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!