Baking, Plus Me and the Kid

So I'm sitting here on the Group W bench, waiting to find out whether we're getting paid this week. I had intended to take off all week--this being exam week--but paychecks are really quite key, so . . . I'm using the time to put together the baking schedule for tomorrow, seeing as how we have five ovens and 16 people and a whole bunch of different products to bake and temperatures at which to bake them. I took that organizational task upon myself largely for the experience of doing it--how DO you organize a baking schedule? One way to find out is by doing it, and figuring out where you screwed up, and then doing it differently the next time. So I think I have it figured out, but we'll find out tomorrow. It also remains to be seen whether everyone cooperates; I'm guessing not, but I don't have any predictions about where the breakdown will occur. I recruited one of my classmates to help with the schedule, and my partner (who's also extremely well-organized) threw in his two cents, too, as did the youngest member of the class.

The real challenge begins on Wednesday: ten (multiple-choice) questions on each of the three areas we've covered, and a list of products to produce by Friday at 11:00 am. We can present things as we finish them--and the chef prefers that we do so--so I'll presumably present things each day. The difficulty for me, I think, is that I spent several hours yesterday looking at the sample list of products and detailing each step of each thing, and I barely got it all done in three days, which led me to believe that I hadn't allocated time properly. The other difficulty is that I could schedule the fantasy bakeathon without regard to what other people were doing; on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we're going to have to coordinate those things or we all fail. (Teamwork is actually 20% of our grade on each product.) For some things, timing isn't all that important--it doesn't matter so much if French bread sits out an extra 15 minutes. For other things, though, like a biscuit or anything else with a lot of air in it, that extra 15 minutes might kill it or do it significant damage. Similarly, some things--like tart shells--don't care if the oven opens midway through baking, but anything that rises (bread, biscuit, sponges, puff pastry, croissants) cares deeply. A good way to fuck up someone's product is to open the oven to put your things in while their thing is rising. The chef said he was going to assign ovens to products for the exam days, so that will help sort some things out.

We also had an evaluation today, and I was content with mine. Chef Fred told me to keep doing what I'm doing and I'll be fine. Part of the secret to my success--and I tried to give him credit for it with the chef--has been my partner, who is organized and hard-working and funny and generous, so it's all good.

We had the Kid this weekend (who totally wiped out on his bike yesterday--I haven't seen the damage, because the Kid and C were riding bikes back near Mommy's house, but it broke his glasses, badly scraped his arm, and bruised his face), and he and I managed to have two serious conversations. I felt kind of bad, because I was a little cranky, especially Saturday, but I managed to regroup yesterday somewhat, despite not getting a yoga class for more than two weeks. Anyway, Kid and I went to the park to play catch for awhile, and he wasn't overwhelmingly into it at times. We worked on catching, which went okay sometimes, and then I got tired of him not being into it (and saying how bad he was at it) so we left. As we walked home, I said, "Come here, I have something important to tell you." When he caught up with me, I said, "I don't care how good you are at things. You're already good at a lot of things like writing and drawing and reading, and you're going to be good at some things and not as good at others, and I don't care whether you're good. What I do care is that you try your hardest no matter what you're doing." I'm also trying to impress upon him that to get good at anything takes practice and takes being bad at it for awhile. The truth of that hasn't quite sunk in yet. We talked about why Ernest Hemingway killed himself (we passed a house in which EH lived at one point, apparently) and we talked about how you should tell Mommy or Daddy or Emma if you're feeling really sad about things.

When we got back to the house, he had some lunch while Daddy made his enchiladas for Daddy's lunches this week, and then Mommy started a round of nasty phone calls. When she's upset about something, she likes to call and yell at C, and if he tries to say anything, or if he says something she doesn't like, she hangs up on him. (Very mature, I know.) As we all know, her life is very, very hard; she's doing this All By Herself (yeah? who fixes the pool and the furnace and every other fucking thing that breaks?); and did I mention that her life is hard? Because it is. All the Kid wanted was for Daddy to bring Daddy's bike out to the cemetery near Mommy's house so they could ride bikes together--that's all Daddy wanted, too. It's not clear what Mommy wanted, other than multiplication flash cards. (At one point Mommy apparently suggested to Daddy that the three of us--her, C, and me--all meet because she wanted a third party to hear her grievances. I thought that was pretty amusing, though I do wonder what she could possibly be thinking. And, as I said to C, if it's so fucking hard for her, then the Kid can live with us--no problem.)

After about round three, I turned to the Kid and said, "Let's go. We're going for a walk." "Where?" "Somewhere." I didn't have to ask twice. We went to the small park two blocks away, and on the way there, I made sure he knew that the fighting wasn't about him, and he did, and that that's why Mom and Dad broke up, and he knew that, too, and pointed out that they still fight whenever they're around each other, which isn't exactly true, but close enough. I said that he didn't need to be around while they fought, and he agreed with that, too. We played two rounds of 20 questions, and a couple of rounds of Hangman in our heads, and we looked at clouds and flowers and the parrot someone had brought to the park, and then we went home. Mommy had apparently cooled off enough such that Daddy could, in fact, bring his bike and get the Kid's from Mommy's garage and go riding. She also came to fetch them after the crash.

I, meanwhile, had headed off to a cafe to drink iced tea with S and his friend and study my cookbook and eventually have some dinner with the two of them. Quite the pleasant afternoon, actually.

Vows

Some of you may remember how angry I was at my brother, and how hurt I was that he and my sister-in-law decided that they weren't bringing my nephews to our wedding. I should point out that I had said, from the moment we picked a date, that I wanted my nephews there, that we were hiring a babysitter for all of the kids, that my stepson was looking forward to it, etc.--and my brother never said a word when I mentioned all these plans. Months and months later, when he finally talked to me about it, my brother's story--and he's sticking to it--is that the kids "couldn't handle it," that it would be too late for them, that it's Emma's day and their presence would get in the way of that (!!). My sister-in-law blurted out, way back when, that she and my brother wouldn't have as much fun if the kids were along, and I've suspected that that's the truth at the heart of it all along. But my brother stuck to his story, and I just stopped talking about it. I keep waiting to forgive him in my heart, but it's not happening, and I'm a bit at sea about it.

Tomorrow is the 22nd anniversary of our sister's death. My parents and maternal grandfather went to the foreign country where she was while the rest of us waited at home for news. When it became apparent that she wasn't going to live, my parents and grandfather made plans to come home, and I left the city where I was living to go to my parents' house. (I only lived about an hour and a half away, and my recently-ex-boyfriend performed a mitzvah for which I still thank him in my heart by driving me to my parents' house rather than consigning me to Greyhound, which was pretty much my other option at the time.) Now that I think about it, she died on a Saturday, too, I think.

Anyway, I think went up to my parents' around Tuesday or Wednesday, but they didn't get back until the following evening. The night I arrived, my brother and I sat on the back patio in the dark, drinking Michelob (it's what was in the refrigerator) and smoking our cigarettes (we've both long since quit), and we promised to take care of each other. We knew our parents would be devastated, we knew they would barely be able to function, much less take care of us, and we vowed to look out for each other. We kept that promise over the years. We'd always been close, even though there're six years between us, in part because of the similarities in our personalities. (I'm the oldest, and my sister was 17 months younger than I am, so my brother and I had somewhat different experiences of her as well as plenty of shared ones.) And that vow has been important to us as we've weathered various storms in our lives.

Not bringing my nephews to my wedding felt, and feels, like a betrayal of that vow, and I don't know how to go about forgiving someone for something that cuts so deep--and not just any someone, but my only remaining sibling. We've spoken once, maybe twice, since the wedding, and we spoke only once in the five months prior to the wedding, about two weeks before the event when he called to express his shock that I was upset (really? you were shocked? then why did it take four months to call me?) and to tell me that he knew his sons better than anyone and they couldn't handle it and it was all about my special day and blah blah blah. Normally we'd talk about once a month, maybe once every six weeks, so this really is a severe reduction in the amount of contact between us. But my heart just isn't in it.

