Queen, Revisited

I tried to watch last night, but, alas, I was too tired. (I did make it to yoga yesterday, despite a bad case of motivational deficiency disorder, so yay me on that score.) I live in one of the neighborhoods with all of the bars, however, so, when I was awakened at 12:30 by horns blowing and people yelling and cheering, I quickly and correctly concluded that the White Sox had won. I would normally sleep through such ruckus, especially given that C is out of town, but I suspect the noise level was much higher than usual. I went back to sleep within ten minutes, however. I admit to having been torn regarding this series. I would normally root for the National League team (because the designated hitter is an abomination unto human and beast and should be abolished, by Constitutional amendment if necessary)--but Houston edged out my beloved Phillies, so they were the one team in the NL playoffs for whom I could not root whole-heartedly, Rocket notwithstanding. Given my antipathy toward the American League, I thus had some difficulty rooting for the White Sox, even if they are one of my current-home teams, not least because I will never truly belong in this city, no matter how many years I live here (I'm up to 19 years, so it's not like I haven't given it a try). I ended up half-heartedly rooting for the Sox, but not actually watching much of the Series.

I've been in several cities when the hometown team won a championship: I was in Philadelphia when the Sixers beat the Lakers in, hmmm, must have been '83?, and not far away when the Phillies won in, I think, 81. I was in Houston when the Rockets won--both times, I think, though I might be wrong about that. I was in Chicago when the Bulls won, all six times (and was among the cheering, yelling crowds at least once), and now when the Sox won. Luckily, I was NOT here when the Bears won, or I don't know what I would have done. (C is an uncontrollable Bears fan, and he's already teaching the Kid that, every week, one roots for two teams: for the Bears, and for whomever is playing the Packers. I fear for our marriage, or, at least, my sanity, if the Bears ever get close to the Super Bowl again.) It's a little strange, at this point, given that those of us who get all excited about it are basically getting excited about watching people do their jobs. The stars no longer (or rarely) take the subway to the ballpark or live anywhere near the fans, and even the "fans" are more likely to be businesspeople who can write off the tickets as entertainment expense. What's amazing, nevertheless, is that beauty still breaks out of this capitalist stranglehold--men and women play hard, play well, execute flawlessly or nearly so, not because they're getting paid, but because they can. The equation works the other way around, I guess: they get paid precisely because they CAN execute. (And do not come here to bitch about players' salaries: the money that sports teams make can go to two groups of people, the owners and the players. Given that choice, I will always pick the players. And there isn't a third choice.) Anyway, to use something that Susie mentioned the other day, I think that, at its finest and best, sports can be transformational--watching OR playing.

As soon as I get around to it, I'm adding twisty to the blogroll, because I'm lovin' her patriarchy-blaming style; go check her out. While you're at it, check out badger, too. She's dealing with some very tough times right now (as is Twisty), and they're both giving new meaning to the notion of grace under pressure.

But you people, you don't care about that--you want to know what I've been making this week, don't you? Well okay then. Yesterday was a bonanza of sugar and fat. We took home two kinds of lemon tart, one made with lemon curd that was extremely good and one made with lemon cream, which tasted like lemon butter and I really disliked it intensely. Both had meringue on them, but we baked the meringue separately, so I've been chowing on meringue and its evilness for two days. We made a Paris-Brest, which is (bottom to top): pate a choux with nuts, hazelnut pastry cream, pate a choux, more pastry cream, nougatine (!), more pate a choux with nuts, and then, piped around the whole thing, more hazelnut pastry cream. It's made to look like a bicycle wheel (or, at least, to invoke one), because it's in honor of a bicycle race between Paris and Brest. We also took home a St. Honore cake (St. Honore is the patron saint of pastry chefs): inverted puff pastry (i.e., the butter is on the outside, rather than the inside, of the dough), pate a choux puffs filled with a different kind of pastry cream (called chiboust; it's got whipped cream and meringue folded into the basic pastry cream) and dipped in caramel (I burned ours a bit), then dipped on the other side and attached to the puff pastry; and filled with the chiboust cream, which is piped using a special St. Honore tip. (St. Honore's day is apparently either May 16 or May 20; I can't seem to find out. But my bakery will give out free pastry on that day.) Today we finished the pistachio nougat mousse cake, but I won't take mine until tomorrow. Bottom to top: pistachio dacquoise; apricot-passion-fruit gelee; pistachio dacquoise; nougat mousse (italian meringue made with honey instead of hot sugar); pistachio dacquoise; nougat mousse; pistachios, apricots, and dried cherries, all chopped up; and a thin layer of apricot glaze to seal and protect the cake. It is extremely good.

