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So we’re done with bread (finally) at school and not a moment too soon. I’ve always been a big fan of bread, but after making it every day for 4 weeks I’m kinda sick of it. Next we’re doing individual pastries, petit fours, etc. We started making puff pastry today, and so far so good. I really do think that the equipment that professional chefs have access to makes it so much easier to turn out consistently good products. We have a dough sheeter in the classroom (for rolling out doughs to a consistent thickness, mainly for croissants, puff pastry and danish) that is really cool. If they weren’t 3000 dollars, I might consider buying one. It’s funny though, I’m making things in class that I’ve thought about making hundreds of times at home, but I never got around to it, thought it would be too hard or too much hassle. The practical exam for this class is going to be pretty difficult, we have to make at least 12 different kinds of buffet-sized pastries, cream puffs, baklava, petit fours, and other little yummy things. I think it will be fun to work on, but the practical exam is worth 120 of the 200 and something points for the three-week class, so it’s really important to do well. I’m more concerned that I’m actually learning the techniques than I am about my grade, but it’s always nice to get an A. Once we start actually assembling things, I’ll bring my camera in to take some pictures.

So I decided to try something new and pay the bills early this month instead of waiting until the day before (or worse, after) they’re due. And since I was feeling lazy and unwilling to write out fifty bajillion checks, I thought I’d see how many of them I could pay online. And out of 7 bills, I used the Internet to pay one. One stupid bill. I hit “this site is temporarily unavailable” on 6 out of 7 tries. It was most annoying. Jon, being an IT guy himself, said it was probably because its Sunday night at 11:15 pm and weekly maintenance stuff was being done. Damn him and his logic. That’s what I get for trying to be on top of things. Next time I’ll just pay them late like I usually do.

So I fell and busted my shit again at school today. I was walking over by the dishwasher and I slipped and landed on my ass. Actually it was more like my thigh, but either way, it hurt. And of course I had 2 metal bowls in my hand so it was all loud and obvious. I really should be more careful, thats like the 4th time I’ve fallen in that area of the classroom. Tomorrow I’m going to have a major bruise. And as I was falling, I hit one of the bowls I was carrying against the floor and it bounced up and hit my finger, so now I have a teeny tiny little bruise on my index finger. It’s kinda silly, I’ve never bruised my finger before. Hopefully the rest of the week will be less painful.

Oh wait…no I’m not. We have our practical exam on bread starting tomorrow morning, and I’m kinda nervous. So far I’ve done really well on the practicals, but the bread unit has given me a little trouble. We have 4 days to make 9 kinds of bread, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but some of them have to be made over a couple of days. So it’s gonna take some planning to get everything done and still leave myself some time to redo anything that I might screw up the first time. The only comfort that I have is that everyone else has had some trouble with this unit too, so at least I know that it’s not just me.

Tomorrow I have to make croissant and danish dough (to bake on tues), make brioche, start on my sourdough (a three day process) and make all the fillings for my danish. If I get everything done on Monday and Tuesday like I’ve planned, I should be fine for the rest of the week. Of course, I want to go in early tomorrow morning to get started, but that’s not stopping me from staying up way too late tonight. It’s like I put off all the stuff I wanted to get done this weekend until Sunday night, and now I’m running around like the proverbial chicken sans head. And I do this every weekend…you’d think I’d learn by now. Well I should try to get some sleep, 5 am comes mighty soon when you don’t get to bed ’til midnight.

So as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I’m a chronic reader. I’d rather read than do almost anything else, and one of the really nice things about not working is that when I get home from school, I have almost the whole afternoon to sit and read. Lately I’ve read some really good books. Here they are, in no particular order, but all highly recommended

1. The Little Country by Charles de Lint
2. Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (although all his stuff is worth reading)
3. War for the Oaks by Emma Bull
4. The Making of a Pastry Chef by Andrew MacLauchlan and Scott Vlaun
5. The Grand Finales plated dessert series by Tish Boyle and Timothy Moriarty

Other than the baking books I’ve kinda been on a fantasy kick lately…I’m excited about the Charles de Lint book, since he’s written a lot, and if they’re all that good I should be set with reading material for a while. At the moment I’m reading “Smoke and Shadows” by Tanya Huff, but I’m not far enough into it yet to give an opinion other than so far, so good.