I hate that that's true, and I really don't know what to do about it. The first time he tells me that his wife took my nephews off to see her sister, or the whole family is going to California to see her father, or whatthefuckever, how am I supposed to not say anything? But what's the point of saying something? I can't change the fact that my nephews weren't there because my brother and sister-in-law were too self-centered to bring them. I think it would be okay--I think I'd be able to forgive him--if my brother could even or would even acknowledge that he fucked up, that the kids should have been there. But he won't or can't see it that way--he falls back on how he knows what's best for his own kids and he doesn't see his own selfishness. If we weren't close, if we hadn't promised to take care of each other, it probably wouldn't matter so much, either. But all of these if-onlies are wishful thinking.

In less serious news, I said something to Chef Fred today about running a pastry shop for him and he said (and I wish I could replicate his facial expression and tone of voice, because they were hysterical), "Oh, no, then I'd be getting phone calls, someone saying 'Emma stabbed another customer in the pastry shop today.'" I have no idea why he thinks I'd be intolerant of fools . . .

Next week are our exams. Two "free" days on Monday and Tuesday, when we can work on things that we think we need to practice. Wednesday we get a list of the things we have to produce by 11:00 on Friday, and then we have thirty questions (multiple choice) to answer, ten on each of the sections we've covered (breakfast breads and pastries; petit fours; and wedding cakes and cake decoration). After that, we each have to produce the items on the list. As the chef pointed out this morning, it'll go more quickly and smoothly if we coordinate our baking with each other and work together. I don't think that will be a problem for our group, despite the mini-meltdown that occurred today; there are a couple of people with a lot of experience at this stuff who do a good job setting a tone for the rest of the class. (It's amazing to me how that happens.)

Today's dessert, of which I did not take a picture, was croquembouche: a pyramid of caramel-dipped cream puffs (though we left ours unfilled, because the pastry gets soggy quickly), topped with a little sugar fountain and with a caramelized almond nougatine base. Yes, it's quite tasty. The only down side to this whole week of sugar and caramel is that the floors are a sticky mess and I've been on floor duty this week. Eh, no problem; at least I'm not doing floors next week during exams.

Parenthood

I think I made a majority of my important life decisions by the time I was about 16. One of them was about having kids: I didn't think I had the temperament to be a stay-at-home mom, and I was sure that I didn't want to be a de facto single parent--one of those people who has to tell the spouse where to find the cleaning solution, or the diapers, or the number for the doctor's office, or whatever, EVERY SINGLE TIME. (I feel the same way about housework: If you're capable of holding down a job, if you can drive to work and back every single day, then surely you are capable of cleaning a bathroom or a kitchen without major coaching. If you're not, then I don't want to marry you; it's as simple as that.) Basically, I decided that I'd be willing to have kids if I met someone who (a) really wanted them and (b) was going to participate fully in raising them without me having to be a nag about it. (Reading Arlie Hochschild's "the Second Shift" in graduate school pretty much confirmed all of that, too.) That didn't happen--but I'm nevertheless a parent, at least part of the time, thanks to The Kid.

Stepparenting is an interesting exercise. I'm luckier than many people, I think, for several reasons. First, I met C when the Kid was less than 18 months old, so the Kid doesn't remember me not being in his life. This is useful in a number of ways, not the least of which is that he doesn't think of me as the bitch who broke up his parents' marriage. It's also true that he's just plain used to me being around, and I try to be consistent (even if it's consistently being a pain about some things), and kids really, really like consistency. I'd read that, and heard about it, but still wasn't prepared for just how true it is. They also like to know what's going to happen next. Luckily, I'm something of a planner and list-maker, and The Kid is totally into that. We don't do it all the time, every time, but the organization appeals to him. The other thing I think I see is that including him in the planning and list-making makes him feel like he knows what's happening and helps him feel like part of the process rather than a puzzle piece that's being shuttled around from one place to another.

A second way I'm lucky is that The Kid's mother means well. She has gone out of her way to include me in a couple of things--the first holy communion, for one--and she does seem to appreciate what I contribute to The Kid's life. Luckily, it's very different from her contributions (she's not much of a cook or baker, for example, and she doesn't play any sports), so there's no sense of competition, at least not from my end, and I don't think from hers, either.

However.

You knew that was coming, didn't you?

Sometimes I wonder whether it really is a good idea to take The Kid to a theatrical production--even one he really wants to see--the night before the first day of a new school year. And simultaneously call C a couple of times because maybe The Kid doesn't have his multiplication flash cards just yet (like he's going to need them the first day of school?). We were asleep, however, and didn't hear the phone ring. It's symptomatic, really, of someone who loves The Kid very much (no doubt about that), and tries to provide Good Stuff for him, but doesn't always seem clued into what he really needs (sleep, exercise, healthy food, active engagement for his mind). The sleep and exercise often seem deficient, so C and I try to make up for it as best we can.

Same Damned Cakes

Here are pictures of the styrofoam cake (top) and the real (i.e., edible) cake (clicking on the photos will make them larger). Not bad for a first effort, I think. There was a cake today, too, complete with new-baby-type decorations and a pulled-sugar Slinky, but I didn't ask my neighbor to photograph that one; don't want to wear out my welcome. C has found an old crappy digital camera, and I'll get him to teach me how to use it this weekend, so maybe I can post more photos here for you. I don't know that I have any thoughts today, profound or otherwise, but they'll go in a separate post if I discover that I do.

Buttercream Flowers: They Sag But They Don't Break!

There are two issues about which I'm not going to write, because they annoy me too much and others are handling the critique just fine without me. First, I'm not going to write about how (a) Iraqi men are creating a misogynist theocracy and (b) American men are perfectly willing for this to happen--for the warmongers among us, it's not a problem if Iraqi women are LESS FUCKING FREE than they were under Saddam Hussein! Echidne's handling that one. The second thing about which I don't feel like bitching is the article in today's New York Times about how some men who witness the birth of their children are traumatized by seeing their wives' vaginas during the actual birth process. How can they ever have sex again?!? With that particular vagina, anyway; presumably they could still get it up for some nubile 25-year-old. Until she gives birth to his child and MAKES HIM WATCH, that is. So Jonquil, and Elise over at Bitch and Belle have more elegant critiques. And don't get me started on Pat Robertson suggesting we assassinate Hugo Chavez.

S and I went to see "Broken Flowers" last night, in part on the recommendation of one of our fellow handball players. S pronounced it "okay," and I wouldn't go any more strongly than that. I really don't like Jim Jarmusch's movies very much at all; this one was salvaged by Bill Murray. (I hadn't realized it was a Jarmusch movie, and then reviews from people I trust were so enthusiastic that I thought I might like it.) Yes, we KNOW it's a fucking road trip; we don't need to see YET ANOTHER shot from inside the car or inside the plane, or, at least, those shots could be shorter. So, unless you're a Jarmusch fan, don't go; "Groundhog Day" is a much better movie about existential angst.

At school? STILL working on the fucking wedding cakes. At least we've graduated from styrofoam to real cake. We decorated the real wedding cakes with buttercream (lightened with Italian meringue so it's less like eating a stick of butter): two layers of buttercream on each layer of the cake, into the blast freezer between layers of frosting, and into the regular freezer overnight. Today we decorated with buttercream (back into the freezer for tonight), and I was pleased with how mine was coming out. I'm hoping that the person at the table next to me will be able to take a picture for me and send it; if she does, I'll try to post it. I wasn't horrified with how the other cake came out, either, though we still have to put the flowers on that one. In both cases, I stuck with my simple stuff, and I was happier for it.

Ya Gotta Have Friends

The Divine Miss M was right about that. I was spewing my doubts last night, to B this time, and he was extremely encouraging and positive (and we laughed, because that latter is not exactly one of his common traits), both about my efforts in general and about my plans for the fall (i.e., making an attempt to do some baking for profit as well as fun). He suggested that a camera would be a useful tool--when I'm talking about our current place of employment, he said, I have a furrowed brow and a generally unhappy face, and when I'm talking about baking, the furrows disappear and I look happy. (C has said the same thing, for that matter.) I guess I know these things, but it's reassuring to hear someone whose opinion I trust say them, too. Back when I worked with the junkies and alcoholics, someone explained the horse concept to me: If one person tells you you're a horse's ass, well, maybe that person has his or her own issues and problems and you might not have to worry about it. If two people tell you you're a horse's ass, you might want start thinking about it. If three people tell you you're a horse's ass, go buy a saddle. It works in the positive direction though, too, as my friends (and husband) have demonstrated. So I'll be doing some stuff in the fall, maybe October. I'll hire S as my kitchen slave, and maybe B, too, and we'll see what happens.