Hivelettes, etc.

So last night C and I went to dinner, but we decided to have dessert at home, because of the ice cream cakes in the freezer. I hacked off a couple of pieces for us, we ate them . . . and I broke out in hives. Not from the ice cream, but I really have no clue why. The hives only lasted about 20 minutes, and they weren't extreme, but I definitely had me some itchy blotches. I suppose I could freak out and think that my body is weakening or something, but I prefer to interpret it precisely the other way 'round. That is, something made me break out in hives, but the sensible part of me said, "Oh, stop it already," and the hives went away. It's not obvious why I actually, instead of merely metaphorically, broke out in hives. Yes, I had shrimp and red wine, but I've had them hundreds or thousands of times without hives, and, frankly, they wouldn't have gone away so quickly if it were a truly serious allergy of some kind. I think I had some a few weeks ago at handball (and, it turns out, exercise can induce them), but I just ignored them and kept playing (which, it also turns out, isn't what you're supposed to do) and they went away, if, indeed, they were ever there. (I didn't stop playing and take off my clothes to check.) Eh; I'm not going to worry about it, but it was a little weird.

Chef Tom is a trip. He likes to quiz you as he goes along with his demo, and he forces you to (try to) think about what makes sense, not just blindly follow along. It's challenging, and I like it. He, too, complained about how much noise we (as a class) make, and I fear we're never going to be very good on that score, but I think we can improve. We'd better, or he'll make us miserable.

We also got our exams back from Chef Bob today, and my evaluations were just about where I expected them to be. As I noted before, the only thing I really fucked up badly was the chocolate showpiece (and the sugar written exam), and I did a few things quite well, so I'm pretty pleased, all in all. Satisfied? No, not really, at least not in the sense of "Okay, that's as good as I want or need to be," but definitely in the sense of "Okay, I'm getting this, and with some practice I could be good at some of it." It's funny--I suspect that there are people (and times in my life when I would have been among them) who focus on, and mainly see, the negative comments, the criticisms and critiques the chef provided. I certainly read those, but, really, I could have done some (but not all) of those myself in some ways. I find myself focusing at least as much on the positive comments, in part so I know what I did right. My last partner, V, thinks that the chefs are all soft on us (not Chef Tom, so much, but definitely Chef Fred). I see her point, on one hand: they don't run the kitchen as strictly as they could, even if they are demanding about quite a few things. On the other hand, when it comes to grading the product, they point out the smallest details, and they grade accordingly, so I can't quite classify them as "soft," either.

The exams are an interesting exercise. They really force you to focus, to manage your time and your resources, and to produce something that's as good as you can get it without taking too much time, which means, at our level, that there will be compromises. Take the raspberry bonbons: I could have redone the shells a third time and perhaps managed to get them a little bit better. Would I have done them better enough to justify the extra half hour to 45 minutes it would have taken me? Probably not. Something else would have suffered, for sure, and I finished maybe 15 minutes before time was up as it was. So, I know they were flawed--not perfect--but they were still pretty damned good, and I managed to get really nice bottoms on them, too. But was it worth it to do them a second time? Definitely; the first time around, the shells were really horrible. In any case, with both the raspberry and the hand-dipped chocolates, I had enough from which to choose so I could find 12 of each that were pretty good. (I only dipped about 16-18 of the hand-dipped ones.)

In Emma's-a-geek news, I reread "The Hobbit," which I hadn't done in years, prior (this time) to reading the trilogy. And now it's time for the yearly reading of the trilogy. Yeah, I know, I know. And I don't care.

Finally, I've had to burst balloons lately, which isn't all that much fun, but is sometimes necessary. As I fret about whether I'm actually going to be able to start a business, I have people tell me that "If there's a will there's a way," and "You can do it!" and so on. I know people mean to be kind, and they mean to tell me how much they think of me, but I know better. That is, hard work is a necessary but not a sufficient condition--and, frankly, if you've got the right connections and/or money, it's not even a necessary condition. I've wanted things very badly, worked very hard to get them, and gone into serious debt and spent many years in the effort, and it still didn't work out. That's not to say I'm not going to try this time, only that there's no reason to think I'm actually going to be successful.

Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts

I'm thinking of that song because of the incessant drilling outside today ("the cabaret was quiet except for the drillin' in the wall"). Yes, just what this neighborhood needs is yet another luxury high-rise, because the 50-60 that have been built in the past ten years surely won't be enough, and the two that have gone up within a block of the latest one aren't enough for the immediate neighborhood. As best I can figure, each of the development companies went to a different bank for their financing; otherwise, someone would have figured out that there really isn't enough demand for all of the buildings. But hey, what do I know? I'm a marginally employed pastry chef, and I'm not even working AS a pastry chef yet.

We switched chefs and partners today, and both will be fine. This chef (let's call him Tom) is also quite interesting. Each of the chefs has been demanding in his own way, despite the things they have in common. The things they have in common include a passion for the art and craft of French pastry; an absolute insistence on cleanliness (which I love; even though I'm not good enough to work as cleanly as I'd like, I have every intention of instituting those principles in my shop); and a real interest in teaching us, provided only that we actually want to learn, which most of us do. I think it's been an adjustment for each of them, in different ways, to make the switch from a hotel or restaurant to teaching.

I'm guessing that, in a hotel or restaurant kitchen, a chef might take someone under his or her wing if the person showed promise of some kind, for example, or if s/he was enthusiastic, and, of course, the chef must also want to share what s/he knows--but none of these things is necessary, and a chef might very well focus on production and not be interested in novices like many of us. That is, it would have been difficult for me to get any kind of job as a pastry chef or assistant, given my near-total lack of experience, and it's pretty much impossible that I'd be able to find a position where I could learn all of the things I've been learning here. Any good place of employment would have many people ahead of me, people who have culinary school educations and experience I don't have.

This setup enables people like me to take a crash course and then, with the help of the chefs, find places where we can hone our skills further, in the direction we'd like to go. The chefs have connections all over the world, and the school has a good reputation, both of which help overcome the many-people-want-this-position problem. I don't want restaurant work, for sure, and I probably don't want hotel work, either, unless the chefs think it would be particularly useful for me, so that helps me focus, and other people are similarly focused. (Some really want to do wedding cakes, for example, the thought of which makes me break out in hives. Some want to work in restaurants. Some want to move to other cities or countries.)

Anyway, today we made a pistachio dacquoise (remember that a dacquoise is a meringue--whipped egg whites--with sugar and nut flour(s) folded into it), an apricot-passion-fruit gelee, some apricot glaze, two sablee dough shells (we didn't get to do those, as the only sablee dough left was too soft to work with, so we'll do it tomorrow), and each of us made an inverted puff pastry recipe and put four turns in the dough. Inverted puff pastry is a trip--the butter layer is on the outside of it! It's not as difficult to do as I thought it would be, but still. Tomorrow I think we finish lemon tarts. In addition, I was supposed to give a presentation today, but we ran out of time, so I'm scheduled to do it tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

All Done

More Scoutacular events! C and the Kid are camping tonight and tomorrow night (insert sad frowny face), which will be fun for the Kid, but C and I agreed we wish we were going to be together tonight. The Scout leader has seen more of C than i have.

How'd the exams go? In general, pretty well. My caramels rocked, my hand-dipped chocolates were good, my raspberry bonbons were pretty good (the shells were a little uneven), the pate de fruit was good, and the pastilles were fine (I made orange rather than mint). Here are four of those five things (I dumped the pastilles, because they're basically flavored boiled sugar.) Here are the candies:

Here's the chocolate showpiece, which I don't hate as much as I did a few hours ago:


The chocolate showpiece was a fucking nightmare. Basically, every time I looked at the pieces, something broke or fell off. At first I was extremely frustrated, which certainly didn't help matters any, but then I just laughed. What else can you do? It's messy, for sure: those blotches are a major issue. The flower in front is bad, too, but the one behind it is even worse; that's the one that kept breaking on me. I like the colors, and I like the movement, and the sphere was actually cast pretty well, but it just was not very successful. BUT! I turned it in.

Here's the sugar showpiece, which isn't half bad.

The pastillage in back is lame (all my pieces broke), and we were only supposed to have one rose; I did a second one because my larger one (the one in front/on the bottom) broke a little and didn't fit on the middle part of the piece, which left a big open space in the middle. The curlicue is a little uneven, too, but the chef complimented my pear, and I rather like it myself. Not bad for someone who's only been doing this for a little while.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. I would have liked to have done a better job with the chocolate showpiece, but I just didn't have time. All of the other stuff, though, I liked a lot. I can find the little flaws here and there, but I really felt like I just cranked through stuff and got it done. I have to give kudos to my partner, too (with whom I drank several beers yesterday afternoon and evening), because she's extremely organized. I really, really like working with her, and I really like her as a person, too--and I'd hire her in a minute. It made it much less stressful, having someone next to me with whom I could plan and execute. I think I get to keep her a little longer, which will be nice. Monday we start with cakes, tarts, and plated desserts, plus I have to give a little presentation.

