Getting What You Deserve

It's unfortunate the above phrase always has negative connotations, because it can mean positive things are finally coming your way, too. I've felt this more and more since I followed my heart and quit the easy path that was laid out for me.

For example: apartment living. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I have terrible luck with neighbors. Every apartment I've lived in has had some of the worst neighbors imaginable. Weekly parties at midnight on Wednesdays, crackhead med students who never sleep, musicians and their "band," Harley-Davidson owners, barking dogs, cats in heat, flocks of parrots nesting in the palm tree outside my bedroom window!

I consider myself a rational, reasonably good neighbor. I don't have pets, and we don't throw lots of parties. If we do have a party, we always invite the neighbors, and make sure it moves inside (with the windows shut) after 10 pm, regardless of the day of the week. If someone else is having a party, I don't expect them to be quiet before 10 pm, and even later on the weekend is fine. If I have an issue with you, I always talk with you first before involving others (landlords, police, etc). I don't even walk heavy! So why do the stars always align that I have terrible, discourteous neighbors?

I'll tell you why: so we could earn the awesome place we live in now. Our cute little house a block from the beach, with the cutest elderly owners you can imagine.

I'm seeing the same thing with my job, because last night was my first time at our new bakery, and I LOVE IT. I've been scheduled to start at this bakery from when I was hired six months ago, since it's about ten minutes from my house and none of the other bakers live near me. It was the last of three new bakeries we opened, and I have been patiently laboring away in one of our others stores until we opened. Apparently all my hard work at the other stores has paid off, because this store is awesome. Everything I could want in a bakery.

I like getting what I deserve.

Stressers vs. Neck Pain

So far Life is doing a heck of a job trying to give me more stressers to make up for the ones I'm aliviating. It's like I have to keep a quota. But I've finally found doctors in my area for those all-important yearly and twice-yearly exams; you know, the dentist and such that you KNOW you should go see, but just have to gear yourself up to actually make the appointment. Also found out I'm going to get to start working next week in our new bakery, opening up just down the street, instead of having to drive an hour to the current one. Plus I got a little research done for our upcoming trip to Paris.

And just as things are falling into place? The oven stops working during the bake and I can't reach my boss. Thank God everything was baked except for the bagels, but still.

I'm also starting to notice a trend. I tried to do some meditation like my healer-friend instructed: my boss calls to tell me something wasn't done the night before and I'll have to take care of it tonight. I actually started this blog post as part of my dicipline and stress-relief: my boss calls to tell me why he missed all my calls last night when the equipment was failing.

He's a great man, don't get me wrong. I really like working for him. And he did just give me a $1 an hour raise, along with the extra $1 I will be getting for becoming a trainer, all after only six months working with him. But my goodness, is it a test or what?

Thanks to my husband for tasty libations and dinner when I get home - otherwise in my frustration I would probably have resigned myself to neon Kraft mac-and-cheese.

I could never keep a diary, either

Why does it seem so hard to keep posting on this damn blog? I think it stems from a combination of laziness and realism: do I really expect to be the next Julie and Julia? Nope. So why bother?



Recently a friend of mine who is a Reki healer was working on some neck pain I've had for the last two months. He suggested, aside from the usual stretches, massage, hydration, etc. that I do something to de-stress myself. Something to collect my thoughts and focus my mind, both before and after my work day. For those of you that know me personally, you know I very rarely am "off;" meaning I'm always busy, always thinking, always planning. I have to read a book before I go to bed to control my mind and make it focus just on one thing in order to fall asleep. Meditation has never been something I could do. Sitting still and not thinking for an extended period of time? Are you kidding??

But maybe a blog is a way to organize my thoughts, a la stream-of-consciousness writing. Sometimes I feel like I don't have a lot going on in my life, because I like to hear what other people are up to. But then I think: I'm going to Paris in two months, I've already become a trainer at my job though I've been there less than six months, I live in one of the best climates in the western hemisphere and consequently visit Disneyland on a regular basis, and have a less-than-average job title. So maybe there is a lot going on. Maybe my pain is stress-related, as well as job-related. Either way, attempting to keep this blog going isn't going to hurt anyone, right?

So here we go. Round three. Let's see how long it will last this time.

Sometimes God just says "Sit down, crazy!"

If you read my last post you noticed I have a dinner party tonight. Well, in the midst of my overachieving prep the kitchen sink clogs. I'm not sure how this happened because I'm VERY careful what I put down the drain: no potato peels, eggshells, citrus rinds, coffee grounds or other foreign objects that are on the "no no" list. Sometimes I think things happen because God looks down and says "STOP. You're going overboard. Who cares if you don't have tuiles for the top of your dessert? You don't have to make empanada wrappers yourself; go buy real ones at the latin market down the street. Your friends are coming to see YOU, not the food."

Touche.

Oh God! The garnish! I forgot the garnish!