Friday Song(s)

Yeah, I know, we haven't had one of these in awhile. And I'm going to fudge it by not picking a song but a whole album (or "CD" for you kids out there), and it's one of my all-time favorites: Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen's 1978 release. I've detailed the circumstances around this release elsewhere, but not so much the songs. For, let's see, 27 years, I've turned to this album when I'm feeling bleak (and, yes, I think of it as an "album" because, in these moments, I tend to play it straight through in the original order, a concept that's lost in these iPod shuffle days, but that is important with older works--can you say "Dark Side of the Moon"?--because some artists thought about the order of the songs, at least on some of their works). Imagine becoming successful--simultaneous-cover-of-Newsweek-and-cover-of-Time-successful, anyway--and then not being able to do the work at which you had become successful, and, finally, getting to do that work again. That's the background.

One reason these songs resonate with me is that the person whose voice we're hearing has faced, and is facing, knowledge of despair, duplicity, and hardship of various sorts. Nevertheless, the person is taking a stand--to futile ends, perhaps, but with the thought that one can either take a stand, or not, and he prefers the former. I realize it's Martin-Luther-esque in a 95-theses kind of way ("Here I stand--I can do no other"), but what other choices do we have? Starting a new path may be difficult, but continuing down a path that is unrewarding and unfulfilling (and isn't working, in some sense of that) is insanity. Sometimes you really do have to say, "What the fuck."

The downside to "Darkness," though, is that a few of the songs (notably "Promised Land" and "Badlands") have become anthemic hits, such that, when played in concert, they are massive sing-alongs. There's something to be said for that, in some ways, but I have some bootleg recordings from 1978, 1980, around then, and I like those versions MUCH better. They're faster, for one thing, in part because Bruce and the band aren't waiting for the audience to catch up--which means the performances have more energy, they're more dynamic, they're closer to the original interpretation of the songs.

So I think I'll find some time to listen to "Darkness" this weekend. But first: beer.

Fondant: Feh!

Today's class was a complete pain the ass, pretty much from start to finish, though, oddly enough, I still loved it. Well, not every last bit of it. First we practiced making paper cones (pastry school origami), which was fine. Then we practiced piping, which was okay. It takes time to get good at this, of course, and I've had mere hours to try it, so my work doesn't exactly look like Chef Fred's. (His work is beautiful, if you want to know.) Some people clearly have done it, and it shows in their work, but I was content to find a couple of simple designs that I could execute more or less successfully and stick with those. After we practiced on some ceramic cake dummies, we got out the styrofoam we'd covered in fondant yesterday. We had to add borders, at the seams between the two layers and between the bottom layer and the cardboard, and it made me completely insane. I finally managed to get a twisty rope that I could use for the top one, but, after many futile attempts to do it for the bottom, I gave up and just pressed in a simple shell design on a plain rope. But then I just stopped fussing with it. I don't have the skill to execute something more complex, and I'd rather do something simple competently than try to do something beyond my current skills poorly.

We then made pastillage--a concoction of confectioner's sugar, water, vinegar, and gelatin--for the figures for the top of the cake. Of course, I had to make mine twice, because I put in too much extra water the first time. Luckily, my partner rocks, and he cleaned up around me and covered my ass. I did manage to make the figures and the base, and then microwave the leftovers to get this hard bubbly stuff. Today was also big clean-up day, so we had to finish everything by 11:00.

All in all, then, today was an exercise in patience. I was going to say that that's not my strong suit, but, on reflection, I have to disagree with myself. I am capable of patience, and I exercise it often enough, but I do not appear to be a patient person (even to myself). I am impatient with myself when I screw up something I should do better, or when I miss a detail that I should have caught. I am patient with myself when I'm trying something new; I'm impatient if I don't get better at it over what I regard as a reasonable stretch of time; and I'm especially impatient with myself when I've been able to do something in the past but seem to be fucking it up right this minute. One of the things I love about school is that I can try something a few times and, if I still don't seem to be getting it, can ask an expert, right then and there, and get immediate assistance. That's incredibly valuable, because it means I don't have to try to figure out forever what I'm doing wrong.

Ah, well. S and I had to go out after handball last night (if by "had to" you mean "I suggested we grab some dinner and a beer at this place that has mussels that S likes and S said okay"), and, surprise, the Friday Irregulars are having a brief meeting tonight as well. B will only stay for a little while, and J is bailing completely, but S will be there again, and my group's intern, B2, may also join us. C and The Kid will be home, however. They've been camping since Wednesday, and I thought they wouldn't be back until later tonight, but they were within the city limits by 12:30. C is taking the Kid to the doctor this afternoon, because the Kid has a mysterious something on the bottom of his foot. We thought it was athlete's foot, but C now thinks not; I suspect it's warts. I suppose it makes me a bad wife and stepmother--to go out and drink beer with friends instead of waiting to welcome them with open arms--but I obviously don't feel bad enough about it to cancel the beer plans.

I'm kind of hitting a wall this week--I've been saying that repeatedly, I know--in part because I'm worried about things like money and my future and so on. S told me last night that I am not, in fact, stupid for doing what I'm doing, and I was glad to get his reassurance; I've been doubting myself lately. I don't doubt that I love what I'm doing, I just doubt that I can make any kind of living at it. The other thing up against which I keep bumping is how much I miss aspects of the academic environment. When S and his friend and I were relaxing after the move the other night, I gave the three-minute description of my dissertation (on request; I don't inflict it on unwilling listeners); given their fields, S and his friend both understood at least some of what I was saying. Most of the time, though, I'm surrounded by people and working in environments where people really don't give a shit about any of it. I miss being a practicing philosopher, among other philosophers; I miss talking about political theory and practice with people who have at least some of the language and background in common with me. I miss working these things out, in writing and in conversation; I miss teaching these things. I don't know how to incorporate these things into my life in any meaningful way outside The Academy, and, at this point, I'm hopelessly behind in the literature, given that I haven't read anything in any academic field in more than ten years.

Though I did think of an interesting project last night, having to do with how the American immigrant experience, in combination with industrialization, has ruined the American diet. Maybe I'll write about it in my "spare" time. ("But to what end?" I ask myself. I already have the experience of writing a long manuscript that fewer than 50 people will ever read. Why would I want to do that again? And don't tell me it's for the satisfaction of doing it: writing is a social act, among other things, and one of the purposes of writing is to communicate. If the communication isn't reaching anyone, then it's not a communication, quite, but more in the category of "futile effort." And I don't know that I want to sign up for (another) futile effort.)

Out Loud

I had my first conversation with Chef Bob today about what happens after I finish the program. The difficult part was telling him what I eventually want to do. Well, really, I had no trouble speaking the words, it's just that it's interesting saying out loud, to someone who has some say in the matter, what it is you want to do; it makes it more real, and it also feels a lot riskier than just thinking it in my head. I'll speak to Chef Mary Lou on Monday about the other option that might be interesting. I would have thought there'd be more interest in the things I'm interested in doing, but perhaps not--a fair number of people are from out of town and will probably go home; several already have significant restaurant and/or hotel experience and want to continue doing that; several already have some other kind of work in mind (e.g., focusing on wedding cakes; food styling). Some of these opportunities pay, some do not; some would be full-time no pay, one might be part-time with some pay, which would enable me to keep working part-time at my current job, perhaps. It's hard to know which is the most viable, given our uncertain finances, but I'll see what happens between now and December.

If (a) I continue to get paid, and (b) we can hold down expenses, and (c) I get my back pay, then we'd be in okay shape; we'd be in better shape if we hadn't renewed our lease (starting this month) and had looked for a cheaper place, but, really, did I have time to move the first week in August? Did I have time to look for a place in June? Umm, no, that would be when I was planning a little wedding. Our current apartment isn't cheap, especially when you throw in the several hundred dollars/month for parking C's car. If I thought the rental agents would be able to find a replacement renter for us, we could move out in, say, January or February (and who doesn't love to move in the middle of winter?), provided we could find something we liked. Even better, though, would be if we could find a place to buy. Of course we have no down payment, unreliable income on my part, and, by the way, I'm changing careers to one that pays for shit, so that's much harder to manage. I suppose if we bought a building that would house both us and a business we'd be okay (and, hey, short commute!).

