Mom Wants to Know How I Update

So I showed her.

Watching Finding Nemo. Still stand by the fact that Monsters Inc. is cuter!

I suppose I should blog...

Blog time!

Well, Christmas is over, New Year's coming up! Already half done my two weeks away from PEI. I just keep telling myself "4 more months." And since I had told myself "It's just 8 months, you can do it" back in August, I think I can handle just 4 months. I should be busy for the 4 months, so it should speed by fairly quickly.

Ugh, I'm thirsty and just got myself settled into bed...what a conundrum.

Got myself a GPS from the parents for Christmas this year. Didn't get a whole lot for Christmas - we didn't do sibling gifts, so that cut back significantly on the gifts...and I don't really miss them in all honesty. I miss shopping for the siblings, but I don't feel like I'm missing a big haul or anything. My GPS rocks and is allowing me to pursue a new hobby - goecaching!

Geocaching is a hobby where people have hidden things around the world and then put up the coordinates on the goecaching website (www.geocaching.com). Then the other players can type in the coordinates on their GPS and go find it! It's like a massive treasure hunt. I went with Andrew and we found one and then I went with him and the parents today and we managed to NOT find 5 of them. But it got us out and active, so that's good. I'll go look for the ones I didn't find again - tomorrow maybe. I think it's probably funner to go caching in the summer - we probably would have spent more time looking for each one today if it wasn't cold out.

I bought myself a Christmas present - Home Simpson slippers. Basically, they rock. I have a slippers thing - the way some women have a shoe thing. I restrain myself a lot, but I love getting new slippers. And I've been eyeing these ones for a few years now - finally broke down and bought them - managed to get them on sale too during Boxing week! Now I can walk around with Homer chewing on my feet.

Anyway, it's late...4:20 on my computer, which means 2:20 Saskatchewan time - I didn't bother to change the computer clock for this visit, just my watch. So yeah, I should probably sleep or play more of my computer game or something. :P

Have a good night/day all!

Brrr...

Back in Saskatchewan and it is definitely COLD here!

Now, I stand by my opinion that I prefer the -30 to the rain of PEI.

But now that I've lived in both places, I wouldn't mind living somewhere that's as warm as PEI, but not as damn wet. I'll have to look.

Flight home was not too bad. We left Ottawa 1 hr 40 minutes late, but given the storms in Ontario and the cancellations going through Toronto, I think I'm pretty lucky that I was only delayed a couple hours. Being on a plane for 4 hours sucked though. Going through Toronto is nice b/c it splits the flying time evenly in two. Going through Ottawa means a quick trip from Charlottetown to Ottawa, but a long one from Ottawa to Saskatoon. However, the Ottawa airport is CLASSY! If I had to get stuck in an airport, based on the airports I've been to, I would absolutely pick Ottawa. They have business centres to set up laptops and couches for sleeping. Also, a waterfall.

Had some fun in Saskatoon - not nearly enough, but it'll do me for the moment. Went to a wedding - two my callers who met at the call centre and fell in love! Very exciting!!

I'm crazy tired. Slept for 12 hours last night, which I never do anymore, but I've been ready for bed since about 2pm. Hopefully one more good night and I'll be all caught up.

Overall, glad to have a break from PEI! I'm somewhat eager to go back, but not b/c I want to be there - just b/c going back means that I'm slowly making my way towards May when I will be once again free to roam wherever I please!

And the countdown continues...

We finished our gingerbread village today! It's officially at the hospital! It turned out great and we got a lot of good comments! I'm supposed to be in the paper for it - they took a pic with two of us. Overall, I think the village looked great, and I'm just really happy it's done! One more thing to check off the list! Once we delivered it and got back to school, I cleaned up the room we had been borrowing from the golf program to store/work on the project and I also put away everything on our storage trolley. So gingerbread is officially put to rest for this year!

We only have 3 days of school left. They don't do production on Friday, so we're going to clean on Thursday and be done! On one hand I'm a bit pissed, as I would have flown home a day earlier if I had known we wouldn't have class on Friday anyway. But oh well. I still have my Brownie Christmas party Thursday night, and this just means I get to sleep until 10:30 on Friday instead of being in class until 10:30. It should make that day a lot less stressful.

Went out for pizza tonight with some of the girls. I think we're all at a point where we don't want to sit at home alone and think about how long this week is, so we keep going out. Which is fine by me! My classmates are awesome - by far the best thing about this place. If it wasn't for them, I'd be outta here by now for sure.

Anyway, I really should sleep. It's 11pm and I have to be up at 4:30, lol. We stayed out too late, plus the service was SO SLOW. Oh well! Only 3 more days of class!!

Who Throws a Shoe? Honestly!

Apparently Iraqi journalists do. It took 11 years, but now we know Austin, now we know.

One Week

Well, in one week, I'll be on my way to the airport to wait for my flight. I'm really praying the weather is good and my flight isn't delayed/cancelled. B/c if it is, I will be stranded with nowhere to live, b/c rez is kicking me out. Ugh, I hate rez. Turns out my roommate is moving out...today. And told me...yesterday. Wow. So now I need kitchen stuff b/c I was using hers. And I'll have to get used to a new roommate in January. Not cool. So not how I wanted my year to go.

I really just want the next week to go by really fast so that I can have two weeks away from it all.

Right now I'm just waiting for the rez office to phone me so that I can go pick up my keycard for next week so I can get in/out of my room. Then I think I'm going to just sleep away the rest of the day. :)

I Miss You So Much :(

That's right. I'm talking about Old Dutch Sour Cream and Cheddar Potato Chips. I love them. They don't have them here and it's been crushing my soul a little bit every day since I've been here.

Please feel free to mail them to me.

Update?

Apparently I'm supposed to update this thing. Oops.

School is going. It's been pretty drama-riffic lately but I really don't want to talk about that online. Online is very wide open.

My flambe dessert KICKED ASS. Whoooo!! Chef Pam helped me flambe it and it was about the coolest thing I've done in school so far...ever. Even cooler than the volcano thing. (Yes, that's right, I said it)

Ack, power flicker. It was flickering at school. It is pouring BUCKETS outside. Freakin' ocean places. I hate the rain, I'm sick of it. It's such a mix of rain and snow, it's baffling. I think the weather here is crazy...SK is nothing compared to this place. Want an example? It was snowing out, yet THUNDERING AND LIGHTENING. That's right. Insanity.

I'm on cafeteria now, sailing to Christmas. I have one assignment I want to get half done before I go home for Xmas. They gave it to us in October, it's not due until March, and I know it's going to slip through the cracks. But I have enough info now to get it half done, so I figure that if I have it half done and it slips through the cracks, that's only half left to do during the all nighter the night before it's due. :D

Brownies is still awesome! We're going carolling with the girls tomorrow, so that will be a lot of fun!

Anyway, other than a quick trip to the gym in the afternoon, I was at school for 12 hours today, and I'm tired. I'm on AMs this rotation and am walking, so that means I'm up at 4:30 and usually out of the house at 5:15ish. And it's POURING RAIN and has been both days so far. And it's not looking like it's going to stop before tomorrow. Stupid rain. So, I want to go try and get dry, sleep, then hope that my clothes/coat are semi-dry before morning so that I can have a sort of comfortable walk to school. Wish me luck!

Flambe!

I get to make a dessert next week that I flambe! WOOT WOOT!

Tired, hungry, etc.

Ugh. I've been procrastinating my homework all week and now I really need to do it. Might mean a bit less sleep for me tonight.

Surprisingly the week has gone well though. I think it'll be two days of hell for tomorrow and Friday, but that's just two days. Yesterday my dessert worked out great. Today Chef Pam was gone and we had Chef Hans who didn't really know what to tell us to do - he was more there to supervise and try to answer some questions. So, I ended up making a chocolate mousse, then I asked Chef Richard what needed doing and his #1 thing that he needed done was to cut out Christmas decorations from Patissiere (that's totally spelled wrong I'm sure...it's like playdoh but YUMMY). So, I spent like 2 hours doing that. Then we got out early! Which NEVER happens in the afternoon. Nice treat, since we were there 45 minutes late yesterday. :)

I work the Lucy Maud on Friday night and Saturday night and then next Tuesday. Basically that means I work with somebody and we just have to plate any desserts that are ordered in the dining room that evening. From what I hear, it's incredibly boringgggggg.

