means nothing.
My cooking classes this semester are going to be HARD! I am taking Principles of Baking with the strictest man in the world. This class is so important for me because this is exactly what I want to do in my future, but the teacher is something else. He has told us numerous times in the 2 classes I have had with him so far that he is not our friend and he wants to know nothing about us. He wants us to come to his class and do our work and shut up. If he deems that you answer something not in the exact way he would like he tells you quite politely to think before you speak and to read the book. He has had 60 years to learn this stuff, I have had a week. Give me a break. He LOVES to go off on tangents. For example, he was talking about milk and if you end up having to throw away a half of the gallon of milk, only buy a half gallon. Then he started talking about how families break up and children dont listen to adults. Now, I, personally, and not really sure what one has to do with the other but clearly they make sense to him. He also loves to remind us that if a recipe goes wrong or if we can't find jobs, etc then something is wrong with us and we need to change ourselves. He is crazy. Certifiably. And, even as I constantly broke out into laughter over this crazy, much older mans serious rantings, I couldnt help thinking how sexy and assertive he is. Oh dear. Its going to be a long semester!
My next cooking class is Quantity Baking. It just teaches us how to make huge amounts of items and have them come out nicely each time. With a family as large as mine this will certainly help out! This is the first class that this teacher has ever taught but he is incredibly nice and patient and I know that while it will be very challenging this class will be rewarding.
One day, far, far, far away from now. After years of peeling oranges and emptying flour into bins, to get the experience I need, I will be able to claim a little hole in the wall as my own. Here's to hope and dreams!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Hard to go back

Yesterday was the first day back to school after spring break and it was not easy to go. I found a grade for my sugar rose and the teacher only gave me an 80% for it and said that I need to work on my roses. Had she not shown us how to do it 4 hours before I made it, I wouldnt have cared so much. She is throwing so much down our throats that I am ready to vomit. She doesnt have much care for the fact that we are just learning this stuff and that we need more time to practice. I cant wait for this semester to be over. Chocolate class was a mess. I got so freaking dirty that it looked like someone literally threw chocolate all over the side of me. And, I have absolutely no idea how I got so messy. I just went to the bathroom and saw it in the mirror. And my feet and back were killing me. I was still super sensitive from standing for 3 straight days getting ready for angs wedding. I am super glad thats over. Sugar was better. I managed to burn my pinky pretty bad but I'll certainly live. Erin/Heather came today and made sure everyone knew that she has permanent nerve damage in her hand and that she cant feel anything and that it will take 2 years for her to be fully healed. There was something a little bit off cuz she kept saying that she was so seriously hurt so I kept watching her and she could definitely feel in that hand cuz she burned herself again. Thats what liars get. Even though she was hurt really badly, she doesnt need to over dramatize. Try having a 13 pound tumor scraped off your ovary and taken out through a 12 inch slice in your gut, then come talk to me about what hurts and for how long.
Here are the completed projects for this week. The swan on the far right has crazy eyes cuz I messed him up. I cant stop laughing about how crazy he looks. Anyway, Enjoy!






Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Todays Adventure

Class this week was rough, to put it mildly. My chocolate class was a mess. My teacher thoroughly believes in the trial by fire method and I seem to be doing OK in my sugar class but not so much in my chocolate class. I worked for the entire 5 hours on my chocolate structure only to have it crumble at the very last minute. My teacher was totally unfazed by it because it happens to everyone, even professionals, but I was DEVASTATED. We cleaned the kitchen and then left and I tried not to cry the entire way home. It was definitely a day that made me question my chosen career.
Then tonight I was reassured that I am doing the right thing. It was my sugar class. We had 4 hours to make at least 1 rose and some kind of sculpture. It certainly wasn't easy but I was so happy that I was able to get it done. Luckily, we are no longer working as teams in that class because the girl I am teamed up with really struggles and I end up doing all of the work. Me no likey.
There are extremely weird people in my class and I have to tell you about two of them specifically. One of them we will just call T. I have no idea why she decided to take the sugar class because she never does anything in it. Literally. She just boils and burns her sugar the whole class and never makes a project. We don't use normal sugar, it is a special kind called Isomalt, which is extremely expensive, and I am not exaggerating when I say that she wastes at least $45-$50 each class. And, she is heinously oblivious to things. My point coming soon. Then we have Erin. Erin is a 19 year old girl who swims around the teachers colon all day long and feels that she knows everything about everything. I cannot stand this girl. I have on many occasions asked her to not speak to me unless she can remember that she is not my mother. The thing with Erin is that for some reason I ALWAYS call her and refer to her as Heather. I have absolutely no idea. I will even call across the classroom to get her and yell Heather and get frustrated that she doesn't answer until my stupid self realizes that its not her name! Anyway, the point of my story. Erin and T were working at the same table and T burned her sugar and started to pour it into a mold directly on a stainless steel table. If she left it there the sugar that overlapped would have to be scraped for hours to get it off the table and the mold would take forever to cool down. So, Erin-Heather, thinking that she would help this hot mess of a girl, grabbed the mold and started to pull it on to a silpat(silicone mat). T, apparently thinking that Erin-Heather has hands of steel kept pouring the molten lava sugar onto the mold and Erin-Heathers hands giving her 2ND degree burns!!! T, didn't even know what she had done wrong at first. That's how clueless she is. So, I'm watching all of this happen in a 3 second time frame and start to holler for the teacher that Heather has been hurt badly. The teacher had no idea who I was talking about and then I looked like an ass and had to say, again, that I don't know why I call her Heather. Erin ran to a container of ice water and had tears pouring down her face. We ended up calling an ambulance and she had to leave. I cant stand the chick but I was sad that she got hurt so badly. It goes to show how important paying attention and working cleanly is. Anyway, here is the picture of my sculpture. I definitely need more practice but for the first time, its not so bad.