Enough depressing and/or scary shit.

We continued with the wedding cake crap today--we rolled fondant and put it on styrofoam cake forms, and we'll attach our flowers tomorrow, along with piping and borders and whatever other crap we can imagine. The first time I tried to roll out the fondant I made complete hash out of it, so Chef Fred came over and basically re-demonstrated how to do it. The second time, though, worked perfectly--it was pretty amazing what a difference it made. I have no clue what I did wrong the first time, but I did get a feel for what doing it right was like. I also asked him to coach me through folding the sponge today: I've not been doing well with the folding, and, hey, that's why he's there. That, too, worked out pretty well. My flowers came out reasonably well yesterday. My roses are light orange, with copper accents along the edges; my carnations are similar; two of my lilies are goldish and one is pinkish, if I remember correctly; and my orchid is edged with blue (with a tiny hint of purple). My daisies are white. My partner's flowers are a trip--turquoise roses, edged with silver; turquoise carnations, edged with yellow (thus making them kind of green); and an orchid that's a wild combo of blue and pink. He hasn't done his lilies yet, but I think he's going to go kind of over the top with them, on the principle that his flowers are already unnaturally colored. I think they look great, too.

I'm tired today, though. I helped S move yesterday--he, his friend B, and I moved the bookshelves, bed, other furniture bits, some books and clothes, and the couch (a Danish thing that weighed nearly nothing). It took us less than four hours to shlep to the south side, pick up the truck, load the truck, drive north, unload the truck, take the truck back to the south side, then stop by my place so S could borrow a TV for the night (the cable guy needed a TV today for some reason). Which meant we had plenty of time to sit on the roof of this faux biker bar (used to be a real biker bar but it got popular; still plenty of tattoos, though) while the sun set, eating some dinner and drinking a few beers. I could have stayed several more hours, such a good time was I having, except for that 4 am wakeup call. I drank water like a fish to prevent alcohol-induced dehydration (it worked), and I was asleep by 10:45 or so, but I'm still tired. S's old place was on the third floor, and the new place was on a first floor reached by a steep flight of stairs, so I got some exercise. It was completely worth it; he's got a great new place. The cable guy is installing his internet/cable connection as I type, and we'll still make it to handball today. Life is good, even if nothing I'm making this week is tasty (technically it's edible, but you wouldn't want to eat it).

Little Fussy Things

Today was Day 2 of gum paste flowers, something that many people (including all three of the male chefs, I believe) apparently hate. It has some gendered aspects, of course: apparently, in the last session, the person who excelled at gum paste flowers was a police officer, and he was kind of embarrassed about it and demanded that his classmates not tell his fellow officers about this newfound talent. And, of course, the biggest "consumers" of these items are brides preparing for The Most Special Day In My Life. Some of the samples we've seen, in books and magazines and the like, are so over the top as to defy description. The other thing that's true about gum paste flowers is that they require a lot of slow, detailed, fussy work. I don't see it as so different from some of the other things we've done (e.g., petit fours) or will be doing (e.g., chocolates, sugar sculptures, elaborate plated desserts), because all of those things require working small. Smaller than a loaf of bread, anyway, and smaller than a tart.

I don't mind them--all that needlepoint and knitting and so on is, in fact, very similar. With all such tasks, I've found that there are almost two separate rhythms going on. One is in your hands, as you do this or that little bit of something, and the other is in your head. When I'm alone, I've always found such tasks to be meditative (jigsaw puzzles, too, which I also love); your mind is free to wander. When I'm with other people, as I have been in class, conversations break out; it definitely makes it clear why, a century or more ago, women would bring their needlework along when they visited each other.

The main reason I'd avoid doing gum paste flower decoration is that I suspect I wouldn't deal well with the inevitable bridezillas. And, really, it doesn't do to piss off your customers, you know?

We also had a news crew in class today, but I have no idea whether we'll be on television. (I don't even know what channel they were from.) They didn't really talk to us, just to Chef Fred, mostly.

21-20

I got to play handball last night for the first time in at least two weeks. S (the one who's writing about embodied knowledge) and I teamed up against The Cheater--a pain-in-the-ass who really does cheat, by getting the score wrong, by making bullshit calls, by not getting out of the way and letting you make your shot--and his buddy, who is often embarrassed by Cheater's antics and who is one of those graceful natural athletes. We didn't start out well at all--S hasn't played in a couple of weeks either, seeing as how he was "camping" (not exactly roughing it, he said; his friend called it "sushi camping"). Next thing you know, we're losing, 16-3. Since the game only goes to 21, this was not good. However! S made some key plays, we got a couple of little couple-point runs going, next thing you know, it's a lot closer. We tied up at 20. And then we won. Oh, yes, readers, it was satisfying. We lost the second game, but we galloped away with the third game. Truly satisfying.

I was asking someone from the other morning section about how that group is doing, and got an interesting response from her. She's the oldest in the group, and a career changer, so she's trying to suck in as much knowledge as possible, but she also realizes that this is the first time she's doing a lot of this stuff. Apparently a number of the younger people in the other morning groups spend endless time trying to perfect their product--make it look like the work of someone who has the 20+ years of experience that the chef has. I'm glad that we as a group don't seem to be falling prey to that--I suspect age has something to do with it.

Class today included Even! More! Evil! Not only meringue, in the form of macarons, but CHOCOLATE macarons. My partner and I have improved in the piping department, so they even looked good. (Oh how I wish I could take pictures of them . . .) We also made little apple nougat tartlets, which were eh, and finished up Puff Pastry Mania! I had a flash regarding my leftover puff pastry that worked out well, too. You may remember monkey bread--leftover puff pastry dough chopped up into bits with lots of cinnamon sugar (or cut into strips and turned into palmier, but I didn't have enough flat stuff with which to make palmier). It's quite tasty, as you might imagine, but big fat loaves of monkey bread are kind of a commitment--you'd better have a lot of people to eat it, or you're going to end up eating more sugar and butter than you probably want. Or throwing it out, which is just bad.

Anyway, instead of making a big fat loaf of it, I greased some muffin tins and just put a little layer of monkey bread dough on the bottom, and ohmygod do they look good. Little golden sugary buttery rounds, just begging for some sauteed ginger peaches and maybe a little ice cream or whipped cream. They're still a little on the large side; I'd probably make them in a smaller pan, or not go up the sides at all next time. But still--they're pretty spectactular-looking, and they supposedly freeze well, so I think I have instant dessert. (It's always nice to have something stashed away for those impromptu dinners.)

So we're done with petit fours, which is fine with me. I do well enough at them, given my capabilities for dealing with small fussy things, but a lot of it is a pain in the butt. In particular, the doughs are a pain to work with--moreso than croissant or puff pastry dough, for example. I like them, and, of course, I'll have to have them at my bakery. I think they fall into two categories: simple, time-tested recipes (macarons, madelines, pate a choux, financiers, tuile) that are beautiful and tasty when executed properly, and small fussy things like the miniature fruit tarts that require a lot of time per item.

Next week we start on wedding cakes and cake decoration--gum paste flowers, here I come!--so I think it's even more of the small fussy things. Luckily, all of the needlepoint and embroidery I've done are good training for the progress-in-small-steps idea that I suspect will be valuable in this section of the program.

How Is It?

