*Dances*

Today was the last A La Carte day!!! All I have left is a make up lab for Butchery, and then written finals and I am out of kitchen block!!

Today I was on soup. That is the best station ever. Make soup. Check. Ladle soup. Check. Garnish soup. Check. It's over so fast because it goes out as soon as the ticket comes in, so as soon as every ticket came in I was done, basically. :D Wooooo! Of course I went around and helped the other stations, and cleaned, but that is way less demanding than sitting at your own station.

Okay, I will talk about yesterday in Desserts now.

It was the practical final, of course, and we had to make a dessert of our own choosing, and then make a dessert using whatever ingredients she wrote down at the beginning of class. She wrote Chocolate, Raspberry, and Almond, but I'll get to that later.

The dessert I chose was a Pecan & Apricot Roulade. :) I chose it because I've been wanting to do a roulade this whole time, plus I knew it was quick to make (it only took me an hour including baking.)

The hardest part, of course was rolling it up. And really, it wasn't that hard, I was just freaking out because a little bit of the cake was sticking to the parchment paper as I was rolling it. But when it was rolled up I realized I could just smother it with powdered sugar and it'd be fine, so that's what I did. xD

Purty, huh? The sauce is apricot. :) I just cooked the jam I used for filling with added water and strained it. It's such a beautiful orange color!! :D <3

Okay, so like I said, we had to make SOMETHING that involved Chocolate, Raspberry, and Almond. I'm not going to lie, I wanted to make something I knew wouldn't take a ton of time or be seriously difficult. So I made a tart with Almond short dough, Chocolate ganache, and Raspberry sauce. :)

Ta-da!

All in all, I got a 96 for the day! Very happy with my 96. :D Some people were still there after 4:30... I felt bad for them. She deducted a point for every minute you were still cooking after class was supposed to be over. :O So I feel smart that I chose these things, because I was done with time to spare, and by the time I got done cleaning and out the door it was 4:29. xD

Well, that's it for the CCI kitchen. I still need to take plenty of lecture classes to get my degree. I may post, I may not. My favorite part has been posting pictures, so I suppose I could start experimenting at home and post those, while talking about boring lecture classes! Who knows?

TTFN!

Time to stop ignoring the blog!

Only a few more weeks left, really only 1 because after next week it's just written finals! :O Scary!

Looking back, this term really did fly by. Of course there were times when it felt like it would last forever, but I'd say that the first few weeks and the last couple weeks actually have been fast. :)

Anyway! This is... from last-last Wednesday. Frozen Lemon Mousse with Mint Whipped Cream (the mint was our little addition and it was awesome. ^_^) So refreshing!

On Thursday of that week, I actually didn't do a whole lot. I was supposed to be repeating chicken for the 2nd time, but then someone on Salmon station was absent, so I was supposed to help that station instead. Well, she basically wanted to just take charge because she said no one has been letting her do much on Thursdays. Pretty silly, really, to whine about how no one lets you do anything, and then not let ME do a single thing, but oh well. xD So I just helped out on Salad station and then helped Salmon with plating. hehe Super easy day. :)

------------------------------------------------------

OKAY, now LAST Wednesday, we did a "Specialty Pastry." The Gateau St Honore (gatoe saint on-ray :P) Which wasn't actually as horrible as it looks. It was pretty fun, really! I guess last term the students were pretty much crying over it, or losing it in general. lol!

I'll just post a pic and explain it after. :)

So! The base is simple, just a pate brisee, which is basically a mealy pie dough. Then, you make Pate a Choux dough, the annoying pastry that remembers exactly the shape it was in and puffs up accordingly, so if there are any ridges at all when you pipe it out, there will be awkward ridges in your final product once baked. First, you do a ring around the crust to give it some height.. After you have baked that, you do the vanilla and chocolate creme diplomat, and pipe it in alternating layers in a ribbon. After thaaattttt, you bake as many pate a choux bulbs as you can get, pick out the best ones, cut a hole in the bottom, fill THOSE with cream, alternating between chocolate and vanilla. Then, you make caramel, dip the tops in, lay them on parchment so there is a flat "glass-like" look about them. Then! You take more caramel, and glue each bulb on one at a time. o.o For how fancy this thing is, I'd say most of us did a great job. xD

On service, the next day, I was on desserts. So, I had to cut in between each bulb to get slices, which took some very careful hands. Keep in mind that almost everyone had different sizes of bulbs, and some were squished together harder than others. Some bulbs would fall off entirely!

I got to decide the plating design, which is of course my favorite part. I forgot my camera that day so I will make a crappy MS Paint version of what it looked like! :D

Just imagine that, only less silly and more realistic. xD It was very cute, I assure you. The brown lines are chocolate sauce, make from leftover diplomat creme, and the dots are an orange-caramel sauce that somebody made. At the end of the day, I plated 63 of those, so I got pretty efficient at making that design. :)

This week is Thanksgiving, so have a happy one!

Just not much to write about this past week in school. Life has been very hectic, so that has taken most of my focus away. Anyway, there was nothing to take pictures of unless I wanted to whip my camera out during service. (which, by the way, I don't.)