Managed to convince myself to go to the gym after class today which rarely happens. Usually my feet are sore after kitchen that I just trudge home. They were sore today, but I still made it to the gym. I needed to get my program back from my trainer anyway and I knew she was teaching a class tonight, so it was there. I probably would have done a bit more there, but I really wanted to catch the 5:35 bus, so I cut back on my cardio (I was on my feet in the kitchen anyway, right?) and busted out the strength to get done in an hourish. Not too shabby!

Rez is pissing me off. The rez person in charge of granting extensions for staying after the move-out date (of which I need one b/c my classes run a week later) isn't answering her phone and isn't answering the e-mails I send her. It's very frustrating. I'll give her until Friday, then I'm going to hunt down my RA and ask her to speak to her for me. I just find it very frustrating that the communications are so rough here. Before I can move out for Christmas, I have to have somebody inspect my room - to make sure the garbage is taken out, the fridge has nothing that will spoil in it, etc. (Not that anything in a fridge really spoils THAT badly that it'll create a smell in 2 weeks anyway...) This would normally be fine, but I'm moving out after the RAs are gone, so I have to find somebody from the management to do it, and I only have about a 2 hour window between my last class and when I need to be at the airport, so I need to be able to rely on them to be here on time to inspect my room. And I'm not too confident of that right now. I just wish they had their shit together a bit better.

Anyway, for now I should do some homework, eat, and perhaps clean. Ciao!

SUCCESS!

My first successful plated dessert! I went for REALLY simple and still used the entire 4 1/2 hours we had to make it. Chef Pam helped me with the plating, but the basic idea was mine. The ice cream isn't in here - this is just the sample plate so that they know how to plate it. But the ice cream definitely turned out - it's very bourbon-y though. Although most people said "It's very nutmeg-y." I thought the bourbon was more overpowering. Either way - it's eggnog, lol.

The chocolate cigars were made by Chef Pam with the chocolate group. When we have chocolate garnishes, you just order them from the chocolate group and they make them for you.

The cookies are just sugared ginger snaps basically. The middle one is dusted with icing sugar.

The snowflake is just a dusting of cocoa powder mixed with icing sugar. I cut out a stencil and dusted using that.

Overall, a very successful dessert! Hopefully people order it!!


And since I blogged about my cheese tasting and my wine tasting I figured I'd better blog about chocolate tasting!! We did chocolate tasting in class - so I HAD to do it. (Totally forced :P )

We tasted only dark chocolate. There are 3 kinds of chocolate - dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. Dark chocolate is made from pure cocoa beans. Milk chocolate has milk solids added and white chocolate is made from just the cocoa butter.

We went from 55% dark chocolate up to 75% dark chocolate. The percentage is the amount of cocoa in it - this means that there's less sugar. I think what made this really interesting was that we were truly TASTING them. Letting them sit on our tongue and melt - moving them around our tongues so that you caught all the flavours. And let me tell you...dark chocolate can be DISGUSTING. Some of them are very fruity - almost like wine in my opinion. Others are sort of smoky. It's really interesting.

Anyway - chocolate tasting was not as great as I had hoped/expected/assumed. But it sure was interesting!!

SNOW!

Well, winter has come to Charlottetown. Winter is my favourite season, so I'm happy! The first day is always bad of course, but after that, you're used to the cold and then winter is awesome!

I've noticed one thing here...THEY PLOW THE SIDEWALKS. Wow. Never been somewhere where the sidewalks are plowed by the city, not just if somebody happens to do it. Usually the city plows the roads and puts the snow ON the sidewalks. But apparently they don't do that here in the Maritimes. They put the snow in the MIDDLE of the road and plow off the sidewalks. It's kind of a weird system overall. But I like it - mostly b/c I don't drive.

What the F...

...is this weather? Seriously? Could it please just SNOW if we have to have precipitation? The wind here is INSANE. Way worse than in Saskatchewan. And that mixed with...I dunno...a mix of rain, freezing rain, sleet, and a touch of maybe snow...it creates disgusting, wet, cold weather that I hate. It can't even be classified as a single type of weather.

When I was typing that, I was thinking freezing rain, but typed frain and now I've decided that we should just call freezing rain, frain. Please go forth and do so.

Love

I love my bathtub.

I spent the last 4 years with a midget bathtub that I couldn't really fit into and that wasn't in any way comfortable.

My tub now may not be the best tub. But I can fit in it. And I can be comfortable in it. I can actually sit IN the water, versus just having a couple inches of water to attempt to soak in.

I love my bathtub.

Monotony

Well, the blog is getting boring, but so is life.

I'm starting to realize that I LOVE making bread. (Did I mention that in a recent post? Well, no matter, it can be repeated.) It can suck at times, but overall, I don't find it nearly as tedious to roll out 50 rolls as I did the first time I did it. And I'm slowly getting better at shaping my loaves. And there can be something a bit therapeutic about kneading dough - it's easy to just zone out in the kitchen and think about stuff.

Afternoon kitchen is interesting. I've got a different chef for it, so there are new rules and new expectations. Overall, it's not nearly as bad as what everybody made it out to be. On Fridays we spend an hour cleaning the kitchen really well. I heard of the horrors of that - it was nothing. I think some of these people have just never worked in a kitchen before and don't know how to clean. I have to say that cleaning the already clean barracks for three hours at the Dundurn Army Base when I was in cadets was wayyyy worse. Anyway, what I like best about the afternoon kitchen is that although the chef is a bit more harsh and yes, I do get snapped at, the fact is, everybody gets snapped at and overall I've thought it's mostly for good reason. She's whipping people into shape who I've been in kitchen with for weeks and been thinking "Ugh, I wish they would ________." Sometimes she could say things in a nicer way - but we all could, so whatever. The fact is, I like that she's making sure that we are doing what we should be. For example, it annoys me when somebody from another group comes and uses our area. She doesn't let that happen. So awesome. I also like that she is incredibly skilled and knowledgeable. She knows how to explain things very well. She just has an expectation that you are to pay attention.

Overall, I like morning kitchen better. The reasons being that it's a bit more relaxed, you come into a clean kitchen, and you're done by noon. But afternoon isn't bad. The worst thing about afternoon is that it makes for a shitty day. You are there from 10:30-4:30, so I often don't get home until 7:30 or 8pm by the time I do all my things downtown - hit up both libraries (I have become a total library fiend), go to the gym, go to any meetings I might have. It just seems like the days are longer and I'm more tired.

I went to a day long workshop for Girl Guides on Saturday. Some of the sessions sucked, but some were really fun! Myself and one of the other leaders from my unit went to one session on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) together. She's younger like me and we had a BLAST. We got to play with all sorts of fun stuff, like corn starch and water. Is it a solid? Is it a liquid? Who cares!? I went to a session on geocaching, which I had somehow never heard of. I now want to make it a hobby. Which means I need a GPS. I will be looking on EBay. :D Overall, I'm glad I joined Girl Guides - it reminds me a lot of SADD. Just a similar type of setup for a non-profit organization, just bigger. I think I'll be with it for many years to come, regardless of where I end up moving.

I've been looking at places to work in the future. I really like the look of the Fairmont in Whistler. My only problem is that the place where I'd live is fairly small. But it's the Olympic Venue in 2010, which is pretty kick ass. Check it out here and let me know if you have any thoughts/comments. http://www.fairmont.com/whistler/

I Love Fire Safety

(credits are in the little copyright box in the comic)

4th Place!

My pumpkin won 4th place in the contest I entered it in! And, b/c everybody gets to order the list of prizes in the order they want it, I managed to get my FIRST CHOICE! Score! I'll post my prize here once I receive it. Which might not be for a while.