In my last job, I was in another state, acting as our company's representative, basically, as a consultant we had hired provided training for corrections officers. My company was going to be providing substance abuse treatment services, and the corrections officers needed some introduction to such treatment. Several people from the state were there, too, seeing as how the state was funding the treatment program--i.e., we were the contractors overseeing the state-funded program. At the end of the first day of training, one of the state people (who liked to stir shit up just because he could) expressed his unhappiness with the training to me. I, too, was unhappy with it--I don't remember my complaints, but it was not being done well. I immediately got back to my hotel room and called my boss--I might even have paged him, which I did not do except under extreme circumstances. I eventually spoke at some length with the head of the consulting group providing the training, and, despite his insulting demeanor toward me, managed to make some points clear. The second day of training was much better than the first, and the state people were happier, so I was happier. When I was back in the office the next day, shit started hitting the fan. I don't remember all of what happened--the asshole head of the consulting group was in the mix somehow--but I think the gist was that the consultants were peeved that I had said anything, the state guy was still sticking his fingers in the pot, though he's the one who started it, and so on. I wouldn't have done anything differently, except to take back one passing comment I'd made to the state guy early on (and it was pretty innocuous; I think I made the mistake of actually agreeing with him that the training was shitty). I certainly would not have NOT called my boss--that would've been the worst possible thing I could have done. Still, everyone was unhappy, it seemed. As a result, late on a Friday afternoon, I was in my boss' office and I was extremely unhappy. I said something to the effect that it seemed like everyone was mad at me about something--the state was still not entirely happy about the training, the consultant group was pissy about the whole thing, etc. My boss kind of narrowed his eyes and looked straight at me and said, "The only person's opinion you need to care about is your boss's, and he's fine with what you did." He and I had already agreed that I shouldn't have made my comment to the state guy--I knew it as soon as the words left my mouth--but it wasn't an egregious error as these things go. One of the many great things about working with and for him was that I got straightforward, honest critiques. He is better than anyone I've ever met at helping people be better at what they do best.

In order for that to happen, though, all the parties to the transaction have to be in on it. The speaker has to be willing to speak the truth, and the listener has to be willing to hear it. Sometimes you can brainstorm on ways to improve something that needs improvement; sometimes the more knowledgeable person can tell you how to fix something--as when the chef showed me how to fix the chocolate tart shells for the chocolate espresso tarts the other day, or how to fix my uneven puff pastry dough today. According to the chef, not everyone wants to hear these things. I do--for one thing, when he compliments me on something, it means even more, because I believe that he wouldn't lie to me about it, but, for another thing, there's no way I can get any good at this stuff without feedback from someone who knows what the hell he's doing. So I've been trying to get into the habit of asking him for a critique of each of my products, and I wish I'd done that sooner, not least because I think tomorrow is our last day with him, which bums me right out. (I've gotten passing critiques all along, if he happens to be walking by.) I also wish we could afford a digital camera, because I haven't been able to take a single photograph of my work.

Today was Puff Pastry Mania!, during which I made another pithivier, because I made such hash out of the last one. (I could have made the horns for cream horns, or vol a vent, but I thought I needed more practice on this one. I'll make palmier out of the leftover dough when we finish the Mania! tomorrow.) This pithivier came out much better--I thought it was a little lopsided, but the chef said it looked good (even though he laughed when I lamented that it was ugly in a whole different way from the last one) and wondered if I'm too hard on myself. I don't think I am; I think I'm as demanding as the situation warrants. Anyway, the pithivier, for those of you who don't remember, is puff pastry with almond pastry cream in the center; this time I managed to not hack all the way through the pastry, so the filling stayed put. We also made miniature fruit tarts (this IS the petit fours section of the class) and more macarons with passion fruit filling. Our macarons were much nicer looking today than they were the other day, and I thought my fruit tarts came out pretty well, too. They got a little smushed in transit, but they looked and tasted pretty nice. I'd sent the opera cake to work with C, and he informed me that his coworkers would probably carry me around on their shoulders, so enamored of the cake were they. I gave a few pieces to the bus driver this morning, too.

Teamwork, Part I

Not quite as much with the butter, but still with the sugar and chocolate. Oh, wait, I have to do the theory stuff first, don't I?

One of the things that is completely fascinating about this whole experience is the actual classroom experience, particularly the blend (or not) of different styles, approaches, and experiences. In most classrooms, the teacher lectures; I primarily taught discussion-based classes, but even in those I'd do mini-lectures on particular topics, I'd nudge discussions as necessary, and/or I'd provide guidance and interpretative nuggets. Some classes worked quite well because of the students; others not so much. It doesn't take but a couple of people to set the tone--negatively or positively--for the whole group. Sometimes the negative and positive forces can counteract each other, which is useful for preventing a class from going to hell in a handbasket. Except in extreme situations, though, most classes, at least at the college level (sorry; high school was too long ago), are pretty much right down the middle. There might be a person or two who's kind of an asshole, there might be a person who knows everything, there might be a couple of people who say interesting things or spark interesting discussions, there are almost certainly a couple of people who just kinda sit there. I suspect lab classes are different, at least the ones where you work with a partner, but I wasn't a science major so I have only my experience in high school for that one.

Two, possibly three, things seem to be making a difference in pastry class. (Okay, probably more, but you know how I get.) First, the people who have no or limited experience working or coordinating with others are at a disadvantage. Take as a counter-example my current partner, who, although he's only 23, I think, is ex-military. As far as I can tell, the military is all about working with other people, subsuming yourself to the mission at hand, so he's extremely good at the teamwork thing--really a pleasure to work with. He's also assertive, which is useful, and generous, which is also useful. The assertive thing comes in handy as we check each other's work or the organization of our tasks, and both the assertive and the generous are useful as we do various tasks. He's already been to regular culinary school, so if there's something I suck at doing or want more practice doing, he's extremely generous in offering to let me do it, or, in the case of Monday's Italian meringues, do it more than once in a day when normally we'd split that up. We seem to have the cleaning up worked out pretty well, and I think we're getting things done in an orderly fashion.

There was also an interesting interaction today, only part of which I witnessed. Each team has assigned clean-up tasks for the week, and the tasks rotate. Our tasks this week have not included wiping down the refrigerators and freezers, but we've ended up doing it every day this week. (When you finish your tasks, it behooves you to just keep cleaning rather than just wander away.) He got a little . . . peevish is way too strong, but pointing in that direction, about that, so he looked up which team was supposed to be doing it and went and found one of the members. She was extremely apologetic--she works her butt off, and is not at all a slacker--but she and her partner had divided up their tasks at the beginning of the week and her partner was supposed to be doing the freezers and refrigerators. But my partner had no problem mentioning it--politely, respectfully, but mentioning nevertheless. I was really impressed with how he handled it, if you want to know.

So if one thing is experience working with others, another is experience working in a kitchen. The latter gives you something similar to the working-with-others thing, but making and serving food is much more immediate than most other coordinated activities and therefore requires attention to details at a much higher intensity and speed. You can't just throw stuff in the oven and not check the temperature, timing, or doneness. You have to bake like things together. You have to coordinate your baking, if some things are at one temperature and other things at another temperature. If you're sharing ingredients or tools, you have to take turns--and clean up when you're done. It's a much more intensive coordination than in most other fields--I imagine surgery is similar, in some ways, but even then you'll have a single person at the head of the team and others who are subordinates. In the kitchen it might be the same way, but in this classroom, or in any kitchen that functions more like a team and less like a hierarchy, you have to organize and coordinate yourselves. The people with kitchen experience are better at that.

Okay, enough of that for today; more tomorrow when I remember where I was. Today's goodies included the aforementioned Opera Cake (which I still say was too rich for my tastes), chocolate financiers (yesterday we also made financiers, but they weren't chocolate and they had a raspberry instead of an almond in them; yesterday we also made chocolate espresso tarts and coconut rocher), madelines (according to the chef, the butter has to be screaming hot when you add it to the batter; I find that a little yelping sound effect helps, too), and tuile (pronounced "twill"), which is caramel with almonds that gets a little crispy and which can be covered on one side with chocolate.

Is Empathy Systematic?

That is a relevant question, because yet another person is making claims about the "essential" differences between men and women. (As the bio attached to this op-ed piece notes, the author has written something titled, "The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain.") As you all know by now, reductionism of various sorts makes me crazy.

In any case, according to this guy, his research divides people and their brains into "systematizers" and "empathizers," and, what a surprise, in his research the former is associated more with males and the latter with females. The part that is making me crazy (today, anyway; something else about this will make me spit tomorrow) is that the underlying assumption is that empathizing is not systematic, it's just this "there, there" response. As he puts it:

Systemizing involves identifying the laws that govern how a system works. Once you know the laws, you can control the system or predict its behavior. Empathizing, on the other hand, involves recognizing what another person may be feeling or thinking, and responding to those feelings with an appropriate emotion of one's own.