On Wednesday, we made ice cream. Vanilla and Caramel. Making ice cream is very easy if you have the machine for it, but it takes quite a while and is somewhat boring. xD Tasted very good though, and it's cool to be able to adjust the ice cream flavor to exactly your own liking. ^_^ We did a tasting in class of four different brands of vanilla, and you can definitely feel the waxy texture in ice creams that use way too many preservatives. I can't remember which, but there was one brand that had a horrible chemical taste to it after eating the other ice creams. That comes from way too much cheap artificial vanilla, and I don't think the skim milk helped it any. =/ Also, that kind of vanilla will turn it yellow. :D

Yesterday was service day, and I was on chicken... again... except Salmon only had one person due to an absence or two, so I did prep for chicken and then went to Salmon station. So, in a way it was my second time on chicken and my third time on salmon, all in one day. -.-''' The person on Salmon really wanted to take charge because I guess she has been partnered with some huge do-it-alls before. Fine with me. :P I floated between helping her and Salad station plate and carry over their dishes to the table. So, not too stressful. I'm irritated that I keep getting put on stations that I've done before. Next service I am scheduled to do the steak station AGAIN, so I emailed saying that I'd REALLY like some NON-ENTREE EXPERIENCE GRRRBLARGGGHHH!!! I want to do a starter course, or maybe desserts for a change. Guess he really does not keep track of who has been where because I've heard some complaints from others about repeating as well. *sigh* If we had just started this term with a good, simple rotation system, this wouldn't have been an issue. Well, we don't have class on Thursday next week so I am thankful for the break. :)

"Coulda said something nice about my profiteroles!"

^From a Flight of the Conchords song. :D

Because we made profiteroles! Whee!

They aren't too beautiful, because we only got to fill one of the ones we were plating, and couldn't use whipped cream, so... very minimal. Still, cute!

Pat a choux is very hard to pipe correctly... you have to hold perfectly still with just the right amount of pressure, stop at just the right time, don't lift it AT ALL, go in a circular motion, but not more than ONE CIRCLE, and then swipe it off to the side and pray the whole thing doesn't fall off. And then you usually still end up with a "tail" that you have to smoosh down! O_O Silly profiteroles... Anyway, these had a pumpkin filling, and the swish is creme brulee. And I definitely would have done something with whipped cream if I had it. :P That was yesterday, Wednesday.

Today was service day and I was on Salmon. Freaked out for a minute because we got a little bit behind, but mostly because I burnt my finger on the pan... twice... in the same spot.. lol Hand towels are your friend... It's actually not too bad, just stung and was really frustrating. Kept having to go re-numb it when it got slow. :D Overall, a very smooth day though. Caught up really really fast, and from then on nothing went wrong. The rest of the class were going very smooth, too, and we really busted out everything when it was time to clean, and got out of there are 2. :)

Almost time for Halloween! I am having a nerdy Halloween party with friends on Saturday. ^_^ Can't wait!

Dining Room Management

Our final project for my Dining Room Management class is Food Photography. We watched a video about a food stylist today and it made me think about how awesome it would be to plate and photograph food for a living. ^_^ I think that would make me happier than being in the kitchen every night, honestly... Anyway, I'll look into it while I'm finishing up my AAS degree. I'm sure it's not the most readily available job on the market, so it'll just be a wish for now. :) I'd prooooobably have to take some photography classes too (duh) so ... yeah, it's fun to think about anyway!

So I haven't decided what I will create for the plating yet... in fact, I'm still debating between dessert or hot foods! Desserts usually look the prettiest to me, although shrimp can be pretty cool looking on a plate, too. And then, there's all the desserts to choose from if I *do* go with that, and I know I don't want to be in the kitchen forever, so I have to decide on what length of time do I want to spend baking the darn thing before I can take its picture!!! *huff* Chocolate and raspberries look reallllyyy pretty together, so I'm considering something with those in it... and sauces, of course. Boo-ti-full sauces. ^_^

Blarrgghhh

I've been lazy with posting because I hurt my ankle really bad and have just been really tired because of it. It was getting better but then I had to go to school and it just stopped getting better. :C I have a few pictures from baking last week, so I guess I'll post those now.

Really, we just made some kind of boring pear stuff. The other one looks more boring so I'm not going to post it. I didn't have any pictures from this week because during baking I got really dizzy from medication and had to go home early. We were making bread pudding. I really wish I had just left after lecture because the hour or so that I was in lab ended up counting for nothing at all. ;-;

Today was really painful but went better than I expected. I was on the grill station making steak, the most popular dish. I think we sold about 20 and there were only 64 or so people who showed up. Which is a lot of steaks considering it's only one of 5 entree choices. :S Anyway, I only messed up one order and it was the second-to-last. Basically it just got well-done when it needed to be medium, so I just made another steak. Took a few extra minutes and all but I was very happy that I only made on mistake and it was so minor. :)

Oh, I slowly burnt my fingers by holding the steak to slice it. haha Nothing too bad, of course. After a while I got a glove and that helped a little bit.