Started my first PM shift today. I have PM for a month. Bu the first week should go by quite quickly - there's only 2 more days left in it already! Beyond that, a 3 week countdown to being done with afternoons, then 2 weeks with Chef Richard on AM, then home for Christmas! I'm on bread right now which, in the afternoon, is dumb. You get to make one recipe for bread and that is all. There is no way it takes 4 hours to make one recipe of bread.

The long weekend was good. My roomie went home for the weekend, so I had the place to myself, which was nice. Friday I had a pastry test (which went well), Saturday I had my final for bartending (which went well) and then I was off for the weekend! A few of us stuck around to drink all the drinks everybody had made for the bartending final, so I was definitely hungover by 3pm on Saturday. I spent the rest of the weekend basically playing video games, watching movies, and sleeping. It was great. However, I was productive too! I got most everything on my to-do list done. So, all in all, a good weekend. :) Although my Zelda game is going to drive me insane, now that I've actually started playing it.

Anyway, I need to go do homework and get some other stuff done before bed. I'll be back to write another spellbinding post another day!

Long Update Post

Well I said I'd write a detailed blog, so here it is. I feel like I have so much stuff to talk about, I need an agenda - like in a presentation. Something along the lines of this:

Daylight Savings Time Breaking News
Riders Game
Gingerbread
Kitchen
Student Council
US Election
Wine Tasting

OK, so Agenda Item #1 - Daylight Savings Time Breaking News!

-I don't care what we have to do to our clocks...it's still dark out at 5am.

Agenda Item #2...we're moving along quickly! Riders Game!

-I missed the Riders game. However, they got another home playoff game! So I now have something to do on Saturday...as if I already didn't! I wrote an awesome note on Facebook featuring an article from CBC with some hilarious quotes. Here's one from there:

B.C. is 5-4 away from their dome and when you are playing in Regina, in the November wind, in the playoffs, in front of those guys with carved watermelons on their heads, you are decidedly on the road.

Agenda Item #3 - Gingerbread

We officially started our Gingerbread project. It's not for marks, just for fun, but we make a Gingerbread village for the hospital for Christmas. There are 8 groups and each group is responsible for a 2'x4' piece of the village. They will all be brought together to make one giant village!

I've volunteered to be in charge of this project, along with a classmate. We're in charge of making sure it's getting done and being the liaison between the students and the instructors.

My group is going to do the park, with a big Christmas tree, skating rink, carollers, dogs, etc. :)
Agenda Item #4 - Kitchen

Kitchen has been...interesting this week. Yesterday went well. I'm getting slowly better at decorating cakes, yet I still suck at it. And my dessert for today didn't have enough time to prepare, so it didn't turn out. :( But at least I know I had a nice plate design.

Tomorrow we have a function and Friday is buffet. So no individual dessert. I'm going to attempt mini Brioche fruit thingies. If not, I'll whip up some mousse.

Agenda Item #5 - Student Council

I somehow ended up on Student Council again. Not sure how that'll go, but we'll play it by ear. Good chance to meet a few new people at least.

Agenda Item #6 - US Election

Well, I stayed up for another election. This time my guy didn't win. :( I didn't expect him to. I did at the start of the campaign (you know, 2 years ago). But picking Palin sentenced John McCain's campaign to death. Anyway, it should be an interesting 6 months coming up with Obama coming into power.

Obama's resemblance to JFK is uncanny and quite creepy. He's young, relatively inexperienced, charismatic, has a pretty wife and cute kids, is an excellent orator...I really hope he doesn't meet the same end - and I would say that there is a very high risk of that.

Anyway, interesting election. The 2 year lead up is a little silly though.

Agenda Item #7 - Wine Tasting

That's right, we did a wine tasting for our Bartending Class. I've decided that red wine tastes like Worcester Sauce. And white wine is odd. Maple Dessert Wine is entirely too maple-y. But wine is in no way as bad as Brandy. Brandy smells JUST like wine, not too terrible. But it does horrible things when it hits your tongue. >:(

Well, that seems to be all I have to say. Just a quick overview of everything going on. Now for some pictures!


This is what my plated dessert was SUPPOSED to look like. With a Bavarian Cream/Mousse dome instead of that little cup.



This is what it turned into instead when it didn't unmold. :(

And a picture of our wine tasting in the Lucy Maud Montgomery Dining Room!

Daylight Savings Time!

It's my first Daylight Savings Time! How exciting! I woke up at 11 and it was only 10! Craziness!

Today

So, today! Let's chronicle it shall we? Chronological style? Sounds good!

5:00am - Alarm clock goes off
5:23am - Roll out of bed, dash to the shower
5:50am - Wait for my ride out front
6:05am - Get into the kitchen

-Kitchen today was not bad. I made 2 pound cakes which turned out ok. I also made up my last Millefeuilles which I am glad to NEVER have to make again. What a shitty dessert. Also I just remembered that I forgot to give them the chocolates. Oops. I then made an Italian Buttercream. This is a very complicated icing. Let me explain it. First you make a sugar syrup (Water+Sugar) and you boil it until it reaches 116C. Think this is easy? The thing got STUCK at 103. Took like 45 minutes just to get that up to the proper temperature. In the meantime, you need to whip egg whites to stiff peaks. Yes, egg whites can get there. Then, when the syrup is ready, you turn the mixer on low and as it is beating, you pour the SCALDING HOT sugar syrup into the egg whites, without the syrup touching either the side of the bowl or the whisk that is whisking. Then you need to whip it until cool. This is tough b/c not only did you just put 116C sugar syrup in, you're whisking it, which creates friction, thus more heat. Anyway, once it's a bit more cooled, you add a CRAPLOAD of butter and continue whisking until it's all together and creamy and then you add flavouring and VOILA! Not your simple "Water+Icing Sugar" recipe, that's for sure! Anyway, mine was a total success and I love it! Now tomorrow I need to use it and my cakes and DECORATE. Which is scary.

10:30am - Theory Class

-Chef Pam has been teaching theory while Chef Richard is gone. We wrote a test last Friday that I was 100% sure I failed. So, she says "I have your tests marked, but I want to meet with you individually to go over the results." Eep. Chef Pam is the tough chef, but I haven't had her in kitchen, so I don't really have my own opinion. Nonetheless, I am nervous. So, since I'm in AM, I can either wait until 12:30 and go back to the kitchen to talk to her, or I can wait until the next day.

11:30-12:30 - Mess around the school, because there is no way I'm waiting another day to find out I failed.

-I'll just lose sleep. So, I'm the first person in line to talk to her. I got 69%!!!! Whooooo!! And the meeting is mostly b/c we can't keep the tests, so she answers any questions we have about the test. So I got her to clarify a couple things for me and she was really good and explained everything really well.

1-2PM - Meet with Personal Trainer

-I really like my personal trainer. That is going well.

2-3PM - Walk home, stop for groceries, DRAG my butt home as I am about dying from exhaustion by this point.

3-4PM - Shovel food down, watch some Oprah.

4-5:30pm - Get my costume on for the Girl Guides Halloween party!!

5:30-8:30pm - Girl Guides Halloween Party!

-This was a lot of fun! I manned the station where we got the girls to wrap each other like mummies with toilet paper. We had food, fun, and plenty of hyper girls!

8:30pm - My feet died.

And now I'm off to do some homework and go to bed. Night all!

Breakfast

So, I've talked about lunch at school, but now let's talk about BREAKFAST. Breakfast is awesome. Each day you get a meal consisting of:

• Omelette or Scrambled Eggs
• Bacon or Sausage
• Hashbrowns
• Pancakes, Waffles, or French Toast
• Regular Toast - White or Whole Wheat
• Sauce of some kind - strawberry, blueberry...
• Fruit Salad
• A drink
  

In other words, they HEAP your plate with food! Score.

I love breakfast.

Halloween is Coming!

Florida vs. New York!

So, I'm dragging the little bro on a vacation in May. We've whittled down our choices to either New York City or Florida.

Anybody have any suggestions about which one to pick? Things you've heard, have you been there? Please comment!

Hi!

Hello! Long time, no type. Well, not so long. Let's recap what I've been up to!