Okay, people, listen up: recognizing what another person may be thinking or feeling means that one must have a typology of emotion--a system, if you will. It's not just random hand-holding. There are, in fact, laws involved, and you can, in fact, control an emotional system or predict its behavior. (What's that old line about parents? They're so good at pushing our buttons because they installed them?) You can argue about whether the difference in subject matter makes a difference, but, damnit, it's still a system.

Second, however, none of this takes into account how socialization affects the systems to which we devote our time. (First questions regarding the mechanical mobile versus human faces in the first 24 hours of life: How was "look at" measured? Did the measurer know the sex of the infants? It's possible that this test would still stand up, but let's not forget that "assertive" gets coded as "aggressive" or "bitchy" when the genitalia expressing the behavior varies.) I think it's absolutely likely--not just possible, but likely--that hormones influence our development, including the development of our personalities and our likes and dislikes, and possibly even the development of something like Asberger's or autism. But it's also likely that we still do not have much of a clue about the mechanisms involved, number one, or, number two, the interaction of the vast number of inputs to the system.

Back to the socialization question. If you are in a subordinate position, because of your sex, you'd damned well better learn how to read emotions. You'd better be able to figure out what pattern your parent, boss, partner, etc. is displaying today, because if that person is going to go off, you want to be able to defuse or get out of the way. If you're not subordinate(d) you do not have to care what other people are feeling. If you're smart, you learn to do so anyway, but you simply do not have to care. Thus, to my mind, measuring empathy and not taking that socialization into account means you've muddied your results. Just saying.

This Just In

Meringues: Still Evil, or Not So Much?

Still evil, I say. Even more evil, really, than they were on Friday, but you'll have to wait 'til the bottom of the post to find out why.

Meanwhile, Ann, channeling Pandagon comments, gives us the quote of the day, about the "intelligent" design crap:

Next, on CNN, "Clouds: Atmospheric Moisture, or Fluffy Angel Farts?"

In other news, the major downside to this whole pastry chef thing is that, so far as I can tell, I'm going to make diddly-squat. I'll mind that less if/when I can open my own place, but it's unclear how one gets together enough money to do that if one is only making the aforementioned diddly-squat. (After typing it both ways, I've decided that "diddly-squat" doesn't have an "e" in it. But I could be wrong.) I've decided not to worry about that at the moment, however, not least because I'm loving this so much that it's probably illegal.

I suspect part of it is that I like learning new things so very much. At the wedding, my uncle came up to me and told me that my (maternal) grandfather always said about me that I'd never get married and I'd never stop going to school. He was half-right, anyway, but it was an interesting insight. (And I am way off the charts in terms of age at first marriage--definitely more than two standard deviations from the mean.) And I do love learning new things. It's not school, per se, because one has to pay for schooling, usually, and put up with administrative bullshit, at least sometimes, but school is a pretty efficient way of communicating information if the instructor knows his/her subject and the students are motivated to learn. I've taught myself a number of things--how to knit, do rudimentary calligraphy, use most computer programs (I've rarely had classes in such things), do needlepoint, cook, write, play handball (though with some help on that one), teach, grow plants, and build a relational database, among other things--and I'm going to be teaching myself how to structure documents with DocBook if the company stays in business. So there's the "learning new things" part of the program, which is related closely to (if not identical with) the "hates being bored" part of the program.

This weekend was the Festival of Fermented Breads at the Goldman household. I made some fermented dough on Saturday (or, rather, I made some dough Saturday and let it ferment overnight in the refrigerator) (yes, I skipped handball AGAIN; I'm going to forget how to play at this rate), and I weighed it out for the recipes for French, farmer, wheat, and beer breads after it proofed. I also made a recipe of croissant dough, though I didn't put the wad of butter into it until Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, after yoga, I made the wheat and farmer bread, but (a) I forgot just how much bread those recipes made, so (b) I put the fermented dough for the French and beer breads into the freezer. We'll see what happens to them. I also froze the croissant dough after two turns, and the chef told me today that one can, in fact, do that, so we'll see. I didn't want to waste it, and it was clear I wasn't going to get to it yesterday. I was so exhausted last night, though, and it was unclear why; I'm pretty tired today, too. I think I need an extra day somewhere, a day to sleep and hang out and not bake or exercise or anything. I don't see one of those coming any time soon, though.

In class today we made even more bits for the Opera Cake and we assembled it (upside down, so there's no difficulty getting a smooth top chocolate layer)--basically, it's a lot of sponge (or, in our case, cracker, because our sponge dried out some) soaked in coffee syrup, layered with various kinds of chocolate and buttercream. The buttercream is lightened with Italian meringue (whip egg whites, then add hot sugar syrup while it continues to whip, which cooks the egg whites and makes a shiny, sturdy meringue); were I to make this cake, I'd probably add even more meringue and less buttercream, because otherwise it's just a little to fatty for my taste. We also made macarons--italian meringue combined with grounds almonds and confectioner's sugar, piped, dried, and baked into little rounds, then some passionfruit creme sandwiched between two of the rounds. So, yes, there's the even more evil meringue. It's very easy to stick about eight in your mouth, because, hey, it's only egg whites and some sugar, so what could be bad?

22 Hours

It's not that I have anything to say--or, at least, it's not that I have anything to say that I could say coherently right this minute--it's more that I want to point out that I've been up for 22 hours (and counting), which I don't think is all that impressive, really, but I wanted to point it out. I also wanted to let you all know that I managed to find, and drink, all of the beers that had my name on them. Plus, there was one with YOUR name on it, but you weren't there, so I had that one, too. And some casement meats--they're always a nice complement to beer (with anyone's name on it)--I had some of them, too. Unfortunately, the place I found those beers was full of people who smoke. I used to smoke, so I try to have compassion and so on, but the ventilation was really bad, so I walked in the door of my apartment and took a shower, so much like an ashtray did I smell. It was also full of a mix of people when we got there, but exclusively full of 20-somethings by the time we left, including one whose voice was INCREDIBLY LOUD. Disconcertingly loud, even.

In any case, having found, and drunk, the beers with my name upon them, I'm going to bed.

Meringue is Evil

I had another, more clever name for this post, but I forget what it was. Meringue IS evil, but, in deference to kStyle's request, you'll have to wait until after I explain why Pops is wrong to find out WHY meringue is evil.

Pops' latest heuristic is Tocquville, whom I haven't read in a million years, but who apparently blames the lack of appreciation for craftspersonship on democracy. I kind of see the point, but only kind of: that is, Pops says,

And everyone else's fault all at the same time because we live in a democracy, where the differences between classes is blurred to the point of non-existence. Where aritstocracies engendered a tiny class of people with all the resources and a whole crapload of idle time, they could afford to commission, pay for and wait for works of great and unique skill for the sole purpose of adornment and distinction (I spend all this money to show that I can spend all this money).

Whereas in democracies, the taste for really cool stuff still exists, but we can't wait for it forever and it can't cost that much because it has to be accessible to a HUGE (relative to an aristocracy) contingent of the population who MIGHT buy whatever it is should the desire arise. Instead of paying a whole, whole lot for something great, people in democracies are willing to settle for something merely "pretty good" if they don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it and they can get their hands on it before they, say, die.

It's part of Tocqueville's more general point about how democracy fosters a sense of acceptable mediocrity in MANY ways (craftsmanship included), favoring the many over the few, discouraging ideas of distinction and taste in the aristocratic sense; a sense of the vast, overall equality of people everywhere as opposed to the separation of a few. The marketplace reflects that in a shift from adornment and presentation to (nearly) pure consumption. Emphasis shifts from the craftsman's craft to the owner of the shop and his means of production (to briefly get Marxian) for the majority.

But then Tocqueville was making what now seem like quaint and simple distinctions purely between aristocracy and democracy, so none of this may actually be relevant anymore.

There are several problems with this argument, compelling though it is in some ways.

First off, I think that's a false dichotomy between an aristocracy and a democracy and the ability or willingness of people in either to appreciate craft. Much of Europe seems to appreciate craft a whole lot more than we do, but there really isn't an aristocracy to speak of. One could even argue that, given the vast difference in income between the owners and the workers in much of the American economy, we've got more of an actual aristocracy than exists in Europe.