I have a three day weekend now so I am REALLY hoping that my ankle will heal and I can stop being so irritable and tired. O_O

Happy October!

Today I did a makeup lab for Meats from 12-3. Spent about half of it slicing bacon on the big slicer, and the other half packaging that bacon and some sausage.

It is now 6:28,

I've washed my hands plenty of times...

but the smoky bacon scent is still lingering. O_O

WEEKEND, WOO!

Line Cooking

Did some practice for the actual service days today by letting 1st term students order off our menu. I was at the chicken station, which takes the longest to cook. So now we have some idea of when to fire the chicken when it's ordered at least. Not that I know when I'll be there again or anything. :P Wonder what my next station will be.. hopefully desserts. I love plating those things and I'm guessing it's the coldest station in the kitchen. ^_^ It is not pretty when it starts heating up in there, and of course the damn neck-kerchief is the first thing to heat up. D:
Service went... well enough, I guess? There was a lot of confusion on the servers end because it was there first time, and now and then we had trouble getting all of the entrees on one ticket done at the same time, but hopefully it'll smooth out.

Okay, picture time. xD



First picture are our three starter dishes. From right to left: Squash Soup, Pear Salad, and a fried Oyster appetizer. That's the order they get served in..
The second picture are the starters next to all of our entrees; A Vegan Garbanzo Pattie dish, Chicken with glazed carrots, mushrooms (chantrelle and button,) and potatoes, Steak with greens, blue cheese, corn, potatoes, and demi-glace, Salmon with mustard greens on top of a squash puree, and a Shrimp pasta dish. :)

Pies!

Today in Desserts, we made an apple pie and a pumpkin pie. :)
As exhausting as the Wednesday schedule is, it still feels worth it when you have a beautiful end product! Good thing I feel that way, too, or I'd never in a million years make it as a cook! haha

So, Pumpkin pies are actually annoying to make within a 3 1/2 hour time frame, because they take nearly an hour to bake, and a lifetime to cool. Chef Michelle nearly gagged when some groups gave her a slice that was not completely cooled. :S So warm pie was not an option. I stuck mine in the freezer after too long trying to cool it in the walk in and it did the trick. :) The apple pie was a pain in the butt. My teammate mostly worked on that, and it turned out pretty shoddy but I'm not going to pretend I could have done it any better because I've never made an apple pie before. :P
We both did things here and there for each other, as well, of course.

Okay, most satisfying part of the day was the very end! Every week, Chef will choose the best plating job that must be copied and used for actual service, and she chose my plating job on the pumpkin pie! :D Woot! She also chose my teammates plating for apple pie so I guess we were just rocking the plating this week. xD Okay, done boasting. Look at some adorable pies now!
I didn't get any of the apple, mainly because I wasn't the one plating it so it slipped my mind.

Oh, the middle is a little bit droopy because I've never cooked a pumpkin pie before, so it had just a few more minutes to go when I took it out. It tasted delicious anyhow.

Top: Before adding anything. Center: Overhead view. Bottom: View from "maple leaf" side.

If it's hard to see, click it for the original large size image. Basically it's surrounded by rosettes of hand-whipped cream, sprinkled very lightly with cinnamon (which shows up better off camera, but you can see it a bit in the pictures.) :)

A La Carte

Actually ended up doing a LOT yesterday, on A La Carte day. So much, in fact, that none of us got eat until 1:30. Besides being exhausting, it was really fun. We learned about all the stations, and practiced making our stations' dish. Started with prep, which in normal days we will always have to have done by 11:15. I was on the fish station with my classmate, D. All of the dishes were very gorgeous when plated, so it's a shame that I didn't have my camera on me! Most importantly, all of the things I tasted were DELICIOUS. :) I think that this is going to be a very fun class, and it'll be great to get some more realistic line cook experience.

Today was simply Food Service Nutrition class day. Looks like it's going to be an easy but fun class, at only 2 credits, so I'm happy for that. I volunteered for prep after class. We prepped food for a womans 95th birthday - she has donated quite a large amount of money to CCI, so on Sunday the culinary department is cooking her and a big group of her friends a nice dinner. Prep was fun for the most part, but I was pretty tired from the week and having some woman-troubles (cough*pms*cough) so it could have gone better for me. Fun enough though, just got a lot of things ready so they'll be easy for the cooks on Sunday. :)

Wont have anything until Wednesday. I decided that I cannot handle Tuesdays pig-corpse breakdown so I talked to Chef Thor and he'll let me go to lecture that day and make up for the lab another day.

Have to remember my camera for Wednesday and from now on to keep a record of all the beautiful things we are creating!

Desserts

Something I've realized today...
If you try to have anything resembling a life after a class that goes from 10:15a-4:30p, you will get no work done. :|
Not that I'm behind or anything. Really, I just would have hoped to get more... ahead. :P

Today... there was a REALLY long lecture. Seriously. Really long. Then we made lemon meringue tarts, and that was fun. There is a new girl in my class, because she had a baby two years ago during her third term in culinary, and I got to work with her. She's pretty cool, so it was all good. Messed up a few things, but hey... first week. :D Normally I prepare at least the night before by typing recipes in the order I want them done, printing those out, and making sure everything is just right and blah blah blah, but I wasn't able to do that this time around. Next week should go smoother.