Hosting a dinner party is no easy task when your friends are expecting greatness. Well, it's kinda easy because I'm willing to spend days working on it, but here's my latest delimma:

Hosting a Bunco party in two days. The theme is "New York." Dinner was easy - street foods from all over the city. But as a pastry school grad, dessert really needs to be something special. Got it! Individual New York cheesecakes with a spiced apple and caramel compote and raspberry coulis. Easy. Now, what to do for the height to make it really spectacular?

Idea #1: A red tuile cookie in the shape of an apple. Amazing, right? But hmm...no stencil. Can I really cut an apple shape out of cardstock and make it look good? Yikes.

Idea #2: A great tall sugar comet or other shape. But sugar doesn't hold well, and I won't have time to make them all during the party. Plus no way to get isomalt to make sure it's foolproof.

Idea #3: A beautiful chocolate free-form garnish. Oh, wait, that requires tempering chocolate. Nevermind.

Do you see? Drama. Crisis. Mass hysteria. Why is my life so hard?

Halloween. I'm not crafty, I'm just clever.

Ah, as we enter the end of September, the fun holidays begin. Halloween, my fav, is just around the corner, followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas. A food lover's dream, and my bank account's nightmare.

This year, since the husband and I are both in new jobs, we can't exactly ask for these coveted holidays off. Halloween is typically a huge affair for us; hundreds of dollars and months of work poured into completely unique costumes that are then shown off at the West Hollywood Costume Carnival. But since I'll probably be working that evening (and he the morning after) we have decided to pour that money into decorating the house, since we actually have a house to decorate this year. The theme? The Nightmare Before Christmas, of course.

Problem #1: I'm a chef, not a seamstress. Sure I can hand-stitch what I need to when a costume requires it, or when I did theatre in college and needed to help sew someone into a costume between scenes, but to create elaborate decorations? Hmm.

Problem #2: I'm a chef, not an artist. My painting skills are limited, though what I can do is pretty nifty. So there will not be giant stand-up cutouts of Jack Skellington, but maybe I can make the "days till Xmas" clock. Hmm again.

I'll post pics as we go along, but we've both got some clever ideas to decorate the way we want, without having to enlist an army to assist.

Does a cookie count for dinner if it's the same amount of calories?

The more I'm trained on the job, the more I'm taking on. It's great, except that I'm not fast enough to be able to do things like, you know, eat. Today I had a whopping four minutes to sit down while waiting for the pastries to come out of the oven, so I grabbed what was ready in the store. We make this awesome chocolate cookie with dark and white chocolate chunks and macadamia nuts. I'm not usually a fan of chocolate cookies or white chocolate, but this sucker is gooood. And since it has about 400 calories, that's a meal, right?

The World Bursts Into Flames At 5 am

In the last five weeks, since I have been on the night shift at the bakery, I have seen three separate incidents of fire.

Incident #1: A structure fire down the street from our bakery. A strip mall burst into flames, probably because of the thrift store at the end. Nothing burns like cheap furniture and polyester.

Incident #2: A brush fire at the 91 / 605 fwy interchange. Brush fires aren't anything new here in Southern California, however this was on a wedge of grass between two freeways and a parking lot. How did this happen?

Incident #3: This morning, something large was on fire in the Cerritos area off the 91 fwy. It was far enough away on the freeway I couldn't see it, but large enough I was thankful to be away from it.

My husband tells me fires are more common at night because no one is around to see them, stop them, and report them before they completely consume whatever is around them.

I continue to be amazed at the things I find out living on the other side of the clock.

Who F%&ked With My Meez?!?!?

I believe I have found a career in which my anal-retentive organizational skills are not only acceptable, but encouraged and applauded. It is also, by the way, perfectly acceptable to completely freak out if someone "moves your cheese," or in my case, my bench scraper.

Your "meez," ladies and gentleman, is your mise en place, and is your lifeline. This is your setup, your station, your mecca. Every line cook, pastry chef, baker, and decorator has their own meez, and woe unto you if you do anything to come between them and the perfect meez. Everything is in order, in the same order, so you never have to think about what you're reaching for; it's just there. Always. The fastest way to incur the wrath of anyone in the food service industry is to mess with their station.

So what happened, you ask? Nothing huge. Except I came back from my days off and bins were put back in the "wrong" order, one of the bench scrapers was missing (yes, I need two), and I couldn't find a scoring knife ANYWHERE. My question is this: what do day shift line cooks and cashiers need a bench scraper and a scoring knife for?? Certainly not anything they're intended for. When you're in the middle of panning up one set of bread, pulling another out of the proof box, and watching the bake on another set of bread, I don't have the time to go wandering around the kitchen looking for something that should be in my drawer where I left it.

