I have the Weather Network bookmarked on my computer so I can check the weather before I go out. However, I've never bothered to change the setting to bookmark it to Charlottetown instead of Saskatoon. So, the first temperature I see when I go is what it's like back home. This morning? -38C in Saskatoon versus +5C in Charlottetown!!
It's February and I didn't wear my winter coat outside. I could get used to this. Overall, I LOVE winters in PEI from a weather standpoint. All the rain turns into massive amounts of snow and I LOVE snow. And it's great snow! Not the powder crap we get back in SK...every single day the snow here is snowball/snowman consistency. Also the temperature never gets insanely cold. I think the coldest it ever was here was -25C.
Unfortunately, I have a massive hatred for rain. So no, I won't forgive PEI for it's crappy spring/summer/fall weather just b/c it has great winters. However, I might go looking for a place with similar weather but less rain! Or at least buy myself a car so I can drive in the rain instead of walking in it.
Less than 10 posts so far this month! And it's almost over! Thank God!
So what have I been up to? I dunno. We had a crazy rotation the first 2 weeks in February. Then last week I spent at least 11 hours at school every day until I finished that wedding cake. But it's sooooooo good to have it finished!! I think I was the 3rd person in the class to finish. So now I can start on my final project. My plan is to do a sugar project, so we'll see how it goes.
We have a week off in March break. I'd like to go somewhere, but chances are that I won't. I'll probably spend that week packing up my stuff and getting ready to head out of PEI. I have 8 more weeks of class, 1 week for March break, and 1 week between end of classes and grad, then I'm heading out of here, so 10 weeks total. I'm very excited to be done so I can move on and go somewhere else.
Anyway, I don't seem to have much to say and I should be in bed, so I'm going to head that way. See ya!
My sister just may kill me for not making this for her wedding. But it's her fault for getting married a year too soon!
P.S. The music piped on the top tier is the Legend of Zelda Overworld Theme.
Well, with all the blogs I've done in my time, I think this is only the 2nd one where I've hit 100 posts! *pats myself on the back*
I suppose I haven't posted in a while. So what have I been up to? Not too much! I had to finish my occasion cake - the one posted below. Then we had a very busy week at school. During my last rotation we had 3 functions with a total of 490 people attending. So, I was on bread and we had to do dinner rolls for those functions. We made over 600 rolls last Friday and over 200 this Friday, although I was doing other stuff this past Friday, so my group members did the majority of that work. Also, during the first Friday when we did 600 rolls - we had two group members sick and a fire alarm in the middle of it!! But I'd say we made lots of rolls. Here's a picture of just a fraction of the rolls we made that day.
I tried to do a bread showpiece. I ended up doing it at home as I didn't have time at school to do it. I wanted a Valentine's showpiece we could display at school. But it turned out looking like crapola. I had to make it over 2 days, so the dough that had been sitting in the fridge overnight cooked differently than the fresh stuff, so there was a big difference in how it looked. You could pinpoint what had been made with the new dough. Anyway, here it is. I'm going to try another bread showpiece over March break. I'll just spend an entire day making it.
Oh! And since I'm uploading pictures, here's a picture of the outside again. This is a picture from our cafeteria of the water. Actually, since I'm at it, I'll put a comparison picture of what this looks like without snow.
I'm back on AM shifts for the next month. It's my last month of AM. Getting close to the end!!! We only have 9 more weeks of classes, 1 week for March break, and 1 week after classes are done until grad. Then I'll be home...11 weeks!! :D I don't really have a "home" to go to necessarily...just crashing with the parents. :P Hopefully for as short as possible. There are some recruiters coming to the school in the coming week, so I'm going to meet with the west coast ones if they interest me.
Tomorrow we get a day to just work on our showpieces, so I'm going to work on my wedding cake. My goal is to finish it by Friday and present it on Friday. I'll work on it tomorrow and then stay every afternoon until it's done. :) So hopefully pictures of that for you within the week!
But for the moment I have to go work on some other stuff. Ciao!
Well, I went on a sleigh ride with my Brownies and Sparks on Saturday! The sleigh ride was about half an hour and then we had hot chocolate and hot dogs. It was a lot of fun and everything ran very smoothly! Here are some pictures for those who want to see some of the PEI countryside in the winter.