Excited for this class because there is an emphasis on plating things, which I love! I'm pretty decent at it so far, and I'm happy to get more practice and become better at it. I think if I could get a job just plating desserts, I would. :D

Wont have anything to say tomorrow (most likely) because tomorrow is A La Carte service and there's no one to serve for the first week at least. Just going to have a lecture, and hopefully that'll only take a few hours and I'll have mucho time to do homework and read ahead some. :)

Charcuterie and Butchering

Survived my first day of meat class without puking! :D

What we did today...
Cut a chicken into eight pieces, did it the french style, just for practice. Then we de-boned them and made chicken apple sausage with it. The raw chicken smell kept churning my stomach every time it wafted up. >.<

We also cubed a giant slab of pork butt (pig shoulder cut) which was easier than chicken because t doesn't smell as strong or get all over the place as much. Still, pigs are much cuter and I like them better so it still wasn't any fun!

The day was pretty fun even though it was gross, too. Nice to have another class with Chef Thor. I don't remember what the reason is, but he did his really hilarious impression of the Little Caesars dancing sign lady in class today. xD It was pretty spot on, actually, so it was reaaallly funny! :P

Still waiting for my book for this class to arrive, probably going to get here next week, and then I'll have some reading to catch up on. :o

Almost

Almost time to get back in the swing of all this.

Schedule is a bit stranger this time, and also a bit easier thank goodness. :)

• Mon - Dining Room & Banquet Management-- 10:15A - 12:35P
• Tue - Charcuterie and Butchering------------------- 8:00A - 2:30P
• Wed - Custards, Creams & Desserts----------------- 10:15A - 4:30P
• Thu - A La Carte Cooking-------------------------------- 8:00A - 2:00P
• Fri - Food Service Nutrition----------------------------- 8:00A - 9:45P

The colors are because of the colors of the folders I use in those classes. Yep, super dorky. :D

I like that the week starts and ends on easy/short classes. :D Going to be especially nice on the first week, since I'm barely going to be used to waking up early at all.

The biggest difference is that, instead of Dining Room being a day that I always dreaded, it's now simply a lecture class! The first term students aren't going to have that luxury. >:D Now, on Thursdays; days that were usually Dining Room days, we'll be the ones in the kitchen cooking the meals. The only instructor we haven't yet worked with is on Thursdays as well.
Still 3 days of kitchen, but only two are strictly learning classes now, the third being service day. Really curious how that class works... kind of nervous that it doesn't actually work so well, judging from how rocky last term was in terms of communicating between dining room and kitchen.

Really dreading Charcuterie and Butchering, obviously. Looking forward to Desserts, though! Besides the whole getting out at 4:30PM part.. that doesn't sound so fun.
Also looking forward to Food Service Nutrition being only a 2 credit class as opposed to last term when Fridays were Food Service Management, a 4 credit class with a workload to match. D:

11 weeks and then I'm done with kitchen class stuffs! Then I just need to get rid of the 3-4 terms worth of other classes I need to get an AAS degree! Whoo! :D

Summer tiiimmme and the livin's easy!

So happy! I actually have no clue what my grades are for the other classes, but I got an A in baking and an A in Food Service Management. xD Should get an A in Dining Room too, since it's just an attendance thing really. So as long as I get B's or A's in Dave's classes, then this was a really great term despite all the freakish amounts of stress. xD

Hmmm... to catch up a bit, last week on Wednesday we went to a farm as a "field trip." It really doesn't feel like a field trip without the big yellow school bus... lol
When we got there, there were tons of chickens and 3 big piggies inside a fenced area. We went up to them and they got excited and came over. I pet one and it wobbled its whole back and butt like it was dancing in happiness. xD They were soooooo damn cute! One of the students said "They're so cute, I'll never eat another pig again!" and I pointed to its butt and said "You sure you're not in the mood that that big' ol ham?" lmao Still, I'm the only one that actually *does* find pigs too damn cute to eat. xD
When we left we each got a dozen eggs, and they were sooo tasty. Farm fresh are so much better. Normal eggs make me feel sick, and I was a little apprehensive about these because of that, but I made an omelette and actually enjoyed it, so that was awesome.

Then, basically just had finals after that. The practical for this Monday was to cook a piece of chicken, a starch(we only had polenta :/) and a vegetable, so I just made some tarragon sauce for the chicken, and some onions because we really only had a few vegetables left. :P On Wednesday it was just a random Mediterranean thing, and I was one of the ones to get probably the simplest thing: pasta. xD Hehehe So I was happy about that.

Now, time to be lazy all summer!

Well, actually we're going to meet up and practice for the ACF Student Culinary Competition. Pretty sure the actual competition isn't until January. If that's interesting, or if I make something awesome looking at home, I will post it here. :)

Chocolate showpieces!