People, you don't touch someone's tools. Would you walk into a mechanic's shop, pick up a tool, use it for something it's not intended for, and then put it back in a different place? Please think of us like this. We're like mechanics, if mechanics actually had to fix your car within a few hours.

Is it weird to have a drink at 6 am, and not be in Vegas?

After a full evening of sourdough breads; cinnamon raisin, honey wheat, white, rye, whole grain, asiago cheese, and sesame breads; foccacia; cibatta; various bagels, pastries, and breakfast sweets; cookies; brownies; and baguettes; I could really use a drink. It's just a little weird that it's 6 am. Do I have a screwdriver or bloody mary, to make it more socially acceptable? Am I really craving a glass of cab sav right now? Or do I just cut to the chase, take two Tylonol PM and call it a night?

The sun's coming up, so that's a nice view from our porch, but our new little beach house is on a lovely road that's perfect for riding your bike, running before work, or walking the dog. Is that really the impression I want to make to the new neighbors? "Good morning! Yes, I am drinking at 6 am in my bathrobe. Enjoy your run before work!"

Maybe I can placate them with a cinnamon roll? Ten bucks says they'll take it.

Umm...I bake?

I'm never sure how to answer the following exchange with people I meet:

Them: "So what do you do?"
Me: "I'm a baker for [insert company name here]."
Them: Oh wow, that's cool! What do you do there?"
Me: "...Umm...I bake?"

I don't want to be a smart alack and answer with the above response, but I'm not sure what information they're after. Do they want a detailed list of each product we make? Or maybe a play-by-play of the proofing process and shaping of our sourdoughs? Or do we ask this question automatically because so many people have obscure job titles like "Consumer Marketing Specialist?"

I certainly can understand why people get confused with titles like the one mentioned above. But my job title is the noun of the action verb that encompasses my job. I bake. I am baking. I am a baker. I put things in ovens and they come out yummy.

Never trust a baker!

We're sleep-deprived, foot-sore perfectionists on some sort of combination of caffeine and complex carbohydrates.

It's been nine months, and no, there is no significance to the number of months it's been since I began blogging. I simply underestimated the amount of time school, work, and commuting between the two would take, leaving no time for something as trivial as blogging (that, and the sad realization I only had nine followers).

Here's the gist of what happened: School stayed the same and was fun, slightly challenging, and inspiring. Work continued to spiral out of control, culminating with me doing the job of at least two people, nothing like what I had been hired on to do in the first place, for a manager who couldn't seem to manage her personal life and brought all the emotions and attitude into work with her. After more than five years, I quit. My husband and I swallowed our pride and moved in with my parents for what was supposed to be two months, and ended up being five. I graduated at the top of my class with high honors, a crappy internship, and then landed a great job at a high volume chain bakery. We moved out of my parents' house and into our own little corner of paradise: a turn-of-the-century beach house one block from sunny Southern California's beaches.

So why resume blogging now? A few reasons. Firstly, I have thoughts. Ideas. I'm not sure if they will interest anyone except my parents and my best friend who lives across the country, but for the nine of my loyal followers, this is what's going on. Secondly, I used to be a writer. I miss it. I was good; I even stayed away from descriptive words like "good." I figure it can't hurt to get in a little bit of practice. And finally, sometimes my life is just funny. Weird, strange, sporadic, and funny.

Thanks for reading. Going forward I will assume for every follower I have, there are 50 of you reading and not following. Thanks to all 450 of you.

Another post...finally!

I know, it's been forever! Between working full time and school I haven't had much free time, and the wear and tear on my mental state has certainly been noticeable!

But enough whining - there are enough people in this country alone who could never hope to have the amazing opportunity I've been given, so we carry on:

It's December already! And the middle of December at that! I know I'm not the only one who looked up and is surprised to notice this. Since I last posted I have completed another module and am halfway through the current one.

I'll start with the completion of PBK 121 - petit fours, cakes, etc. The continuation of our basics. Here are some pictures from my final:














If you want to see larger photos (or just more) I have them posted on my Facebook page. This was one of my favorite classes - I loved all the details and work involved to create these little dainty items. I didn't really LIKE many of them myself, but they sure were fun to make!

Now that I'm officially on Christmas Break from school for two weeks (ah, I forgot what that was like!) I'll be updating on what's been happening. Next up: the beginning of hell...I mean 131...and working with a new chef.

Update - my injury

My hands have healed very nicely; thanks for everyone who was asking about it! It took about three weeks, but the large burn on my left hand finally healed over into a shiny new scar. Proof that I worked hard in culinary school, I guess! No infections, no tetnus. So we're ready to go!

Panic Sets In

We have finally finished breads, and have moved back to pastries. I have learned a few things already:

1. Europeans like almonds. Almond macaroons, almond Florintines, almond baton Marceaux, almonds, almonds, almonds! They're in everything; even the lemon Madelines have almond meal.
2. My class is wont to bouts of panic. I haven't figured out if it's organizational issues or if that's just the way they handle the stress of multi-tasking, but there have been a lot of deer caught in the headlights of a large moving van lately.