So...kitchen stories! This is my last week on Bread and Retail 1 before I switch to something else! We had functions 3 days this week...all at 8am. This is horrifying. We have to have food made, proofed, baked, cooled, and on trays by 7:45am and we don't get into the kitchen until 6:30am. Which means that I've been in by 6am at the latest each day to give myself enough time. Horrible. Tuesday was a horrifying day in the kitchen for EVERYBODY. Not just bread, every group. But we survived. Chef Karen is so awesome. If it wasn't for her, I think we all would have gone home absolutely miserable. However, my Tiger Bread came out AWESOME! I've wanted to make that ever since I saw it in the book and I'm so happy it turned out! Unlike that evil, evil Rye Bread! *shakes my fist at it* Anyway, here's my Tiger Bread!



Today we made Baguettes. We halved the retardation time, and it still took 2 hours longer than the shift to finish them. UGH. I was in the kitchen until noon and then Chef Pam tried to yell at me. But I wasn't taking her shit. I'm not going to set myself up for being miserable working with her. I think I'll either get along well with her or horribly with her - she's just like me. So one situation could be great, the other could be horrifying. I have a plan of attack though. Not going to say it here though - it's a strategy I've used before on people, and I don't want it revealed!! It works awesomely good.

Next week I am on Lucy Maud Lunch, so I am making a plated dessert for the lunch service. That's all I'm saying. I'll post a picture next week of what I make. And I hope it turns out good. It could potentially be horrible. Haha.

On Tuesday I met with Sue who is our internship coordinator to talk about jobs. I'm going to meet with her again in a couple weeks after I go through all the information she gave me. She's going to be putting in a call to a chef for me. The one she was thinking of is in Whistler...that could be cool...if I had a car. Whistler itself isn't a big city, which is a downside, but it's close to big cities, so if I could drive places, I would probably survive. The other downside is that she was talking about a situation where I would sign a 3 year contract...I'm not sure I want to jump into signing employment contracts. I'm not really confident enough about where I want to end up and I would like to have the freedom to leave if I end up miserable. So, I'll have to think that over. At the same time, if it's a great opportunity, it might be worth it. We shall see what comes of that!

I started a Basic Bartending class last night! This class will be something I can put on my resume and also gives me my Responsible Beverage Server Certification. It's really good to have in the industry I'm heading into. The class is $250, but they offered it to any Tourism and Culinary Centre students for only $50...so I saved $200! It's only 2 1/2 weeks long, so doesn't really add to my work load too much. Here's a drink I made at the front of the class and a picture of the Bartending Lab we're in:




That's Brittany, one of my Pastry classmates making the crazy face in the front. There are 16 people in the class and 4 of us are Pastry...a quarter of the class. That's right...we make people drunk and fat. Yay Pastry!

Tonight I had Brownies again! We've finally passed the "getting to know you" stage and now the girls are all huggy and crazy and chatty which is awesome. :) I'm in charge of handing out badges, so they all need to come to me when they get one done. So, I'm really glad I'm volunteering with Brownies and I'll definitely do my best to get involved wherever I end up moving past here.

Anyway...I have test tomorrow! So I'd better go study! Bye!

It's 4:45AM...

And I do NOT want to walk to school.

Too bad for me, I have to leave in 30 minutes.

Where to go...

So, the big question that's been haunting me since before I even came here is...where do I go when I'm done? I can go live ANYWHERE! Right now what I'm most pumped to do is move to either British Columbia or the United States. Following behind that would be probably the UK or elsewhere in Canada.

Given that I hate Charlottetown so much, I figured I should look at what about it I hate so I make sure I don't move somewhere similar. And the glaring thing that I hate is how SMALL it is and how few people are here. The population, according to Wikipedia, is about 32K, and about 58K if you consider the "Metro." Either way, too fucking small for me. Saskatoon and Regina are both hovering around 200K - Regina lower, close to about 175K.

So, I thought I'd start by taking a look at a list of cities that have a population of at least 100,000 or more in Canada. Thanks to Wikipedia, I have a base list and there are 48 cities on it. From here I can start to eliminate the places I know I don't want to live. So, the maritimes are out of it, as is Quebec.

Right now, the top city on my list is Kelowna, BC. The population is 106K in the city, or 162K for the Metropolitan area. One downside to it is that it's a tourist city...but I think it's more of a "round the year" tourist city as it has the attraction of the mountains for winter sports, but also lakes and climbing paths for summer sports. Therefore it wouldn't just DIE in the winter, like it does here. It does have an international airport, so I would be able to fly places easily. It's warm there - the coldest recorded temperature according to Wikipedia is -36...psh! It's about half the size of Saskatoon, but I'm sure that population increases due to tourists. Because it is a tourist city, I would be able to get a job in my profession quite easily. Also, it's not right on the coast, which I consider an earthquake/death trap waiting to happen.

Anyway...those are my thoughts right now. Any other thoughts? Suggestions of places to move? I figure I should start doing my research now about what it's like there, what the job prospects are like, etc. I'm meeting with our internship coordinator tomorrow to discuss job opportunities, so that's a start in that direction.

6 1/2 More Months...

Just met with the Residence Life Manager. I didn't get the written citation lifted, but she agreed to write on it that I slept through the alarm. I figure that way at least if I have a landlord in future who phones asking for a reference, it's made clear why I was issued a written citation. And that I didn't do anything wrong.

She basically told me to just not worry about it, it's going to stay there, but brush it off. It's not meant to be a punishment, regardless of the fact that it clearly is one. I'm not so good at brushing things like this off. I'm the goodie-two-shoes who never gets in trouble. Therefore, I don't handle getting in trouble well.

Basically her stance was, "It's not our responsibility to make sure people get out of the building." Which I was a little shocked at, but whatever. I'm not liking UPEI right now, so hey, why not just add to the reason pile? Their argument seems to be, "Well I lived there and it's pretty loud. I don't know how anybody could sleep through it." And my response is, "Well I did. So obviously it's quite possible." And when I mentioned that I hadn't even been around for a fire drill and that I was surprised at this as they were holding them over a week in September, she said, "I think there was only one that week and it was during the day." Which makes NO sense to me. Most residence students are at CLASS during the day, so that's a pretty useless fire drill in my opinion. Isn't the point for people to be home and to practice evacuating so you know what the fire alarm sounds like and where to go when it sounds?

Overall...I'm just not real happy right now. I'm not liking rez, I'm not liking Charlottetown...and I don't even know what to think of my course. I guess I'm liking it. It's the only thing keeping me here at the moment. Pretty much I'm just counting down the days until I can get out of here and go somewhere else. Unfortunately the days aren't going by all that quickly. 6 1/2 more months...

Oddities of PEI - Part 4 - Transit

Ahhh, PEI Transit. This transit system only began in 2005, so it is very new. And from a conversation I inadvertently eavesdropped on, there were a lot of people who opposed it then and who still oppose it. So, the bus system is still fighting opposition.

My understanding is that the bus system is run by a private company, but paid for by the city.

The bus fleet is supposed to match the old time "tourist-y" feel of downtown. So, all the buses look like old trolley cars:


Oh, and that includes the inside. The seats are like park benches:


Where to start about the bus system? Let's start with the good things perhaps!

• It makes me appreciate Saskatoon's bus system
• The bus is always on time here, PROVIDING it's running
• The bus drivers will drop you off anywhere you ask, not just at designated stops
• The bus drivers are very friendly and there's not many of them, so they get to know you

Now the bad points:

• The buses break down...and there are no replacement buses. And the only way you find out that the bus has broken down is by word of mouth from other people waiting for the same bus. If they replace it, it's with a 16 seater van.
• They changed the schedule in the summer so that more buses run. But all the schedules they have posted around the city? They didn't update ANY of them. So, unless you happen to have a paper copy of the new schedule, you don't know when a bus comes.
• The bus drivers are INSANE. I'm surprised a pedestrian hasn't been killed, as they don't really seem to give a crap about them.
  
• The bus doesn't run on Sunday at all, nor on holidays.
  