So, I had planned to do a Super Mario Bros. fire flower for today... but I, and apparently no one else, really, knew that these were supposed to be done in teams. =/ Yeah.... So everyone got paired up (actually I was kind of not pairing with anyone on purpose.. >.>) and I got to work with Sarah and Chelsea on their Alice in Wonderland piece. xD I'm glad I waited because this was probably the most interesting (to me) that I could have worked on. The biggest thing I did was the caterpillar with the hookah. I made the whole thing while Chelsea worked on the mushrooms, cards and butterfly and Sarah worked on the Tree and base. We pretty much each had a focus, but we were still running around and helping each other with a lot of things. xD Oh, yeah, and I got a freeze burnt thumb... nothing serious because it stopped hurting after like 10 minutes but it really burnt!! haha It was because we were using quick-freeze spray and Chelsea went a little overboard on the spraying while I was holding pieces together.

OKAY, Now I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures. :D

Caterpillar! almost done : )


Whole thing in progress.

Done!



Side view.


Back!


My favorite pic cause my caterpillar looks kind of epic up there. xD



For our first time, we were all reaaallllyyyy proud of this. xD At the end the whole class ran out of quick freeze... so all the trees branched were glued on by holding them there, the caterpillar and hookah were basically air dried with the tiny amount that was left in the can with no pressure, and the cards were also just stuck on by hand with no freeze spray. So at the end it was pretty stressful because of that. xD The only thing I don't like is that you can see the white chocolate ("glue") that we used. Need to wipe that up next time before it sets. But, that's what school is for so it's okay. :)

Quick

Here's just a quick post for yesterday because the post I really want to make is coming right after this and it's going to involve a lot of pics....

Onion Rings!



Annndd...

Barley Risotto stuffs!



Yep, there were other things but they looked kinda lame plated so I didn't bother with pics ... Now for todays actual post!

OoOOOkkay!

My computer died for a little bit ... So this'll be a picture-tastic super post. xP

First! Hot Foods! This is the final plate. We made a lot of things that day (that I no longer remember) but he wanted us to plate our trout with a starch and a vegetable so here it is!



Next! Baking! We made truffles and did some more chocolate piping work also. The left is just ganache rolled in cocoa powder, the middle is dark chocolate tempered and set in a mold, filled with lemony goodness, and the right is a white-chocolate truffle. I had to temper the dipping chocolate for that, also.




The blurry one I took after I decided to add a little more to the plate. I apparently didn't hold the camera still enough. :P

I was the partner-less one this week so I got to temper chocolate 3-4 times! :) I actually was happy about that, because it's really pretty fun (despite the hand cramps! D:) If you haven't seen it before, that's where you melt chocolate, dump it all on a stainless steel or marble table, and then go mad on it with two scrapers to cool it down and incorporate air. It's supposed to be pretty tough, but I definitely think I have a knack for at least the tabling method of it, because it turned out great every time! :)

BTW, here are some of my piping deco rejects. xD I took a pic cause I wanted my smily to live forever.



BTW, you can see full size if you click on the thumbnail.

NEXT! Mediterranean! These grape leaves were stuffed with rice! ...and lamb. D: haha




And finally!! .... Falafel. It tasted like grossness. But they're cute, at least. :)




So.. we've got 2 weeks left, not counting written finals week. I just spent 5 hours on homework just for Fridays Food Service Management class. : / Plus I still have a tiny bit more to do for that project. *sigh* But we are doing chocolate sculptures this Tuesday and I finally decided that I want to do an old school Super Mario Fire Flower. xD In 3D of course. Chelsea and Sarah are doing two different Alice in Wonderland pieces that'll go together at the end. Anyway, if they can do AiW, I can damn well do Mario! :) So I've gotten a couple of weights lifted now... Not going to think about the giant study guide we got for Mediterraneans final right now. o.o

One more normalish week and then it's time again for 2 WEEKS OF HELL!
*DRAMATIC MUSIC*

I'll post pictures of anything we make the next two weeks, even if my fire flower looks like crap or something.

Chocolate Tart

This was made in Baking of course. The chocolate was kinda... well... really overbaked, actually so it's lumpy on top. xD I sort of forgot about it for a few minutes. hehe
I think the design we put by the cake was one of Holly's. Most of mine broke because it hadn't completely set when I tried to peel them off, but I swear they were pretty before I broke them! :D

Laaattee

There weren't a lot of pretty things to take pictures of this week. I did, however, forget to post this on Tuesday: It's the first rose (or anything, for that matter) that I've ever molded with chocolate! The white stuff is a bit of excess powdered sugar.

Baking Midterm

Made this Julianna cake for the midterm. The sides are really crap but I like the way the top turned out. :) I tried to do a pattern for the sides but I guess the 2nd color wasn't dark enough to make a real difference at all, so it all looks the same. I got 89/100 which is okay with me cause I know I could have done better if I weren't terrible at cutting layers and if I were a bit more awake. The layers weren't even sizes and after I soaked the first layer in coffee syrup, I completely forgot to soak the other two layers, and I had already covered them in hazelnut and vanilla cream before I realized. o_o So, overall today went well, but it was very exhausting of course.

