Safeway Wisdom

Safeway wisdom seems kinda like an oxy moron to me, kinda like sophomore means wise fool. I'm going to attempt to add photos to this to better illustrate the wiseness, lets see how this works.

Ok so this is a knife... a large knife... with handles on both ends. Said knife is rather sharp and very handy to have when cutting lots of large items.

This is a cutting glove, made of some kind of metal mesh stuff designed to keep idio- erm, people- from cutting themselves. Now looking at the aforementioned knife one would assume that to properly use said knife one would use both hands.

Today my boss yelled at me for not having a (singular) glove on. Now I must ask.. what good is 1 glove going to do me. Especially considering that both hands are on the knife at all times when it is in use, it rather seems to me that I would be in more danger of cutting off a leg than a hand and I am pretty sure a glove isn't going to help my leg. Maybe I should suggest a full Kevlar suit when I am cutting a 4 inch cake. Things can get real scary when you do big jobs like that and I wouldn't want to lose a foot or something. Course I could collect disability pay and not have to work for the rest of my life... hmm I might have something here...

On the other hand check out the awesome cake I made last week. My inspiration was LMFAO ( the music group) and tie dye. I think it turned out pretty stinkin awesome.

My evil.. err I mean wonderful co worker started to do this cake but I told her I would finish because she couldn't figure out what tie dye was. She read the order and said oh they want the stuff  that soldiers wear. I said um yaaa no. They want tie dye. She kept insisting that that's soldiers wear. I am very glad that I insisted on doing this cake, after it was done she said Ohhhhh thats what it meant, I would never have guessed that lol. Oh the joys of working.

On my way down to Oregon a couple weeks ago, my wonderful car rolled over 100,000 Miles. Lucky for me I was at a stop light when I noticed it was rolled over.

Of course now it has a few hundred more miles and another trip to Salem and back on it but I am glad I have a picture to commemorate the monumentis occasion.

Well the final parting thought for the blog
Outside of a dog mans best friend is a book. Inside a dog its too dark to read anyways.

Adult Sea Turtles

Now that I have you rapt attention with that ever so catchy title, I must post a disclaimer and say that the following post has nothing to do with sea turtles at all. As my dear mother and sister learned at lunch today, most subjects in my head are connected by a 20 foot leap and a hand spring or two while other subjects arent connected at all and they just pop into my head like little kernels of popcorn.
Speaking of popcorn- did you see the storm that was rolling over Bozeman last night? I was driving into it and I could see all the lightening streaking across the sky in full sheets as well as the jagged stuff.
Bozeman- I am back in Montana for the summer, I have been here for about 6 weeks ish now I think working for cousin Lance Wickum (he married Brenda Benjamin) and I will be here for another 2 months or so before I head back to Seattle to start my 3rd quarter of school. 3rd Quarter means bread station which has Dad sorta excited and me not really caring :p
I am actually working north of Shelby not Bozeman but I came down to see Ma this weekend before harvest starts and theres no such thing as time off then. I have found it rather amusing that my very first M-F 8-5 job has been working for a farmer... dont get me wrong, I love it I just find it a bit ironic. Come harvest that will most definately change but I am enjoying it for now.
Brenda's kids have been keeping me rather busy with all the "help" so lovingly given. I do believe I get much more done when they stop helping but its a lot of fun having them be so eager to help. I could probably write a lot of stories about spending time with them but that would take away from the sea turtles.
Lance attempted to teach me to drive a semi the other day. Im not sure who was more nervous about it, him or the truck. (That was a trick question, everyone knows Lance doesnt get nervous) Needless to say__. (See what I did there? It was clearly needless to say so I didnt say it and if you dont know what was gonna be said then you clearly are not very good at reading my mind so shame on you)
I didnt realize how much I missed having a cat around til just now when one hopped up in my lap and decided I wasnt supposed to type anymore. I wonder if I could smuggle a cat into my trailer at Lances and then smuggle it home to Rick and Julias...
I would say my book was calling to me now but its common knowledge that while a book may have a spine it doesnt have a tongue and therefore cannot call me. A shoe on the other hand... is a rather silly place to have a shoe, they belong on feet.

2nd quarter almost done

Well the 2nd quarter of my college career is drawing closer to an end. I have exactly 10 days of class left- not that im counting- and then I will be heading to montana to work for Lance this summer doing whatever.

Since May I believe I have done quite a bit. The last post that talked about school I was just getting ready to switch to Cake station from Pies/ Tarts and just this week I switched off of Cake station and am now on Mousses/Creams, laminated doughs, and pate a choux (the stuff eclairs and cream puffs are made out of).