• They only recently upgraded to, wait for it...LAMINATION. The first pass I got was a 4 month pass that was just a piece of construction paper basically. Don't ask me how that was expected to hold up for 4 months. At the start of October they replaced that with a laminated pass.
  
• The bus doesn't start running until 7am and stops at 10pm.
  
• The way they label the routes is confusing. They don't say "Up and down University Avenue is Route #1. Any bus going there is labelled #1." Instead it's more like "The bus labelled #1 is going to be doing University Ave. for this hour. But next hour the bus labelled #5 is going to be doing it." I can't even explain it right, it's so confusing. The buses are labelled, not the routes.
  

Overall, I'm very grateful to have the bus system. But it could use a lot of improvement.

FIRE!

So, I completely slept through a fire alarm tonight. My roommate even was knocking on my door to wake me up and she said she didn't hear a thing out of my room. I was just tired and asleep.

As a result of this, I got a written violation placed on my account for failure to evacuate the building during a fire alarm. One more and I have to pay a $100 fine and another after that and I get evicted and have to still pay all the rez fees.

I have to say I'm upset by this. It's upsetting to know that their fire system did NOT wake me up when there WAS INDEED a fire. Clearly there should be fire detectors/alarms IN the bedrooms.

And b/c of the failure of THEIR system to wake me up, I'm being punished.

Right at the moment I have to say I don't feel entirely safe living in this building knowing that.

Well!

I couldn't think of a good title.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome of the Federal Election. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Conservatives did! The Liberals lost a LOT of ground - and not just to the Conservatives. The Liberals will have to take a step back and take a look at their party. I've heard from some who want to see Justin Trudeau step in as leader - if not now, in the near future. Should be interesting!!

School is going well! We've been hammering out the bread, delivering it all over the building! Tomorrow I am in charge of making rolls for the Lucy Maud Dining Room, so I need to find some cool shapes tonight!

Just got back from selling Girl Guide cookies all night! I somehow ended up with the ADD child. But since we were walking around, she was not too terrible - had a way to expend her energy.

Last night I crashed at 6:30pm and slept right until 4:30 when my alarm went off - awesome. I'll be lucky if I get to sleep by 10pm tonight. But, tomorrow is the last morning I have to wake up early this week - then my 3 day weekend begins! I actually have a lot to do, so I should make myself a to-do list so I don't forget anything!

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I have posts I want to do, I just don't have them written - perhaps I'll add that to my to-do list!

I saw my personal trainer again today - I'm going to see her every 2 weeks. Right now I have a very difficult circuit set up. More difficult than the one my last personal trainer gave me I think.

Oh yes...the parents were here! Yay! We toured around PEI - beautiful island, but eventually got tired of seeing, haha. Here's a good picture mom took. And here's the conversation that was going on in the process of taking it: Mom says, "Shanna, that's far enough. Shanna. Come back now. Shanna!" etc, etc.


Monday night I went over to a classmate's house for Thanksgiving supper. It was good, but you can tell that all us Pastry students don't quite all mesh together. We have definite cliques. Some of us are trying to move into a another clique as we don't like the one we ended up in first off, due to knowing nobody, and I think we are all succeeding in that slowly. But yeah - a good group, just a lot of different personalities.

Anyway, I would write more, but I'm tired and still have a bit of homework to get done. Ciao!

Election Day!

IMPORTANT ALERT: MSN Election Party

I have decided, on very late notice, to hold the 2nd Quad-Annual (? Every 4 years-ish anyway) MSN Election Party!!!

What we do is all log into MSN, get into the same conversation and watch the coverage together and discuss it! People from all areas of the spectrum are welcome!

If you want to come, just add soulfood77(at)hotmail.com to your MSN and put in your name/status "Invite to MSN Election Party" or something to that effect so that I know to invite you.

The party starts at 7pm EST (Ontario). That is 8pm Atlantic (where I am) and 5pm CST (Saskatchewan) and 4pm PST (West Coast).

***************

In pastry news, we began our regular rotations today. I had the "luck" of being the group leader for my first rotation.

At first I was not too freaked, as I'm on bread and bread is not that hard. Turns out bread is the hardest b/c of all the time we have to spend proofing everything. We just don't quite have enough time to finish everything. Also, I didn't think I had too much for our group to do. But I went in early so I could talk to Chef Karen and check the function sheets and it turns out we had a LOT to do. We made:

• 12 loaves of bread - 4 different varieties, so that means 4 different doughs
• 22 pizza doughs - 570g each - we still need 8 more - I just didn't get it all done (I was on pizza dough duty)
• Danish Dough
  
• Croissant Dough
• Ciabatta
• Focaccia
  
• Sticky Buns

We had a group of 5 people and split it all up.

Things were going well until one of the girls in my group cut herself with her serated knife. It was bleeding a lot and she was getting lightheaded, so I got her into the office to sit down. Chef Karen then came to check on her and I stuck around to just watch her and make sure she didn't pass out. When Chef Karen came back to check on her again, she decided to send her to the hospital. My classmate did need a stitch, but b/c of where the cut was on her finger, they couldn't stitch it, so they just taped it shut and put a bandaid on it. She's doing fine, which is a mucho relief.

CRAZY DAY!

What a Start to a Week!

Whew! Well, I am EXHAUSTED. My legs are just dying. Let me try to recap in a not too rambly way.

Worked the past 3 days at Zellers. When I was called to work my first shift we arranged that shift then I was told we would "Hash out a schedule for the rest of the week when you get in." Apparently that means, "I'll have a schedule for the next week ready for you." So, I ended up working the past two nights until 9:30pm then having to walk home...not cool considering I had to be up at 5am the next morning for school! After just standing in place at work and running my feet off at school, my legs are just tired and in pain today.

I haven't even hit a week of working there yet and I already got a call today to come in to cover a shift. Not a great sign. I'm going to give that place another couple weeks, then I'm going to re-evaluate whether or not I want to stay there.

My week did not start out so great. I could play the blame game, but that's a giant waste of time. Shit happens, you deal with it, that's life! I've been getting a ride to school from a friend at 6am and on Tuesday I was waiting for him and he didn't show! Ah! Takes me 40 minutes to walk to school, class starts at 6:30, so by 6:05 I was freaking out. So, I texted him, phoned him, nothing. I ended up just phoning a cab to get to school and managed to get there and get changed JUST in time for class...WHEW! Turns out the classmate just slept in...oh well! I'm quite sure he had just a bad a start as me that morning, so we just got to be slightly miserable together. :P I get to class and we're not making what I was told we'd be making! Which means I don't have any recipes to use. Which makes me mad because I SPECIFICALLY took the time to ask in theory class what recipes to bring and I was told cakes. Liars. So, fortunately my classmates rock and lent me some recipes.

Chef Richard, the main pastry chef, is headed off to Germany on Saturday for the Culinary Youth Olympics with the team from our school. He's going to be gone for a month! The Olympics aren't that long, but I have a feeling that he'll be visiting home while he's there - he's from Austria. Therefore, this week we've had his replacement come in to work with him and make the transition to taking over the class - she'll be here for the next 4 weeks. Her name is Chef Karen and she is AWESOME. She's very approachable and knows how to teach very well. I'm going to of course assume that this is because she is from the west. The last place she was working was at SAIT in Calgary, teaching the Pastry Arts course there. We were a touch worried about who we'd get as a replacement for Chef Richard while he was gone and I'm happy to say that I'm loving the replacement.

Today we started making cakes. We made Pound Cake, Sponge Cake, and Angel Food Cake. My sponge cake collapsed in the middle. :( Tomorrow we are decorating them and making the icings. So, perhaps I shall have pictures for you tomorrow.

Yesterday we had a day to just remake something, so I decided to remake the Vienna Rolls as my rolls turned out horribly the first time! I just don't quite get the rolling thing - the technique used is one that I'm pretty sure most of you don't use in your kitchens. Or if you do, none of you bothered to teach me which makes you just terrible! But yeah, after re-making the Vienna Rolls, I got the technique down! YAY! And now I have a picture for you that I'm willing to share!

Argh!