Russian Cakey

Those aren't my arms, btw. xP
That is just a russian cake, nothing too difficult. That little thing has 3 cake layers and 3 frosting layers, then an apricot glaze. o_o After we were done with those, we made our genoise for practical finals, so we'd have less to do on the actual day next week... I suck at cutting cake layers. *sigh* They are pretty uneven... I might work on them next week, I dunno. >.<

Ratatouille

It always feels nice to have your food be used as the "good" example. :) Especially since last week in baking our frosting was the "bad" example. xD The sugar was kinda messed up so the frosting was grainy. Oh, well.

Anyway, I was proud of my Ratatouille because I did everything for it besides cooking the onions and tomatoes. So I got the right consistency for the peppers, zucchini, and eggplant just by sight which is good. Chef brought it over to another table at one point to show what the ratatouille should look like and I'm just like "yes!" lol And he kept coming back over to eat it, too. xD

Okay, okay, that's enough of that. Made me happy, is all. :P

Mediterranean

<-- Prawns!
















Today I discovered that salt cod tastes awful, and chickpea flour is made from garbanzo beans. :D
I think today we were in Provence, Italy. I almost forgot because the last half of lecture was all about cheese. *snore*
So, anyway, we made Garlic Aioli, Socca (thin like a crepe, made with chickpea flour), Tapenade(mushed up olives and things, with a bit of anchovy, good on the socca. xD),and that an awful salt cod thing. The prawns were just sort of thrown in at the end. But it was the prettiest. :)

Mediterranean

I suck at taking pictures today. : /
That was a polenta I made... Today was basically "stir til you drop" day, because we made this, which needed a good half hour of attention and stirring, then we followed it with risotto... another half hour... stir, stir, stir... We also made Gnocchi, but gnocchi is pretty easy. >.O Wish I had taken a better picture! I need more pics of actual hot food... I've gotten way too much baking pics in comparison.
Meh.

There was no Dining Room Service last week, and there's none tomorrow either, so I have no idea if we are doing anything useful tomorrow... it honestly felt like a waste of time last week because we mostly stood around and talked. -_-
Bleh, I'd rather have a day off!!! Although, I shouldn't complain. I'm really afraid of when service starts again because my shoulder has been screwing with me ever since the last time I had to lift one of those heavy-as-hell trays, and I just aggravated it last tuesday while bussing dishes, so... lifting almost any weight with my left arm hurts, and certain positions hurt, too. *shrug* I want my left arm to be useful again. ;-;

I've had my homework done for Friday's Food Service Management class done since the weekend, so I'm very glad that I don't have any last minute work whatsoever. ^-^
Yep, that's it for this week. I don't think I have any readers anymore. o_o

Baking a Cake

Even though everyone was nervous for today, since the people who took the class last term were freaking out over the difficulty, it turned out pretty fun in the end. I know this is really only the first week of doing things, and it'll get harder, but I still think it'll be a lot better than what we seem to think. xD Dan ended up being a good partner, even though he is always complaining about baking. I guess I sort of took the lead, at least moreso than I usually do, so that is very good. Usually I'm the one asking "Oh, so we did this... what now?" and I think I was answering that type of question this time instead. xD I was the one with the neatly printed out recipes so it leaned a little bit in my favor!

Anyway, this is only my second time really piping decorations, so I ended up really happy with it. I'm getting much better at thickness consistency throughout the lines. :) And of course I got to draw a bunny which makes anyone feel better about their day, right? :D The reason why the flowers look so funny is because the blue coloring kinda sloshed out, and then we still needed to add red to get it to be purple, so... I was expecting it to be the same consistency of the green, and it ended up being a lot thinner. xD It's okay, though, they look sort of cute anyhow.

So, here it is! Our brown sugar spice cake!

Baking II

So... we're making this brown sugar spice cake on Tuesday, along with Royal icing decoration, Chiboust and Buttercream frostings...
I practiced it today and it must've taken at least 3-4 hours, not counting the time I had to wait for the thing to cool before I could frost it.
My cake was pretty good at crumbling apart all over the place. xD

Here are some pics I took that make it look almost decent though. All about the angles. ;)

Hot Foods II

First day went okay. Made some really yummy pasta and sauce, put chicken on top but I just "forgot" to taste the chicken. >.> The pasta was really good though, we made the pasta dough ourselves. Hot Foods this term is supposed to be mostly on meat, though, so I'll probably have to conquer my queasiness pretty soon. xP
Anyway, another group made Gnocchi and we were just picking at everything we made, so that saved money on another lunch. :)
Oh, yeah, and we are rotating partners!! I really thought we should have done this first term... you don't usually get to work with the same exact person every day in a real job. *roll eyes* so, I'm pretty happy about that!
Hmmmm, oh! And we wont be using a textbook on Wednesday!! YAYYYY those things are heavy. :D

Jen needed one more person to help her with this buffet thing at a church tomorrow? It's like a dinner buffet, starts at 5, so I'm going to go do that... I guess we are just going to ladel out the food and refill water or something. xP Should be okay, and about 2-3 more hours for co-op work experience. :)

Grades!!