Cake station was ok, I did learn a few different flavors and kinds of cakes but I was really hoping to learn some more decorating skills to broaden what I already know but sadly they didnt really teach me anything I havent done already as far as that goes. I got rather bored and frustrated on that station because I felt like it was a bit of a waste of time and the teacher wasnt much help when I asked if I could try some more advanced cakes and such. Alas my wondrous skills were not to be overly tested this quarter :p

Plain white cake with buttercream

 Chocolate Cream cake

 White cake with lemon swirl

 White cake with coconut pudding in the middle with buttercream

 Drizzle cake- choc cake with butter cream

This last week I started on the Mousses and Cream station and got to make a Charlotte Bavarian- see pic below- yes I made it all. It was a lot of fun to do. This charlotte is a raspberry roulade (jelly roll) with an orange bavarian cream in the middle, coated with a glace and the border is whipped cream

This next picture is a white chocolate mousse pyramid with raspberry filling, poured with chocolate and the lines are white chocolate. Ganache rosette on top with some chocolate filigree

Showing the inside- this one has a bit much of the raspberry filling according to the teacher but it tasted amazing let me tell you!

So thats the up to date on that. I will try to add photos as I remember to take them and as we make cool stuff :)

Moving in to the new house

Hmm, there seems to be a trend with my not posting very often. Quite a bit has happened in the last month. Rick and Julia got the house and we spent most of the month of May fixing it up to make it liveable.
We tore out all the carpets and found beautiful hardwood floors underneath that look like they've never been walked on so one of the tasks was to refinish those so they were nice and shiney again.

The house is a older model and a little funky in its construction due to an add on or two. My room is upstairs and to the left- a step above the rest of the house. (literally) I have the largest room in the house kinda be default because the stairs going up are rather steep and they didnt want to have to traverse them with pregnant belly and later on with baby. I took up the carpet in my room- it wasnt actually tacked down it was just a really old scrap that you could see through. I sadly do not have nice hardwood floors underneath. I just have the ever so lovely underlayment, so I did what any self respecting person would do... I left it with the underlayment showing its glory to the world. Well I did go and get a couple pieces of carpet to go around my bed so my feets dont get cold in the morning but the rest is in its natural state.
  The walls of my room were a rather lovely cream painted wallpaper, on 2 walls that is. The other 2 walls were the most gorgeous wood paneling the likes you may never see again- so I promptly slapped some mud on it and primed the heck out of it so I could paint it blue. (as if any other color would do).
There isnt a ton of wall space since there is a built in desk between two built in closets on one wall, one wall has the window in the middle, one wall has some built in book shelves (insert happy dance) and the last wall has the main door and my secret passageway door (dont tell anyone about it, its a secret). So in order to have enough space for my sudden plethora of photograpic wonders that I seem to have aquired I decided to do the logical thing. I suppose since its the most logical thing I dont need to waste any space telling where I put them.

The main part of the house is looking really nice. Rick went in and scraped the bubble ceiling off (the stuff with asbestos in it) then textured the living room, kitchen, hallway, and master bedroom. A coat of primer and paint later and it looks like a whole new place. The kitchen now has two walls that are a nice cheerful yellow and the cupboards were painted a bright white. Its amazing how much a new coat of paint brightens up the place.

We fully moved in a week ago today and are getting things unpacked at a fairly good pace. My room is fully put away- yes you may be shocked- and I leave for montana in just 2 weeks time for the whole summer. Im pretty excited about that.

I am going to end this post here. I will post another one on the goings on at school and such to avoid making this one even more lengthy than it already is

Standardized Recipe

Well peeps my last post was on procrastination about a project. That project was the above title. Basically we had to take any recipe we wanted, baking or cooking and convert it to professional terms- ounces/ lbs instead of cups or eaches. Then we had to take that recipe and convert it to make 20 servings. With the recipe it had to be more than 6 ingredients and if the recipe called for tomato sauce then you had to actually make the tomato sauce- no pre packaged stuff. (noodles are ok and stuff like that) I chose to do Hamburger Cheese Bake- most amazing dish in my opinion. Part of the project is to list out every single thing you will need to make this dish- pots, pans, spoons, strainer, knives, cutting board, etc. Assume that you are going somwhere to make this and the only thing there is a sink, trash and stove/oven plus electricity and water.
  To do the actual instructions assume the person is an idiot and write everything out in great detail
put water in pot, put pot on stove, turn on stove to high, wait til it boils then add noodles. Etc
So the rough draft of that is done now. After I finish the final draft I will post it on here as a reminder if nothing else :)