A message to my bed:

What in the hell bed? Last weekend I wake up and I've pulled a muscle in my neck which STILL hurts more than a week later. Today I wake up and I've wrenched my knee! That had better work itself back to normal by the end of the day or I'm going to beat you with my pillow tonight!

Anyway...don't know that I have too much of interest to say, so I'm going to tell you my story of Bulk Barn!

The Bulk Barn Saga

Right across the street there is a store called "Bulk Barn." The sign in the window claims "High Quality Bulk Food!" I read that and scoffed. Mostly b/c the signage on the outside is all bright yellow with red lettering, making me think that it's of dollar store quality. Therefore I'm thinking..."Not trustworthy food."

For school we needed to buy some piping tips. And the name Bulk Barn kept popping up. "Go to Bulk Barn" or "I got mine at Bulk Barn." Which made me go, "Seriously?" So finally I went in.

It's Nutters! Holy crap!

Apparently the east (including Ontario, I asked my friend) has this Bulk Barn store and not Nutters.

This is awesome! This store has everything I could ever need for decorating and it's just a quick hop and a skip away from home. Also if I ever do need something such as what you would get at Nutters, it's right there - sweetness.

The End.

Cheeeeeeeeese

I don't really like it. But, when a post went up saying there was going to be a presentation and cheese tasting, I said to myself, "You didn't come to Culinary School to sit on your butt and do nothing" so I signed up.

Now, I've heard that if you don't like cheese/milk that could be a sign that you're mildly lactose intolerant. I don't remember who told me that...I'm thinking Colleen though. Anyway...I'm almost wondering if that's true. Or if I was just to cheesed out that night. But by the end of the night I was sick to my stomach. But I controlled it and didn't puke all over Josh's car on the way home.

I did try about 5 new cheeses. Which for me is very good! My rules for trying new things basically is that if any of the following are applicable, I won't try a food:

• It looks gross
• Somebody told me it's gross
• It smells gross
• The name of it sounds gross
• I think it's gross based on no real reason
  
• Other things that would tip me off that it's gross

So, given those categories, the fact that I tried cheeses at all was impressive. Especially after the very first one tasted like sand in my mouth.

I was in the 2nd row - right behind the row of tables with the cheeses on them. When he opened up the Oka Mushroom, I could smell it from 3 feet away immediately. And it was rank.

But really, I tried probably 6 or 7 total - the only ones I had tried before was Mozarella and Cheddar. But by the time we got to the Cheddar, I couldn't even eat it. My stomach was churning and I was just passing all the cheeses by me. I had water but that didn't even help to get rid of the taste from my mouth. We needed mint gum or something.

So, I won't go to a cheese tasting again. But it was a good experience! Now here are some pictures!

This is Josh's perfectly organized plate. He went for the spiral method of organizing.


This is my plate - I stopped taking cheeses after the Cheddars as you can see. I went for the line method of organizing. Each line was a different grouping they had us do together.


Here was the table with all the leftover cheese sitting on it. Soooooo much cheese.



*Note for all those mothers/aunts out there - I know what you're thinking but just so you know Josh is a classmate of mine and he's happily married, so just take that train of thought and throw it away.

Milestones! (Subtitle: Happy Birthday Little Bro!)

Well, this past week, I passed my one month milestone! So, what was "It's only 8 months" has now become "It's only 7 more months." Woot!

It's been a crazy, crazy week for me! I was asleep Monday night and got a call from Zellers that woke me up, asking me to come in for an interview on Tuesday. (OK, it was 7pm. I like to sleep early, deal with it.) So, interview Tuesday which went well. On Wednesday I was called and offered the job. Thursday I had my first shift in which I learned basically nothing. They were short people and just didn't have time to train me. So, I was supposed to be "observing" but it's hard to observe when the cashier's fingers are flying over the buttons and you don't know what any of the buttons do. I work again tomorrow for 6 hours, so hopefully I make a bit more progress then. And get some actual formal training.

As for what I think of the job...it's expendable. Not a job I'd want to be stuck in for any length of time, but it'll be ok for 15 hours a week. And I won't mind the cash to at least cover my phone bill each month. I'm also going to apply for some scholarships/bursaries and try to get some cash that way too.

So, due to the job, Thursday turned into a 16 hour day - not cool. I did not come here to get back into the habit of having days where I'm on my feet for 12-16 hours. But I just asked for Thursdays off in future. I was up at 5am so I could get to school for 6:30, was in kitchen until 11:30 - home to eat quick, then off to work. Work until 5. Home for food quick, then off to Girl Guides. It was a crazy day.

Girl Guides should be fun! I'm going to be working with the Brownies group. This is ages 7 and 8. It's every Thursday from 6:30-8, plus some weekend things if I can make it to them. And what I like about Girl Guides is that there are Girl Guides in almost every city, so wherever I end up moving, I can pick back up as a leader in the new place. Quick way to find volunteer work elsewhere. They're happy that I have my CPR/First Aid as nobody else does and one of us is supposed to have it.

We finished the evil puff pastry this week! *shakes my fist at it* My dough ended up turning out awesome. Too awesome. :( It rose so well that all my bouchees fell over! Oh well. I know how to make them not fall over next time now, even if my dough next time is just as awesome. Regardless of how it looked after being cooked...the stuff tastes like sin. So good.

After puff we moved to making Savarin and Brioche. I really like the Savarin. It's very easy to make and makes a very nice dessert. We finished off the week with Choux Paste (pronounced Shoe Paste) which so far is my favourite thing to make. SO easy, looks FANCY, and tastes DIVINE. It's not something I can ship out to you...but perhaps those I see at Christmas will get a taste. *hint hint* It tastes nothing like shoes or like paste of any kind.

Now we begin cakes! One more week of "introductory" work before we begin our rotations. So, the last week we'll cover cakes and I think a couple other things.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the week!

First off, here are some awesome cinnamon buns I made with my danish dough. The filling is a hazelnut filling with raisins and it's drizzled with a clumpy icing sugar icing. (OK, the clumpiness wasn't on purpose...*shakes my fist at the icing sugar)


I went to the Police Station to get a Police Record Check for Girl Guides. I'm given some forms and told to go into a TINY room with a really intimidating peep hole (it moves around and stuff...) to fill it out. Here's my attempt at a picture of the tiny room.


Adding the finishing touches to my Savarin. I did not make the sauce did...Josh did. I didn't like it. But it was heavy on the rum and cloves and I'm not a fan of either.

Picture Blog!

So, I went crazy with my camera phone today, so I've decided to just do a quick photo blog of the day's adventures. Enjoy!

Today we made danishes. Here is a big braided danish I made. This is an in-progress picture. I didn't cook it, as I didn't want to take it home. So I just made it then tossed it into the freezer. It'll just need to be thawed, proofed, and baked and it'll be good to go!


Finished product before freezing!


Here are some danishes myself and a classmate made. Mine are on the left. Mmmmmm, cinnamon rolls made with hazelnut filling.


Here's a picture of that tray baked out. Something was different about our doughs and hers took much longer to cook. So, since we had to leave them in until hers cooked, that meant that mine were a bit overcooked. You can see mine clearly in the back as they are much, much darker.


I said I'd try and get some pictures of the kitchen, so here are a few. This is a picture of the bread making area. This has been my station so far this year as we're just sort of plunked anywhere for the moment. Once we start rotations, this is where I start, as I'm on Bread and Retail for my first 2 weeks.


Clearly you can see we are HARD at work. That's my knife kit right at the front with the pizza cutter. The rolled out dough you see with the square and triangle? Yeah, that was my failed attempt at making croissants. Apparently those aren't the type of triangles that you use to make croissants. The triangle needs to be more "pizza slice" shaped. What is that? And isosceles triangle? I think so.


This is facing over towards the other side of the kitchen. I think the Lucy Maud stations are over there. You can see all our little mixers lined up. We also have bigger mixers for making larger quantities of dough.

And what I think is my new favourite picture of myself. :)

Oh cruel fate...

Apparently you do not want me to sleep tonight. Fine then. I shall blog.