As you can see, Blogger got some new blog templates and backgrounds which I'm pretty happy about. xD It's so pretty now! Woo!

Anyway, I got my grades a few days ago and they are....

*drumroll*

Hot Foods: A-
Baking: B
Garde Manger: A
Dining Room: A

Not too shabby! As expected, my lowest grade came from Mr. "I could have given you all tens on this but it's really not that big a difference so who cares." xP (hopefully no one from my school will ever find and read this blog after *this* comment. :O)

Here's hopin' for good grades next term! Which starts this Monday! Eek!

Baking Final

So, once again, I'm just happy it is over with. :) We got done a bit early which was a big change from the midterm, where we just barely got it all on the table on time. xD The pastry cream ended up being just a quart which was the requirement, and the breads didn't quite look uniform but they weren't terrible either.

Unfortunately, for the scones, I got everything scaled correctly to make exactly 24. But then, at the last second, Chef Julian told us to use the round cutters and just cut them all out into circles like that. So, we got sort of confused and just grabbed the last cutter available, but it was too small so we ended up with like 28 stupid scones instead. >.< I don't really think anyone got it right, though. It was mean to do that to us while we were in the middle of baking frenzy and thought we had already pre-prepared all of the instructions. xP

Well, I'll just sit back and accept whatever grade I get. No one got tens in the rubric for the midterm, so I'm not being picky about getting A's anymore. :C

Overall, I think today went pretty well. :)

Hot Foods Final

Just got done with the practical final for Hot Foods! Pretty sure I did well. He said the Consomme turned out well, and it was pretty clear. Not as clear as some but it was okay. xD My Hollandaise turned out really well, although I had to make it twice because I forgot the procedure the first time and it wasn't in the instructions. D:

He said my Paysanne and Julienne cuts turned out really good, but my brunoise could've been smaller and more cubey. xP

Anyhow, he said he's grading more on the "method" we used for the consomme and hollandaise, so I can't know for sure how I did. Nothing went horribly wrong though and I survived so I am totally happy with that. ;)

Tomorrow is the practical final for baking and we have to scale the recipes to the correct portion ourselves (which I did over the weekend) and we have to make 4 baguettes, 1 quart of pastry cream, 2 dozen raisin scones, and 2 loaves of challah bread! *sigh*

Gonna be a long day tomorrow.

Update

There wasn't a lot to post about last week... We went and did the "My Favorite Local Bakery" project on Tuesday and that was fun. We talked to a manager and she answered a ton of questions, showed us around, and gave us some samples. I took a whoolllee ton of pictures for it.

Next week is practical finals week, and then the week after THAT is written finals week! So not fair that most kids just get ONE finals week! So I don't know if I'll be updating then either. I'm sure there wont be any good pictures to take, it's all about knife skills and just making the recipe, really. I'm not sure how prepared I feel but I did practice a bit... *sigh* We'll see. I just can't wait until it is over. >.<

Sammich

Today was pretty much "create your own sandwich" day. Actually, it was create your own pig sandwich day. So, only me and one other girl didn't wanna eat pig, so we left it out. xD My sandwich wasn't as attractive as I wanted it to be, but I guess eggplant is just an ugly veggie. :D So, yeah, I made it with Eggplant that I rubbed with balsamic, Monterey Jack cheese, Red pepper, and onion, with some mayo to make the bread moister. I was the only person to make my sandwich an adorable circle though! :P
Yep, and that didn't take long so I spent the rest of the class making potato salad for lunch service tomorrow.

Bready breads!!

Yums!!

Up there is more baguettes (third time we've done them this term,)espresso biscotti,cooked challah bread, and uncooked challah bread. Blogger is being really annoying and posting all my pictures in code for the last few weeks, so I can't arrange them the way I wanted to without it being a huge pain.

The challah bread was fun, because I got to learn how to do a six-braid! ^-^ I didn't bother taking a pic of the biscotti cut up, because really they looked exactly like something you'd find in a coffee shop, only messily strewn about a baking pan. xD But they turned out perfectly well and all. There was something wrong with the yeast we used, because the baguettes turned into giant monsters. :D But that's okay, giant baguettes are still tasty. :)

Chicky...

Today we butchered a chicken.

I was doing okay til we got to this part where he's like "Okay, now score the front right here, flip the bird over and push! *CRRAACCCKKK*" D: Yeah, got a little queesy at that point. lol! And moving all the bones out of their joints made me feel really weird too. I've never popped one of my joints out of place, and I didn't know it was that easy to do... I mean, sure it's just a little chicken, but still. Creepy. xD

Didn't do much else... de-pooped some prawn, cut up some root veggies, made some short ribs. Yep. Oh, and today is the first day I can keep the car parked here instead of having Mish take it back! So if we get out early, it'll be a good thing like it's supposed to be! WOO! And I hope we do cause Patrick is coming over later, and I needs cuddles. :)

Got a lot of stuff to do tomorrow as always. Here's the list:

Challah, six braided,
Baguette,
Biscotti, Espresso Biscotti
Creme Anglaise
Pastry cream

