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!!!