So we had planned on spending the afternoon at the coast with our nieghbors today, and after a few false starts, we finally made it out there at about 3:30. It’s only an hour and a half drive, so it’s not a big deal that we were late getting there, but it was such a gorgeous day I felt bad wasting so much of it inside.
We ended up at Ecola State Park, which had some beautiful scenery, but it was super windy and the sun managed to disappear moments after our arrival. Undaunted, we laid out our picnic lunch (well more like dinner) and ate. By the time we were done eating, it was so cold and windy that we decided to just take a couple of pics and call it a day. So we ended up spending about an hour and a half on the coast and then heading home. I’d be more broken up about it but it’s close enough that we could go again next weekend if we wanted to. I would like to explore that area a little more though, it was really pretty.

On a different note, we saw Hellboy last night. I was actually pretty pleased with it; other than the usual elephant-sized plot holes and cheesy villains, it was an ok flick. Lots of humor, which is good, and some decent special effects. I mean, it wasn’t like the best movie in the world, but it was enjoyable.

Tomorrow in school we start working on laminated doughs, which means croissants and danish, for those who don’t speak baker. I’m looking forward to it, especially since when I tried to make croissants the results were less than stellar. Hopefully I’ll figure out what I did wrong and learn how to make something that’s actually edible.

Since most of my friends are pretty irreverant, I don’t know how much meaning this will have, but Happy Easter anyways…may all your Peeps be soft and chewy, and may all your eggs be Cadbury

So I’m totally annoyed with myself. I have a really cool husband, we make ok money, and we live in a town where there’s lots to do on a Friday night. So what did I do last night? Read a book, ate dinner and went to bed. At ten o’clock. If my teenage self could communicate with me today, she’d kick my ass for being so freakin’ lame (although I really think I could take her, I outweigh her by like 50lbs.). And the sad thing is that I was all ambitious yesterday at school, I was like, yeah, we’re gonna go see a movie, or go to a club tonight. But did we? No, I just fell asleep all early. I think I’m getting old! Hopefully I’ll be a little more interesting tonight, Jon wants to go see Hellboy, which looks moderately entertaining at least. And since I got 10 hours of sleep last night, I think I might even be able to stay out past midnight without turning into a pumpkin (or falling asleep in the theater) but we’ll see.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that I will never have a lucrative career in the bread baking industry. We’ve been working on bread for the past couple of weeks and I’m having very little luck getting things to turn out. The only thing I’ve been able to make that turned out relatively well is foccacia. Everything else turns out all funky and wierd. On the upside, there’s all the stuff to make pizzas in the walk-in fridge in the room and baguette dough makes a really good pizza crust. So despite the lack of bready goodness, I’m at least eating well.

In other news, Jon and I had a lot of fun in Seattle over spring break, and we should have some new pics up soon, maybe even tonight if I’m feeling really ambitious. We stayed at this scary ass motel though, the bed was all busted and the people above us were super loud. But it was cheap, so it was ok. While we were there we went to the Experience Music Project, which was really cool, although it was $20 a person to get in. We also took a ferry to Bainbridge Island and ate at this really good restaurant called Cafe Nola. The ferry ride over was pretty cool, you could see the whole Seattle skyline. I did decide that I like Portland much better than Seattle though, the people here are nicer, the city is cleaner, there’s much less crime, and, most importantly, we don’t have to stay in a motel where you need to bleach the whole bathroom before you can take a shower

So today is Jon’s 26th birthday, and I wanted to take a minute to tell him that I love him and I hope that he had a good day. I love you sweetie pie!