Occasion cake done! This was my first attempt ever at a fondant cake. Fondant is a type of icing that you can roll out, shape, and do all sorts of cool stuff with. I'm not sure I'd ever really EAT it, but it is edible.
So, in all honesty, I didn't really have a "plan" for this cake or a vision of what I wanted it to be. I'm really excited about my next two big projects, but this one I just kinda wanted over with. I wanted to finish it within the first two weeks of January, but that didn't happen, so I only just finished it today - a day before it was due. :( Not the best, but at least it was on time I suppose. Anyway, the top just says Happy Birthday and the side says "No dream is ever too small, no dream too big." That was supposed to be referring to my tiny fairy. Overall, Chef Pam said that for my first cake ever, it was very good. I find her to be very supporting and encouraging - you can tell that she wants us to learn and be somewhat motivated. For things like this I try to remind myself of two things. First - I knew that the fancy stuff would be my weakness, so I should expect lower marks. Sure, I can get 99% on a test, but don't expect 99% on a cake, it's just not going to happen. And second - I could never do something this great before I got here, so this is huge improvement on anything I've ever done before.
I've still got quite a bit left to do for the semester. Next up is our wedding cake. I have that 100% planned out and I am quite excited. All I'll tell you is that it's music themed.
Anyway, I'm off to do...something! Toodles!
First of all...SNOW DAY! Wow, and there isn't even that much snow. But I didn't complain! I made use of my day!
So anyway, stuff happening lately. Let's see...
Chocolate, Flour, and Starches test! Remember that one? The boring studying? Well, I only got ONE question wrong. How very frustrating. But anyway - I definitely ninja kicked that test! We have one coming up next Friday and I plan on doing the same thing to it!!
Skills competition results! Chef Richard has this weird thing where he won't hand you a sheet of paper to read - a test, judging results - he has to hold it, not let you see it, and read off it what he feels like reading off. Anyway, results are that one of my french pastries was crap, the birthday cake wasn't perfect (duh), and that I did surprisingly well on my chocolates!! Also, he said that I had the cleanest station in the kitchen, which I did. Haha, not to brag. It's just a fact. Some of my classmates are kinda messy. Chef had said that we could spend "a couple minutes" cleaning up after the deadline "if necessary." Which I took to mean exactly that. Try to be cleaned up in time, but if not, it's ok to just be wiping down your table and stuff at 6:02. Well, most of my classmates took it to mean that they could work right until 6pm and then spend 45 minutes cleaning up. Which sucked for me b/c I had to stick around and help them clean. BOO!
Snow day today! It started snowing yesterday, I walked home in it, it wasn't that bad, we ended up with maybe 15-20cm of snow - but they gave us a snow day today! SWEET. So, I used my day to put together and online portfolio that I can use when looking for jobs. I plan on starting to look for jobs this weekend - long weekend. I've got a line on a small contract job in May (thanks Dad!) so I'm working on that as well. :) Things are looking good. Statistics Canada recently released an update saying that regardless of the economic troubles, business for restaurants is climbing, so that's good news for me. I'm in a good industry. Anyway, if you want to check out my portfolio, it can be found at http://www.shannapilon.blogspot.com. If you have any feedback/comments let me know!
I had a request for some pics of what it looks like outside, so here are some I've taken!
Ok, this is my building from the back. The colour is weird...this was in the middle of the storm and taken with my cameraphone, so wonky things were happening. 
This is the parking lot at my school. Also near the start of the storm - basically this picture was taken at the start of the walk, and the one above was taken at the end of the walk home. I'm finding walking home and to school to be less and less of a bother. I found that in Saskatoon too. At first when I moved there, having never really walked anywhere before, 20 minutes seemed like so long, then that became just a quick walk. When I came here, 40 minutes seemed so long, and now it seems so short. And if I get cold on the way, I just pop into stores to "shop" with no intention of shopping at all. I wander until I'm warm, then leave and continue on my way. 
Picture of a picnic bench in the yard of a building across the street from my school. Kind of gives a better idea of how much snow there is. There's been more snow than this, but it's often above 0 degrees, so lots of the snow has melted/been rained away. 