Second, I don't think an aristocracy is a necessary condition for the appreciation and expression of craftspersonship, in part because I don't think craft is necessarily exorbitantly expensive. Craftspeople can also barter their skills more easily, and most craftspeople I know do some form of barter. (My brother was able to make significant modifications to his house this past 18 months, in part by calling in favors. As he put it, "I fixed a lot of cars." In return, his friends who are electricians and plumbers and the like came by and helped with various bits of the construction.)

Third, though, I think one might argue that adornment and presentation are (at least potentially) nearly synonymous with pure consumption rather than opposed to it. We all adorn and present ourselves, of course: as social beings, we make choices about how to clothe ourselves, whether to wear cosmetics, whether to wear heels, which frames we want for our glasses (or how about contacts or laser surgery?), how long to wear our hair, on which parts of our body we allow hair to grow (or not), etc. Despite occasional disingenuous claims to the contrary, none of these are arbitrary decisions. This is not to say that we spend wads of money or time on the decisions, merely that we spend some time on them. But there's a spectrum, and we've all run across people who spend a LOT of time and money on adornment and presentation (and a few people who could stand to spend a few more minutes). There are societal strata where it's necessary to do so--where it makes sense to own several tuxedos, for example, or to have a relationship with a designer or an exclusive dress shop or whatever. There are also strata where a lot of money gets spent, but, to those of us who expect to wear clothes not just more than once but more than one season of one year, it looks like that money is being spent on whatever's hip this season, that it will be fashionable for about 15 minutes, and we can't imagine buying clothes that way. Adornment and presentation are thus tied pretty tightly to consumption, even if they're not necessarily synonymous the way I posited at the beginning of this paragraph.

Pure consumption makes me think of the people I see in shopping malls when I am unfortunate enough to have to go to such places. The people wandering around there don't really fall into the consume-to-adorn-and-present category, at least not in the sense of being "fashion-forward," as they say, but they consume, nearly mindlessly, it seems--consumption becomes a kind of anesthetic, as well as a confirmation that they have the means to consume.

Where was I going with all of this? Oh, right, World War II. (Hah--betcha didn't know I was going there, did you?)

How does one have an appreciation for craft or expertise? Being exposed to it somehow is a necessary condition, but probably not a sufficient condition. How does that exposure get reduced or eliminated? By living in a country where everything is made cheaply and by a machine. In the decades following World War II, the U.S. could afford to make things by machine that the rest of the world continued to make by hand. You people are probably smart enough to go on from here without me.

I'm running out of steam here--even though I stole Pops' comment for half the damn post--so let's cut to the pastry and then go drink beer. We made more ingredients for our opera cakes today, and my partner and I suck at folding, so our sponge cake (also known as a biscuit, pronounced bis-QUEE, not BIS-kit, it turns out) is, as Chef Fred says, more like a cracker than a sponge cake. We've also made coffee syrup and chocolate glaze, and we still have a few more bits to make. We made meringue delights today, too, and they ARE evil, primarily because I love meringue. Sugary, chewy, what's not to like? So I ate too many. Plus, I still can't pipe for shit--I was making what Chef Fred called "truck-driver meringues." (He also refers to large items as the Costco version.) We had a discussion of various kinds of cremes (e.g., pastry cream plus buttercream equals mousseline, used in a Napoleon because straight pastry cream is too wet and would immediately sog up the puff pastry, which reminds me that I have to find my recipe for pumpkin Napoleons). We had a massive kitchen cleaning, which we skipped last week and I'm glad we did this week because the place was getting a little scuzzy. We had another two-minute evaluation from Chef Fred, in which he said I'm doing better, which was nice to hear, but I think I'm not doing as well as he thinks I'm doing. Or maybe we would agree in a longer conversation. In any case, this weekend I want to try my hand at making croissants at home, so i brought my rolling pin and recipe book.

And now, people, there is a beer somewhere with my name on it--several beers, as a matter of fact--so I'm going to go find them and drink them.

By Hand

Today's petits fours: apricot almond tarts (with a linzer dough); blueberry tarts (on a sweet dough, topped with streusel); and pistachio creme brulee on a little circle baked from extra-fine sweet dough (a.k.a. sable, pronounced sah-blee). The apricot-almond tarts were pretty good, though fragile (probably could have baked a teeny bit longer); the blueberry tarts were too sweet for my taste--I'd leave some of the sugar out of the filling and might even add some lemon zest to the filling or the dough; and the creme brulee was quite nice, even if I need practice with the caramelizing torch. I still haven't finished the puff pastry turnovers at home; I must do that tonight before everything rots in the fridge. I also have to drink beer tonight, I think, rather than play handball, but if that happens, it should happen early. (An ex-coworker is back in town for a few days--his dad had heart surgery of some kind--and he has to be somewhere at 7:30 or 8:00, so we'll meet before that.)

I've been thinking for a week now about a conversation that B and S and I had last week about embodied knowledge. That's a common bit of conversation these days, not least because S is writing about it at great (i.e., dissertation) length; it's also a subject that has fascinated me for a very long time. Because so many of my family members are craftspeople of one kind or another, and because I, too, make things, it's easy to forget that not everyone has that experience. Even though my sister-in-law cooks a fair amount of food from boxes, she has a big garden, and my brother kills the meat they eat. My brother also makes things--a curved pirate sword, out of wood, for my older nephew; targets for archery practice; my nephew's first bow--so my nephews get some exposure to that.

In general, though, we live in a world--and, in particular, in a country--that absolutely does not value those kinds of skills. Yes, I've said it here before and I'm saying it again. One of our chefs has earned the title of MOF, or Meilleur Ouvrier de France (here's a description in French; you can Google m.o.f. France and ask Google to translate for the English), and a second will be trying to earn that title the next time it comes around. The title is available in about 200 arenas, I think, not just pastry; once you earn the title, you hold it for life. It is similar to the Japanese "living national treasure" designation, and it acknowledges expertise. In particular, it acknowledges what S has been calling (in a phrase I have stolen) "embodied knowledge." I would argue that there have been similar levels of expertise in a number of craft unions in this country (e.g., the progression from apprentice to journeyman to craftsman in at least a few craft unions).

The powers that be in this country have long been as suspicious of "craft"-based expertise as it has been of intellectual pursuits and labor unions--all of those things apparently impede capitalism in ways that are detrimental to, um, capitalists, I guess. How has this happened, you wonder? Well, how many of you have heard of Frederick Taylor? You'll notice, if you click through on that link, that the second paragraph refers to "skilled craftsmen" but the rest of the discussion assumes that (a) the skills workers possess are minimal, (b) skilled craftwork can be reduced to simplified (and, perhaps, mechanized) tasks that can be performed by minimally skilled (and, presumably, cheaper-to-hire; certainly more replaceable) people, and (c) workers don't really want to be productive; all things considered, they'd rather slack. My personal favorite part of that page is Taylor's four principles:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed.
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

Let's look at that third one again: "Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed." Because, you know, craftspeople's methods aren't scientific and couldn't possibly embody any relevant knowledge whatsoever, at least not compared to science, and, you know, workers LOVE to have the "cooperation" of their overseers to make sure those new methods are being followed. However did they manage to work without such oversight?

And how about that last one? How, exactly, is managers applying scientific management principles and "planning" the work while the workers actually do the tasks an "equal" division of the work? It's not a surprise that I found this little page on an MBA-related site: Taylor extolled the virtue of "management," and, one might argue, almost single-handedly created the perceived need for the MBA. (Sorry; had to wipe some scorn off the screen there.)

Seriously, though, this attitude is opposed in just about every way possible with the notions that, for example, craftspeople (broadly understood, for the moment; I'd argue that many areas of expertise have these qualities, even the ones we habitually call "professions") have, can utilize and manage, and can communicate skill sets that are specialized. It is opposed to the notion that doing and thinking about one's doing are not mutually exclusive. It is the basis of classically marxist alienation from one's labor. It is dehumanizing, in so many ways. It is primarily concerned with profit for the owners--hence the emphasis, when you scratch the surface, on "efficiency." The efficiency that was the hallmark of Taylorism was designed to increase the profits in the pockets of the owners--at first by getting more work out of people for the same amount of money, and not too much later, by mechanizing expertise out of existence. (As I've mentioned before, Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano" is one of the best evocations of this I've ever read; he was working at GE when he wrote it, I believe.)

