catching up, part 1

The holidays proved to be a little insane, but I managed to get through my baking and pastry practical with near flying colors - a 97 on my written and 99 on my egg dough and puff pastry making. I'm not going to lie, I'd like to have 100 on both, but I committed stupid mistakes - basically going against my initial instinct. But at least I knew what went wrong... some people might not even have the slightest clue... I just didn't follow my instinct.

I was able to finish all the gifts I had planned and gotten supplies for. I ended up making ribbon belts, snow globes and scrapbooks - and IOUs! I also made a little wedding cake for my cousin and her new groom, complete with cute little meringue snow-groom and snow-bride. Grandma and my niece got scrapbooks - a family wedding book and a forget me not family scrapbook, respectively.




















We kept it simple on the desserts this year but I was deeply sorry that I couldn't find a few extra minutes in each day to make a batch or two of Christmas cookies. One year when I was in Boston I convinced a bunch of my friends to do a cookie exchange with me. It was so much fun! And we each had a wonderful assortment of cookies at the end of the night. I'll have to bring that back... I'll also have to convince everyone to come to the NYC area to do it again... yeah, I'll work on that!

It was a lovely family Christmas this year. My Mom, her husband, my brother, his wife and daughter all came from California. My Uncle, Aunt and two of their daughters, plus our newest member, my cousin's husband all came from Rhode Island. Add to that my uncle's parents-in-law and a few of my Grandma's friends and Christmas dinner proved to be a fun filled delicious event with lots of chitterchatter, giggles and smiles. Complete with hours of entertainment provided by my little niece who is a walking, talking, playing bundle of joy at 13 months. Just two days ago, the last of the family left and I got to sleep in. It felt good, but it was sad to see everyone go. My final assessment is that the holidays always go too fast!

what day is it?

I'm beat. Tired. Sleepy. And how many days til Christmas? This year I convinced some of my family that we should make gifts for each other. What in the heck was I thinking? The only thing I have the time to make is a "to-go" box of the left overs from things we made in class that no one else took home. Ohhhh man, it is going to be a soggy, mushy, mixed up Christmas for some of my family! Actually... that just led me to a brilliant idea for gifts... but I'm not telling... because besides Tisra & Candie I think the only people that read this thing are my family...

I have 2 papers, one presentation and one final, all in the next 9 days of school. Oh, and a dinner tomorrow with my fellow Baking & Pastry kitchen-mates and a holiday soiree/potluck with the Culinary Management crew the following Thursday.

One of my papers is on cookies and the other is on milk. An appropriate combination by many standards. The paper that I should be writing (right now, instead of typing this) was an 8 batch experiment/study on peanut butter cookies. I chose a recipe from my Baking & Pastry text/cookbook, cut it in half and then did 7 versions of that, plus a recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The experiment was really fun. And some real results came out of it. But I swear if I never see another peanut butter cookie again for the rest of my life it might be okay. The milk paper is a study in the specifications of milk. I wrote specs at my last job for code that I designed to run programs. I didn't realize that milk could have a spec sheet until we started talking about ordering procedures and food production in culinary management.

Anyway, here is a quick photo of the fruits of my labor from this past weekend - baking 8 batches of peanut butter cookies!

my first burn

Here's a picture of my first burn. It is hard to see... It's the white colored "C" shape on the tip of my ring finger (finger that's in the middle of the pic)...

I accomplished this while pan-frying polenta diamonds at the James Beard House when I volunteered to help the Executive Chef of Fiamma Osteria, Christian Fantoni, and his crew put out a really amazing dinner. The olive oil just jumped right out of the pan when I put in a polenta. It was painful, but I didn't even stop to put it under cold water. As it turns out, I think my finger tips are getting a little callused or oil burns aren't as bad as oven burns/hot metal burns. There was a bit of tenderness, but it seemed to go away in about 2 days. But I'm still proud of my first eventful burn! You're still waiting for my first real cut too! That could be gruesome!