Walking up to my school. They were clearing the streets - pushing the snow into the middle then coming along to get rid of it. 
A loaded mini van pulled in to the only remaining campsite. Four children leaped from the vehicle and began feverishly unloading gear and setting up the tent. The boys rushed to gather firewood, while the girls and their mother set up the camp stove and cooking utensils.
A nearby camper marveled to the youngsters’ father, “That, sir, is some display of teamwork.”
The father replied, “I have a system; no one goes to the bathroom until the camp is set up.”
YAY! One more month down! 3 more, that's it!! Woot!
Anyway, finished up the Skills PEI competition yesterday - what a long day! I don't know what my marks were - as a nice kick in the ass at the end of 2 days, they wouldn't tell us. We just know who got 1st-3rd and the rest of us were left out in the dust. But we did get a "Participant" plaque. Overall, I'm happy with what I produced. I think if I'd changed one of my french pastries, I would have done better, but oh well! Here are the pics!
First up is my chocolates, all presented! We had to do 2 chocolates, 12 each and a chocolate box that could hold at least 5 of each. On the left are Bahos which are a Ginger-Lime Caramel in a molded White Chocolate. On the right are my Anise Stacks which I had pictured before. My Anise Stacks turned out worse than in class - the smaller batch just didn't work as nicely as the big batch. The molded chocolates however turned out nicer. The box I wasn't so pleased with in all honesty. I liked my other one better. But Chef Pam had said that my last one was too thing, so I tried making this one thicker and it just made it a bit uglier. Bleh.
My pride and joy - Miniature Dobos Tortes. One of my french pastries. I was totally making this up as I went along and they turned out so nice! I love 'em! A Dobos is a classical torte that is layers of chocolate sponge cake and chocolate buttercream (typically about 6 layers of each...I cut it back to 3 layers) with pieces of caramel on top. These just looked so great and I was so happy with them!
My birthday cake! Can you spot the mistake?
My uglier "I can speel gud" birthDay cake! Overall, I suck at piping and so it wasn't so great. This was the absolutely last thing I did. As much as it sucks, this is WAY better than anything I could have hoped to accomplish prior to coming to culinary school, so that says something!
My mousse cake on a tile and with a piece presented. Man I was happy with this too! The checkerboard was PERFECT. Except something happened when I took it off the wire rack after ganaching it and the bottom square of mousse on the right got scraped away, causing my cake to be lopsided. Oh well. What matters is that if I could send you flavour over the internet, your mouth would be in heaven right now. It tasted DIVINE.
This is a picture of how dirty I was! The cameraphone kinda white-washes things, so this doesn't do justice to how dirty I was. I had dripped cherry juice all down one side of me.
One of my classmates, Josh. This is his Plan C for a chocolate box - paint a paper bag with chocolate and then pull away the paper. The funny thing is that if he had painted a few more layers of chocolate, it would have worked!
7:31!! All our stuff had to be out by 7:30, so 7:31 was a great time!
My stuff after the judges were done picking it over. A lot of people didn't like my Religeuse - the pink things. I took a chance with that. It's a classical but rare dessert. Oh well, it was something different, which is what I was going for!
Now for the competitors! Here's a few pictures of what my classmates produce. First I've got a picture of Josh's stuff. I don't actually know what it all is. But here's a look! 
This is Stephanie's stuff. She got 2nd place. I was really impressed with her Chocolate Box. 
And now for the winner. I was REALLY happy with who won - Courtney! She wanted to win SO bad and so I'm glad she did. Plus everything she made was wicked! Here is a picture of her Birthday cake which was just ridiculous. The piping of Happy Birthday is just amazing. Her chocolate box is beside it and it had a very unique shape, yet actually very easy to do. Looked great though! 
The rest of Courtney's stuff. She made a (don't quote me on this) Rasperry Pistachio Opera Cake - that's what's in the white thingies. I don't know what the other 6 French Pastries are. Once again, the piping on the top of her Mousse Cake is just really impressive. 
And here's the team! I was trying desperately not to fall into the sink during this picture. 