Yeesh. Better remember my camera tomorrow. :)

Drive Test

I PASSED!!! WOOO!!! All the stress just went *poof* the second he said I passed. xD
I got this nice, mellow older mexican guy and it was SOOO much better than the giant! He was normal human sized and everything!!! And I totally told on that first guy for talking during the test, because I was asking the desk dude what my chances were of getting someone else. xD He said he's "gonna have to talk to him about that." LOL

I didn't make any of the mistakes I did last time, and the only things I did do wrong, were not checking side roads of neighborhoods, and not paying close enough attention to the merging cars on the parkway. I passed with 90/100, which is gooooddd enough!! xD

Yep. I'm happy again. ^_^

Oh, and I was going to learn how to make mochi ice cream tomorrow for extra credit, but then I realized I just gave up both of my chef coats to be embroidered with my name and CCI... and it's against health code to be in the kitchen without a uniform... Oh, well, it wouldn't been a hassle to get there anyway because Misha is taking the car this first weekend for her job, so I would've had to get up at 3:30AM to drive her there. Still, making mochi would have been a nice experience! : / Well, I'm sure there'll be other cool opportunities. :)

Oh, yeaaahhh... here's the dinner I made last night! Tofu with Ratatoille vegetables, and crostinis with white bean and garlic on top, garnished with thyme. ^.^ Mish helped me out by making the baguette for the crostinis. :)
Completely vegan for Mom and Sissa, and totally nummy!

Platingness!

Was feeling better enough today to remember to bring my camera! xP So, we made a jamaican fruity salad thingy, and gots to plate it, which is probably my favorite thing in school so far, besides eating baked goods. xD

Here ish mine!



I used an ice cream scoop to get it round, then I put orange zest on top and cut out a pineapple flower to set next to it. Oh, and if you can see it, it's all on top on a romaine leaf that I cut to a nice little V shape. :) I like to keep it simple when I do plating, but...



...not everyone does. lol!

That's all! Wish me luck for tomorrow morning... ;-;

Hmmm

So, I've been really stressed this week because I'm worrying about my drive test coming up and it's making everything else in my life (except you, Patrick xD) seem way more stressful as well. So... yeah, I meant to bring my camera today, and I meant to post yesterday as well as today, but I'm just not up to it this week. Maybe tomorrow. But I don't want to turn this into a vent blog. :P

I did find out that I seem to be getting A-'s in my classes, so that is good. Just need some more extra credit to boost it up. And today we made really yummy danish desserts.

Hopefully I'll feel better after I maybe pass the test on Thursday. >.<

Arg!!!

Today was pretty fun... we got to make dressings and a carrot ginger soup and then plate them... then we got to eat the salads we plated. xD

Unfortunately I completely forgot to take pics. *shrug* I guess I was too hungry. hehe
But mine were pretty simple.. for my caesar salad, I put a half lemon slice on either side of the plate, 4 croutons around it and lemon zest on top. The other salad, I did 3 baby tomatoes, some croutons, and slivered carrot and cucumber on top. With the soup, I just chopped some parsley, and put that in the middle as well as one sort of sticking up out of it. So it was a pretty orange/green thing. :)

I've got to go now because I'm typing this up during lunch and I really want to finish my spaghetti leftovers. xD

Raisins

So I didn't post about yesterday, mainly because it was boring. It was hot foods midterm day, and really all we did was make our own stock and do some cuts on vegetables, then we took a very easy 5-question quiz. Not really sure how I did yet on the cuts, but I'm sure I got all the quiz answers right.

Anyway, I felt really shitty yesterday because after school I rushed off to go take my driving test, and I failed. >.< My main problems were not stopping before the pedestrian crosswalk before stop signs (which sucks, because usually I make sure to do that! I don't know what happened this time, might've been nerves. :C) and at the very start of the test, I didn't reverse all the way into the lane I was going to be driving in. *shrug* The other things he failed me on... it was something really weird, like, I checked my blind spot before merging, but then he also wanted me to check behind *after* I finished merging? I think that's what he said... I was too busy trying to keep myself together, knowing I had failed, to clarify that at the time. :/ And the other little thing was I apparently went 55 on the 45-limit parkway while he was making me merge around. I remember seeing it at 50 after my second merge, so that sucks. ;-; I think that was because I was trying to avoid my usual mistake of slowing down before a merge. >.< Anyway, next time I take it, I'm going to request a different guy. This guy was effing HUGE which was just pretty intimidating, but the thing that really bugged me was that he made some small talk during the test... which the stupid pamphlet they give you specifically says they WILL NOT DO. UGHHHH.

Anyway.

Baking was pretty typical today... make a bunch of stuffs... today it was danish style croissants, normal croissants, Raisin bars, and a Genoise cake. Not enough time to finish the croissants, but our raisin bars and our cake didn't turn out so well.. the bars were flat, and while the cake tasted fine and didn't have much of a tunneling problem, it broke while we were de-panning it. :|

Here is my croissant after one of it's folds, our cake mixin', and someone elses raisin bars. xD