"It's not dollar days at K-Mart!"

I know, I know. Such a bad blogger am I. Breads is finished, and we are now both feet into French Pastries. I'm liking this class simply for the fact that it is not as stressful as Breads was. Some of the people in my class who've had other labs are, apparently, bored. But, I find enough to keep me busy, so I can't complain. I also do well with the chef's more hands-off teaching method, so no complaints here except for the fact that his instructions can be a little vague. So, I've learned to ask very specific questions.

We're taking our mid-term practical tomorrow. I'm not that nervous, as I'm pretty sure I've got a good handle on everything. Once I learned the trick to piping non-anemic looking eclairs, I stopped being afraid of the pastry bag! For those who are interested, don't pipe your eclairs head-on; angle your hand so you're actually piping a little sideways.

Today, we made this really tasty dessert called tartouf. You make cream puffs that you fill with lemon chello (boil lemon peel and sugar in Vodka or Everclear; mix into diplomat cream). Then, you dip the entire cream puff into freshly made chocolate mousse. Sounds (and looks) kind of gross, but OMG! Delicious! Chocolatey! And it was a good thing, too, because lunch from the International Cuisine class was really bad. Again.

It's hard to believe that the trimester is almost over. Class gets out for fall break on November 19th, and then we have 11 days off! What a treat!

OK, time to gather my notes for tomorrow....

The highlight of the past two weeks....

was getting a new cell phone. One that I could program to play my favorite Rob Thomas song as my ringtone. But, I digress. This is supposed to be a blog about my culinary schooling.

The past two weeks have been seven days of awful and one day of goodness. We're two days in to our practical exam in breads class. The first day, we forgot to convert the formula for our ciabatta down to 5 lbs, so we were racing to do that before we could get anything into the mixer. Then there was a problem with our corn muffins. Corn muffins, of all things. We had to redo them the next day. But, we did get 100% on our ciabatta. We're doing pretty well, with two 90's and two 100's on our graded items so far. Tomorrow is baguettes and soft rolls for my table. plus date-nut bread and croissants (the last two not for a grade). An easy day compared to Thursday, when we had 4 yeasted doughs to make up, plus biscuits and corn muffins, and the laminating of croissants.

This long weekend has been full of "busy" schoolwork. We have to keep these portfolios that are due on Wednesday, and we have to type up all our formulas and class notes, plus keep a daily journal. And we have to put pictures in with the formulas. So, I spent yesterday doing that only to find out that I apparently forgot my camera more often than I thought I did. I'm missing pictures of about 20 items, so now I'm waiting for my tablemates to email me what I'm missing. I just need to get my resume fixed, and then that can get crossed off my list too.

Thursday we start our next class, Classical French Pastries. I'll be interested to see how the table assignments bread down... every chef has a different way of doing things.

Wish me luck in the last of our practical!