If a machine-made croissant satisfies you, then don't bother coming to my bakery; you'll wonder what the fuss is about, and you'll probably roll your eyes at the price, especially when you can get bigger, cheaper ones at Wal-Mart. But if you want a hand-made croissant, then come on by.

A Place for Your Stuff

with apologies to George Carlin

Today's menu, all made with some combination of pate a choux and pastry cream, and all done in miniature (one or two bites) size:

• Eclairs: long, thin, filled with chocolate pastry cream and topped with a lengthwise stripe of chocolate fondant
• Salambos: shorter and fatter than an eclair, filled with pastry cream flavored with kirsch, topped with caramel and a toasted almond to cover the hole into which the pastry cream was piped
• Chouquettes: cream-puff shape, filled with hazelnut pastry cream, topped with a combo of nuts and large-granule sugar (before baking), and dusted with powdered sugar
• Paris-Brest: ring of choux, piped with a star tip and topped with almonds before baking, cut in half like a bagel then filled with six blobs of a mixture of pastry cream, buttercream, and praline paste

We also made blueberry filling, which we'll use tomorrow for blueberry tartlets, and a batch of buttercream, which I have to say I didn't like all that much. WAY too much butter in the recipe for my taste; I much prefer a higher sugar content and much less butter.

I'm still thinking about Larry's comment to the last post, too. As I noted in my comment, I do think he's exploited, in some sense of that word, even if not in the same way that a migrant worker or factory worker might be exploited. He's certainly alienated from his labor, in the classic Marxist sense. It's not clear to me just how much we owe to people who are exploiting us, particularly when they are paying us "well," in some sense of that word. For my own sanity, I typically try to do a good job--anything else starts making me really hate myself and the whole world around me. One might also "work to rule," however, and not give any freebie extras to a company/situation that is exploitative. I don't know how to tell other people what to do, in these cases. Despite its faults (and they are many), my current company is allowing me to work half-time while I go to school; it's worth pointing out that my half-time pay is still probably going to be higher--depending on what kind of job I get, possibly substantially higher--than I will make as a full-time pastry chef. It's absurd to me that that's so (for reasons that I'll get to in yet another post), but there it is.

I don't know how to convince people when, how, where, or why to take a different stand. I've never worked for a big company (other than short stints in fast-food emporia many years ago), I've been valued by my bosses (though typically not by higher-ups in a given organization), and I've made a comfortable living (though, I've found out, often less than (a) I could have negotiated or (b) my coworkers were making). I've never had a dependent. I am, in many ways, very very lucky. On the other hand, I've changed "careers" multiple times, and not always by choice; I've acquired and paid off a big chunk of debt for a degree that I have never used and for which I'll have even less use now; and I've accepted that the choices I've made mean that I'm never going to be wealthy (and I mean industrialized-world wealthy, of course; relative to the poor parts of the planet, I'm already extremely wealthy). Not everyone has the freedom to make the choices I've made, even as I've had a hand in creating a very small part of that freedom.

I've also seen people get trapped (I don't think Larry is one of them, however)--not by the need to support the people who depend on them, but by the need to maintain a certain lifestyle. They have to have new cars, new this, new that, and they carry a lot of consumer debt to do so; this, in turn, means they have to keep the job they hate, because they make a lot of money at it and they'd be hard-pressed to get a more-fun job at similar pay. (A friend who is now a grad student spent a couple of years as a banker, pretty much by accident; he finally quit because he didn't like it all that much, and he saw that he'd have to start buying a certain amount of Stuff, and then he'd have to keep the job to pay the mortgage and so on. He's not a materialistic person, so Stuff didn't have much intrinsic appeal to him, but he worked with people who acquired Stuff the way some of us breathe.)

Really, one of the challenges that C and I face now is not buying Stuff. I can talk him into just about any purchase, in part because I'm usually the Voice of Fiscal Reason, which isn't much help when I'm not listening to that voice myself. But we plain and simple can't afford it now. We've got two weddings coming up in the next six weeks, plus his son's birthday, plus finish paying for the bookshelves we ordered--and who knows whether I'll keep getting paid. All this to say that I decided to hold off on buying the digital camera I'd like to have to take pictures of my baked goods. I'd talked him into it, but, on looking at reality, we really shouldn't do it right now. If the investors come through? If I get some back paychecks? Sure; I'll be clicking away in no time. I don't think this is particularly meritorious behavior on my part, I might add: but I do think there are many people who would throw it on a credit card and not think twice, and then they have to keep the job they hate in order to make the payments. I don't want to get caught up in that--that is, it's fear on my part, not some kind of moral superiority or self-righteous abstemiousness, that keeps me from spending more money than I think I can afford now. But, hell, most of you are on the same page here, so this has a little bit of preaching-to-the-choir, doesn't it?

Are All Jobs Worth Doing Well?

Yesterday we made several kinds of sweet dough, because we're making petits fours for the next two weeks. Today we made pate a choux again (we made it yesterday to practice our piping), out of which we made an assortment of eclair- and cream-puff-type objects (being French means there's a word for every little shape), which we'll fill tomorrow with the various pastry creams we also made today. We also made dacquoise bases (a meriingue-nut mixture) and dacquoise cream (pastry cream with nuts and a little port wine, and, of course, butter and sugar), and assembled them into little teeny sandwich-shaped things. In addition, I did, in fact, make a recipe of puff pastry this weekend, and yesterday I baked ten of them--five blueberry and five apricot--and brought them in for the chef to critique. He complimented me on them! So that rocked. They did look nice, though they weren't all the same size (he totally didn't believe that I had used the same size cutter for each one, but I did; I think the dough wasn't the same degree of coldness while I was rolling, and that would make a big difference). And the fillings WERE good: for the blueberry one, I cooked down the blueberries for awhile with butter, sugar, and some cornstarch (yes, I know, I should have weighed it all, rather than merely using "some"), and when they refused to truly thicken I just dumped them in a strainer and let the liquid part run off (and kept that, because I suspect it'd be yummy over pancakes or mixed with some confectioner's sugar for an icing). The apricots I chopped up and mixed with some butter, honey, ginger, and cinnamon, cooked them for awhile, and then threw them in the food processor. It was so exciting to see them puff the way they're supposed to!

But I keep thinking about Ann's question of a couple of weeks ago: are all jobs worth doing well? I think that, in principle, any job should be worth doing well: if you're going to bother doing it, then do it right. That's what my parents (especially my dad) taught me, and I've absorbed it into my skin. I've also been lucky: although I've had a number of shit jobs over the years, I've always believed that they were temporary. I never thought I'd be literally or figuratively shoveling shit for a living forever. I've also worked under relatively good conditions: even my stints in fast-food places were brief or, more likely, with people I liked and under people I respected. Finally, I've never really been exploited, which is subtly different (or perhaps not?) from the last thing. And those three conditions matter.

That is: if all you can look forward to getting is shit work, if the working conditions are unpleasant, and/or if you're being exploited in any of a variety of ways, then I can understand being less than enthusiastic about the work as a political position, sort of. (What are some working definitions of exploited? When workers are poorly compensated and/or when the owners make many hundreds of times the wages of the average employee--WalMart is a perfect example here, as is much fruit- and vegetable-harvesting. When the conditions are dangerous (because the company cuts back on safety measures to cut costs, not necessarily because the work is inherently dangerous) and the labor market is tight, so people cannot afford to lose jobs, even when the jobs may cost a limb or a life--mass-produced meat jobs are good examples of this. I regard a poor educational system in combination with Taylorized jobs, e.g., dumbed-down fast food jobs as a complicated exploitation system, albeit one that isn't being produced consciously. Though some have argued that the rich right wing is trying to do exactly that, and there is evidence that for more than a century manufacturers have wanted more docile and more dumb workers.)

But in a (admittedly fantasized) society where all the members recognize the value of any job and recognize that all of us should share in the most unpleasant tasks (or pay dearly to have them performed by others), then, yes, any job is worth doing well.