On another note- Rick and Julia got the keys to their new house yesterday!!! And I got a new key as well. I am pretty excited for a couple reasons, the biggest one being its waaay closer to school. Right now I have a 20 mile each way commute to school and leave the house at 6 to avoid traffic. From the new house its only 6 miles each way and I should be able to leave around 6:30 or later which totally makes my day. The new house is in Burien so soon I will have yet another new address. This move will make number 18 in just under 6 years. Kinda sad isnt it sigh. Hopefully I wont have to move for a while after this. It is a 3 bed 1.25 bath (if you count the lone toilet in the laundry room) with a nice size back yard for the future dog and child to play in :) We are doing some fixing up to it as it is a older house with some lovely shades of carpet and walls.
I shall try to take some pics of the house tomorrow and post them on here. Sorta before and afters if you will.
Since my project is done and its still a bit early I am going to go read a guilt free book :) Happy reading

Procrastination

Well peeps (yes I just said that) I am doing homework tonight so of course I decided to help it along by blogging. Procrastination is the key to success after all. My current homework consists of 3 sections of an online math class that I just got bored with then I am supposed to be figuring out what Mise en Place I will need for a recipe if I were to take EVERYTHING needed to make the dish to a place and make it. (Excluding sink, stove/oven and trash can and generator) So this entails quite a lot of stuff since you have to list out how many spatulas, what size knife as well as what kind ex: 8" french knife, 5 quart pot, etc. Then we had to take the original recipe (we could use whatever one we wanted) and convert it to make 20 servings. So basically I got going on it like 2 weeks ago then realized I had to change the recipe cause we arent allowed to use anything out of a can like tomato sauce, we have to write out how to make the sauce and what we would need for that as well. Sigh life is so rough. My notes on it are spread over my desk- you cant really see the surface at all right now. Umm..... ya ok thats really all I can think of to write. Not much has really happened lately I guess.
Oh we get to switch stations tomorrow- something im rather excited about. I am soo sick of making pies and tarts. I get to move on to Cake station which is the whole reason I started this program, to learn more about decorating cakes and such so I am pretty excited about that :) Well its bed time now. Sorry this one wasnt super entertaining but hey I never promised they would be.

No Longer Missing!!

I found my blog! It has been missing for about 2 years now (meaning I totally forgot I had one) But since the name of it still rings true, I figured I may as well see about writing in it again. Its been 2 years, 3 months and a few days since I last wrote. Lots and lots has happened but there is no way I am going to wrack my brain to dredge it all up. There have been relationships and breakups, roommates and roommates getting married (Kirstyn and Rick [not to each other obviously]) or going into the work (Teresa Taylor). I moved to Shelby and drove combine for Roy for a couple harvests and worked at Albertsons Bakery as a cake decorator for a year. Before Albertsons I worked for Dad's Repo company thing with Sis.

In September 2011 I finally decided to follow my dream and go to culinary school- or more specifically, Pastry Chef School. As a result of this decision I moved me and most of my stuff to Auburn, WA (about 20 miles south of Seattle) and moved in with Uncle Jerry, as well as Rick and Julia. My school program is 6 quarters for my AOS (Associates of Applied Science). I have been considering staying and getting my BA as well since the school I am going to offers a 6 quarter program basically meaning I will get my 4 year degree in about 3 years if everything goes according to plan. (but we know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men)

As of this moment I am 3 weeks into my second quarter of school. The first quarter I spent 5 weeks learning more than I ever wanted to know about how to mix cookies and the other 5 weeks learning about all the different cakes there are... and let me tell you there are a lot and we barely touched the surface.

This quarter is split up into 3 sections- Pies and Tarts, Cakes, and French Pastry.

I started on the Pies/Tarts section but I dont know which one I will be going to next. The way this school is set up you start with a group of up to 10 people and go through the entire program with the same group. You may get split into smaller groups (for the 3 sections) but you still are in the same room and interact with each other the whole time. Its nice in some ways because you get to really know the people you are with every day but on the down side... you get to really know the people you are with every day :p

Today we learned how to make a pretty stinkin good Quiche and I dont normally like quiche. I guess its true that every thing really is better with bacon in it :)

I am going to try to keep notes here on how school goes so that I can look back and remember both the good and the bad of it later when I am hopefully working at a nice bakery somewhere