Neck is...well, I don't even know. Sort of better but sort of worse. It's more of just a general pain now, but it's moved up into my head, which I'm not liking. I did get some Advil, and it helped for a bit.

I was supposed to go to a workshop on pears tonight, but apparently the bus broke down. And being that this is Charlottetown, there is no replacement bus. How very unhelpful. I could have maybe made it there somehow, but my head hurt anyway, so I just went home. It was an optional thing anyway. I will have a rant about the bus later. Oh, it's coming.

Charlottetown...what to say about it? Oh, I know. I don't like it. I really don't want to stay here. I'm mostly counting down the months until I can leave. OK, that came out really mean. It's a nice enough city, probably a good place to raise kids, but there's jack squat here to do. I've spent every weekend just bored out of my mind. I'm attempting to find stuff to do, but overall, I'm just sort of unimpressed with the city. Everybody told me I'd fall in love when I came out here. Well, in all honesty, it's not much different than back home except it's more boring. Perhaps it's nicer if you're just sort of popping in here as a tourist. But living here - not my cup of tea.

I did find out that the school hires 2 pastry students to work the summer. (Did I mention this last post? I can't remember.) So anyway, I would be willing to stay 4 extra months if I were to get that job, but that's it, then I'm outta here.

Oh, and everything here is SMALL, did I mention that? I went and got a library card today, and once I got in there and was looking at the books I was like "Seriously? This is it?" This is the capital of the province and the library is smaller than the one in Weyburn is. And Weyburn is 1/3 the size of Charlottetown. This place just isn't big city enough for me.

Had to go to school today for a "Library Skills " class. Just another "Here's the library, here are the books, here is how you find a book" class. As if I can't figure that out myself. What a giant waste of time. And it was MISERABLE out - thank you Tropical Storm Kyle.

OK, this blog is super negative...hmmm....need something positive...

I did hear back from Girl Guides and I'm going to meet with the coordinator tomorrow! They definitely need people, so once I get a record check done (working with kids, that's sort of a standard thing) and fill out some paperwork, that should be something for me to do!

I got woken up tonight at 7:30 (yes, I went to bed at 6:30, I was tired!) by Zellers who was phoning me for an interview, so I have that tomorrow afternoon. So perhaps I might have a job. Although I'm at the point now where I wasn't expecting one and now I'm not so sure I even want one. But I'll go - if it turns out I don't want a job, I can always quit. :) I just need to make sure I can balance everything. I do want to volunteer, so that's my girl guides, and I have school of course. So the question is if I can put a job on top of that. I think I can. I just don't want to go too insane. Need to find a happy balance.

I'm getting a personal trainer. I decided the money was worth it. I'm just going to be meeting with her once every two weeks to keep me on task in terms of working out while I'm here. So, hopefully that all works out well. I met with her last week and really like her, so I foresee good things with that. Didn't work out today though - mostly b/c my neck still doesn't really work and I don't want to strain it more before it heals.

I think I've run out of things to say for the moment. Tomorrow we take the dough we made last week and make final products out of it! So, hopefully I shall have some pictures for you. :)

Ouch :(

I don't know which muscle is responsible for keeping my head upright and moving it around, but I pulled it last night. So I'm not feeling so great today. Took some Tylenol and that gave me a small amount of movement, but I'm still quite limited. I think I'll be spending a lot of time laying down today so that I don't have to hold my head up.

So! The rest of the week! Wednesday we made fillings - blueberry, hazelnut, and pastry cream. All quite simple and easy. Yes, I managed to boil my milk over but my pastry cream still turned out. There was a big banquet yesterday for the Olympic Youth Team, so the summer pastry students had been spending the whole week preparing for it. So, if we had spare time in between doing what was planned for the day, we helped them out. So, on Wednesday I helped with coring some apples for apple crisp. My first time using my melon baller...I suppose that's exciting. :P

Thursday we made Danish Dough! Thursday was definitely my best day in the kitchen. My dough turned out great and I got it done quickly. In my spare time I helped slice up pears - pears that had been soaked in a mixture of red wine and spices - so my uniform got a bit messy.

Friday...ugh, Friday. The downside - I let myself fall asleep for a couple hours when I got home Thursday (still trying to get used to the new sleep schedule) so I was up until 12:30 and then awake at 5am to get ready for school. So, grumpy and tired to begin with. Then we made Puff Pastry which is the devil. In the end, the puff pastry worked out, but it's definitely not my favourite thing to make. The way Danish Dough and Puff Pastry get the butter content in is to make the dough and then roll it out. Once it's rolled out you just put a block of fat in the middle, fold the dough around it, and then roll the fat into the dough that way. And if the fat doesn't stay in the dough, you have a problem. Therefore...I had a problem with my puff pastry. The upside to Friday was that I still had time to help out with the banquet stuff, so I got to help make Truffles! I piped chocolate into pre-made truffle casings and then when we ran out I got to make my first Ganache...basically a type of chocolate sauce to simplify it. So that was fun!

So, we made the doughs this week - next week we use the doughs to actually make the Danishes and the different types of Puff Pastries. Not too sure how that'll go, but we'll see.

Overall, kitchen is awesome. Some things are frustrating - two in particular. The first is just having to share things like the scales. Which I just need to stop being a baby about. I just like to work fast and I don't like getting slowed down b/c I don't have access to equipment. However, once we get into our regular rotations, everybody will be making different things, so that should alleviate the demand for all the equipment. It was very frustrating on Wednesday when we needed a burner to make our fillings and there weren't enough, so we just sat there with nothing to do. The second thing that frustrates me is trying to work with classmates who haven't done the minimum amount of work required to get ready for class - like finding their recipes. I'm hoping that stops soon and that people will get the idea that you need to spend 10 minutes each night getting organized for the next day. Really, there's very little homework - more just preparation for the next day. There's no excuse not to have a recipe ready when you know what you're making the next day.

At home I made perogies on my own for the first time. I've helped make them before, but never done it completely on my own. But I said I'd bring some for Thanksgiving - one of my classmates has invited everybody over for Thanksgiving supper so I'm looking forward to that. I'll have to make probably one more batch just so that we definitely have enough. I didn't think I had made that many, but after they were frozen and I put them all in the same bag, I found I had made a lot more than I thought.

I'm finding Charlottetown quite boring. I've sent an e-mail to the Girl Guides to see if they can use me as a volunteer to help run their programs - I'm hoping that works out. I found a list on the UPEI website of places to volunteer and that's the one that interested me the most, so we'll see if that pans out. But I really need to find SOMETHING to do. Clearly nobody wants to hire, not just me, but anybody in our pastry class. Our schedules flip flop too much and no employer wants to deal with it. I'm definitely going to be giving that as feedback about this new style they're trying with the pastry class. But yeah...I'm super bored here and I need to find something to occupy my time. I'm wishing I'd registered for a web class with the U of S to get a bit closer to finishing that degree. Next term I'm definitely registering for at least one, if not more, that I can do during my spare time here.

Anyway....my neck is giving out, so I'd better go lay down for a bit. Riders game in an hour - go Riders!!!

Oddities of PEI - Part 3 - Taxes

Subtitle: WTH PEI?

Seriously? 10% PST? You make me sick.

And so it begins...

Oh yes, I made those. And Chef Richard called them "Excellent Specimens" in front of the whole class. Granted, I didn't know they were mine at the time. And granted, most of you have probably made bread like this before. But, making something this simple was a good intro to the kitchen - where to find things, how to use the oven (which is GIGANTIC), and other handy things.

Now, the rolls I made. They actually taste better than these braided loaves, but they didn't turn out so great in the looks department. So, you don't get pictures. :P

Overall, waking up early wasn't so bad. I went to bed early, so it really makes no difference - as long as I got enough sleep! Also, a classmate was awesome and came and picked me up, so that saved me about 40 minutes of walking. :) His car is in the shop tomorrow morning, so I'll be walking but that's ok. I figure every day that I can get a ride is one less day I have to walk, so I should be grateful for it.