Luckily my recent jobs have required me to work on may different projects at the same time, due to the "brilliant" structure of giving me multiple bosses/managers (who, nine times out of ten, are out to get each other). Class has been pretty straight-forward for me lately, simply because I'm used to multi-tasking. Where I get frustrated is having to wait on others to catch up. Whether this involves them working more slowly and putting everyone behind, or if they're in my way and I can't get my own stuff done. I finally snapped at a girl today who, while washing her dishes in the ONLY SINK, stopped to tell me something about a bowl she washed earlier that needed to have the sink water dumped out because it made a mess, blah blah blah. I'm sorry? Do I care? Not really, just shut up and wash your damn dishes so I can get to mine!

All in all this class is much more fun than the last. I will have pictures at the end - our final is to present a buffet of pastries we have created, so I will be sure to capture that and post.

Thanks for reading!

Always waiting...stupid bread

So this is the first post in a long time, just because there hasn't been much of interest going on. Well, I find it interesting, but you probably wouldn't, simply because it's the same thing, over and over and over and over. To be honest, even I'm a little bored, so I'm glad we're in the final now. I'm actually blogging from school, since I'm waiting for my bread to proof. That's what we're still working on: bread. And since there is essentially only one way to make bread, we've been doing that. Over and over and over and over. Aside from braiding or rolling or the general look of the bread, the procedure is the same.

Glad to be moving onto the next class on Wednesday. Off to check my bread and make sure it's still doing what it's supposed to. Hopefully I'll have a more interesting post soon!

Only a Flesh Wound

In a desperate attempt to save my falling bread, I seared both of my hands, only to have the entire sheet tray go crashing to the floor. Luckily it's a pretty sturdy bread, so no harm, no foul. And dammit if I wasn't going to have PERFECTLY baked bread after baking my hands, because I was going to make it WORTH the pain.

So if you're a little squemish, I apologize for the following picture. Here's the damage:


This doesn't show the blisters on the fingertips of my pinky, ring, and middle fingers on my right hand, which is making it a little difficult to type. But if you're going to do something, do it right, right?

Blisters and gaping wounds aside, it has been a successful class so far. 97% on my recent test, only because a couple of my pan au lait rolls came a bit unbraided during the proofing process.




Well, shorter blog today, simply because my hands are screaming in protest of this much movement and contact. I'll blog again once all my skin has reattached itself to the appropriate parts of my body.

Going to the grocery store

A quick post tonight, because pizza is on its way and I'm very hungry!

If you ever need an ego boost, go to the grocery store wearing chef's whites. Preferably a specialty store like Sprouts, World Market, or Fresh & Easy. Everyone you see wants to know "oh wow, what is she buying?" You get great questions like "wow, are you a chef?" and "what are you planning on making?" You are automatically the expert in the room, even if you say you're just in school.

It certainly feels good, and I've decided, after encountering this twice, that the perfect time to go shopping is after I get off of school on Saturday afternoons.

Support

Short blog tonight, but I wanted to thank my husband for being there for me. It's so strange to think that I came to the realization that I could be a chef so late in the game. I've always cooked, so it never seemed like anything different, or like it could be more than just for fun, or something you have to do to, well, not die. But before I even considered school Dave kept saying to me I could do these shows like Hell's Kitchen and Chopped and The Next Food Network Star. And when I finally saw that this is where my life was headed, he was, and still is, my biggest fan. He has fewer doubts than I do! It's reassuring that, no matter what, the person who is most important in my life thinks I can do this more than anyone. He's never had a single doubt. How many people can say that?

This is finally getting hard

And not for the reasons you may think. Mostly because I miss my husband. He just left to go study, as a good boy should, for his nursing test on Thursday. He was also lucky enough to win a trip to San Francisco, travel and hotel paid, to see the Seahawks/49ers game. He's been a die-hard Seahawks fan all his life, and has never had the chance to see a game before. But between his work and school schedule, and my work and school schedule, and then the trip, I won't really be able to see him until Monday evening. How can I be expected to study yeast and flour right now? And I feel bad, because I don't want to discourage him from studying, because really, nursing is hard enough as it is.

I've always been an independent person so this is a little weird for me to be so reliant on someone else, but I think it's also the fact that he's the only person I talk to on a regular basis that knows I'm in culinary school. I can't talk about it at work, and I don't have as much time to spend with friends that I used to. So I'm excited about everything that's going on, but I can't tell anyone about it. Sure, I have the blog, and I assume people are reading, but how can I know? I hope there are people out there...

So this isn't as exciting of a post as usual, but it's all part of the process. There are eight steps in the baking process - I guess this is one of the steps in my own developmental process. In order to become a successful chef, you have to go through the fire.