On one hand, my feet are going "You idiot! This is why you got a desk job. We hurt!" But on the other hand, the time flew by and I was glad I wasn't just sitting behind a desk anymore. :)

Voting and The Bus!

Voting!

So I voted today! Yes! That's right! I went in to register, as I'm registered back in Saskatoon and that's not real helpful to me. So, after much paperwork the lady said I could vote right then, or on the 14th, and I was all like "Let's do it now!" So I did. Now, I've never advance polled before, so this was new to me and exciting. Yet very complicated. I am given a ballot with a blank line that just says "Write the candidate's name" or something to that effect on it. So, I was like "Oh shit, I don't know any of the candidates...I rarely do, I just look at the party beside the name and vote like that." So I piped up and asked if there was a list in the thingy that you vote in. You know...half of a cardboard box. And she says they can't make up a list of people - you know in case some scandal occurs and somebody drops out. ;) But she told me the names and I memorized the guy I wanted. Then I went in with my ballot and little envelope and write the name down. Then I had to stick the ballot in the envelope without folding it and seal it. Then I had to stick the sealed envelope into ANOTHER envelope, sign it, and seal it. Whew! But there it is! I've voted!

This means that when the results from advanced polls come in, they will reflect my vote! Which is, granted, insubstantial in the grand scheme of things. But hey, at least the dude I voted for will at least be able to go "Well, I didn't get 0 votes, whooo!" That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Or something.

Now it's your turn!

Bus Insanity!

A few short months after the murder of Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus, another stabbing has occurred! Here's my understanding of the timeline:

-Police in Ontario take a guy into custody for disturbing the peace, charge him, then release him
-He later that day comes back and asks them to take him to the hospital for psychological reasons
-The police do so, he's assessed by a doctor, deemed safe, and released
-He had a "strong desire to go home" so the police used social assistance funds to pay for a ticket for him to go home on the bus
-The police put him on the bus (this is misleading...not sure if they just bought the ticket, or if they dropped him off at the bus station, or what exactly happened there)
-He apparently has a knife and stabs somebody on the bus about 2 hours into the trip
-He goes to the front and asks to be let off the bus, the bus driver stops, lets the dude off, and then just drives away
-The police arrest him on the side of the road.

Now, I swear this is straight out of a movie. If it wasn't for the fact that people are getting killed, injured, traumatized and more, this would almost be hilarious. Instead it's just tragic.

What is crazy is some of the comments people are leaving on the CBC website in reply to the article. Let me quote some of my favourites:

"The police are funny. Like clowns. And seriously?! They let the dude off the bus and kept going??????? "

"I got off a bus in Moose jaw Sask this week end and a guy was selling crack on it."

"I really wish people would stop referring to criminals or other ungentlemanly men as gentlemen."

"The era of taking naps on Greyhound buses is probably now over."

"Again? Why is it these knife carrying crazies are always headed toward Winnipeg? "

And last but not least...

"Commenter wrote: "The OPP are out of control. If the police put that violent man on the bus, it was a fearmongering conspiracy to push people towards a neo con police state."

The bus was heading the right direction ;-)"

Exciting Week

Well, sort of an exciting week.

Let's see...I last blogged on Monday. Yes, exciting news there - no need to take my 2 core classes - excellent!

Since then, let's see. Tuesday was CPR. Boring, but I haven't taken it since my Bronze Cross days, so it was very good to get a refresher and get officially certified. There have been changes to both CPR and First Aid in the past few years, but nothing crazy. Wednesday was First Aid. Overall, these two I'd taken before, but I find them interesting, so they weren't too bad of days. I did learn that one of the symptoms of a stroke is an impending sense of DOOM!

Thursday morning we did WHMIS. For those who don't know, that's Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. Not nearly as bad as I expected! It's something you need to learn, but once you've learned it, it's a lot of common sense. Read labels, don't pour stuff into an unlabeled container, don't use anything if you don't know what it is, etc., etc.

So, once the paperwork goes through, I will be officially certified for CPR, First Aid, and WHMIS!

Onto Thursday afternoon! FINALLY we got to meet as a group with our chef instructors. There are a few classmates we hadn't met yet. People who took the culinary previously didn't have to sit through the core classes again, so we haven't seen them the first two weeks. And we had never been officially with our instructors. So, this was exciting! Oh, Thursday I also came down with a cold...so while exciting, I was also sitting there quite miserable with a sore throat. And I'm still miserable as I type this.

We got our officially "bibles" for Pastry - a GIANT binder with recipes, notes, and definitions. Now, nothing is ordered or indexed or anything - so it's up to us to go through it and put some dividers in and figure everything out. So, I'll be doing that with a couple hundred pages of recipes this weekend. We aren't necessarily given the recipe for everything. So if we're told that we're making a particular thing and don't have a recipe, it's up to us to go find a recipe from somewhere. Perhaps our textbooks, perhaps the library from a book, or perhaps just go online and find something.

We also FINALLY got our schedules for the entire year. The first three weeks we're doing basics - so we're either am or pm. I, of course, am scheduled for the morning. After that we start bi-weekly rotations. We're on one of 6 stations for 2 weeks, then we go somewhere else. 3 of the stations are in the morning, 3 of them are in the afternoon. And if you're on one particular afternoon station, there are also Saturday night shifts that you may have to come in for. Not cool. Chef Richard, teaches the AM class and Chef Pam teaches the PM class. Chef Pam is definitely more strict, but you can tell that you'll be able to learn a lot with her. Chef Richard has a lot of knowledge and sometimes it's a bit overwhelming as I'm definitely a beginner when it comes to professional pastry arts.

So, there are 12 bi-weekly rotations. I'm on mornings for 7 of them and afternoon for only 5 of them. And I only get one afternoon rotation this term and the other 4 are next term. Which I guess is ok since next term will be the colder/snowier one. So, for those of you who are texting me at 8pm Saskatchewan time, I can assure you I will have been in bed for at least 3 hours by the time you text/phone me.

Last thing on Thursday...UNIFORMS! Yay! How exciting! I am now wearing sweat pants to school every day - I just change when I get there anyway. So, our uniform consists of:

• Checkered Pants - they're hard to see in the following picture, I had my apron too long. Suffice it to say, it's very small checkers. The pants are very poofy around the hips. And mine need at least 4-5 inches hemmed off them, which I'm hoping to accomplish this weekend. We get 3 pairs of pants and we're in charge of washing them.
  
• Chef's Jacket - this is embroidered with our first and last name. Just a white jacket. There is a tiny white pocket in the upper left sleeve for pens/pencils. Other than that, no pockets. Just some in the pants.
  
• Necktie - You think tying a regular tie is hard? Try a chef's knot. It's craziness. But I think I've got it down.
  
• Black Steel Toed Shoes - these we had to supply ourselves. I found a pair that are like runners - paid about $75 at Mark's.
  
• Chef's Hat - this is just made of paper. My understanding is that the taller it is, the more senior you are. Your hair has to be completely underneath it.
  
• Apron and Side Towel - those are fairly basic. They're white and go around your waist. My apron in this picture is tied much too long. I think I'll shorten it a bit next time I tie it.
  

So, that's it! We get a new hat every Friday. For the jacket, necktie, apron, and side towel, we just go to laundry and we hand one in and they give us a clean one. Simple. (unless you lose something...then watch out!)

Anyway, here's the picture! I texted some of you. If you didn't get a text...well your phone doesn't do pics or I don't have your cell number. :P


Today was our first Theory class in the demo kitchen. You know those kitchens you see on TV with a chef behind them showing you how to make something? Exactly the same thing. In about 2 hours Chef Richard made 2 batches of bread, blueberry filling, hazelnut filling, and pastry creme. So, I'm assuming that's what we'll be making on Tuesday when we get in the kitchen. Theory class is cool, but it's obvious I've never done this professionally as I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I definitely have to do a lot of reading. After theory was done, they took us on a really quick tour of the kitchens. And that was it! So, now I'm off until Tuesday! Hopefully I can kick this cold by Sunday. :)

Anyway, I have more to say, but I've talked enough for one post. I'll save the rest for another post.