But first, the weekend.

Dazed, but Not So Confused

Just a quickie here. We have to make, by Friday:

12 hand-dipped "creamy Normandy" (the creamy Normandy part is a ganache)
12 apricot-passion fruit pate de fruit
12 caramels
12 mint pastilles (though we can use another flavor if we want, and I will, because I really loathe mint "flavor")
12 raspberry bonbons (molded chocolate with a raspberry filling)
1 chocolate showpiece, including plaquettes, a sphere, a base, smaller spheres, and two flowers, one with cut out pieces and one with shaved pieces (you'll see what that means when I take a picture of it)
1 sugar showpiece, including a base, a piece of cast sugar (egg or sphere), a piece of pastillage, a pastillage rock, a rose, a blown-sugar pear, some bubble sugar, and a leaf

I got some things done today: I made the caramel and pate de fruit, and I'll cut and finish and present them tomorrow, provided they came out. I made and cast the ganache. I cast the halves of the sphere and the base for the chocolate showpiece, and I cast the molded chocolate shells (I had to do it twice, which was better than yesterday). I made all of my labels, too, so I can just go ahead and scale things. I wanted to get more done, of course, but it is what it is.

I can see a few errors already, but they shouldn't be too bad. Some butter didn't get emulsified into my ganache, but I'll have enough to cut that piece out and still have more than enough left for 12 pieces. I didn't remember to put the tartaric acid solution into the pate de fruit until after I'd poured it into the mold, so I have to taste to make sure it's okay. Don't know about the caramels yet. I didn't get the pastilles done, which would have been nice--though I'm definitely using a paper cone if I can, and save myself time having to wash a sauce gun. Tomorrow I think we need to devote to chocolate, except for the base for the sugar piece, the cast piece, and the pastillage. I'll see what my partner has to say about that. I'd really, really, like to assemble the chocolate tomorrow, too, and devote Friday to sugar, but I don't know if I can do that.

Time to go to the museum with the Kid and C for the annual Donor Appreciation wingding.

Exam Daze

Could have been worse, but I did not finish everything I wanted to get done, and not everything came out the way I hoped. I did temper some dark chocolate--twice, actually, so I got some practice with that. I should have tempered some white, too, for the practice (remember that white chocolate is evil, and that's partly because it's such a pain to temper), but just didn't. I cut up my ginger ganache, and dipped it, and it's definitely better-tasting after dipping; opinion is divided on it. No one hates it, and some people really liked it a lot, but I didn't think it was all that, and I wasn't happy with the flavor. I cut the pate de fruit, which came out extremely well, thank you very much. I also cut the caramels, which did not come out very well. They weren't completely unacceptable, and the flavor was nice, but they were too soft. I made the circles for the hazelnuts and dipped those, so I got some dipping practice.

The thing with which I had the most trouble was casting chocolate into molds: I did it not once, not twice, but FOUR times before I got it right (and cleaning out the molds is tedious, because you have to wipe them clean, using cotton balls; four times I did that). By then, it was too late to fill the shells and put bottoms on them and so on, so I didn't get to practice everything I would have wanted to practice. In part because the casting took so long, I also didn't get to do any sugar work today, and I didn't get to remake the caramels (though I'm less worried about that). Still, it was worthwhile to redo the casted chocolates, not least because that will almost certainly be on the exam.

At the end of class, we traded some food, so I got some of D's peanut butter ganache and some of J's lemon verbena ganache (which I appropriated for S, who loves lemon verbena). J also made some lime caramels yesterday that were quite spectacular. A surprising number of people didn't show up yesterday or today, and two other people left early today (one had to go for a blood test and the other has a sick child); we finished class with only 10 of the 16 of us around.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to decide what to do this afternoon. If I want to play handball, I need to leave in about two hours, and, because S is playing in a league match tonight, I wouldn't be able to get a ride home from him until 8:30 or even a little later. I would get to play, and I could deliver chocolate to S, but I probably wouldn't get a very vigorous game, and it's a lot of shlepping the night before an exam. (I have to study, too, so I know what temperature things are supposed to be, by heart.) I could go to a yoga class at about 5:30 instead--it's only two blocks away, and it's a good teacher, but it would cost money, and remember that lack of paychecks thing? I could come up with the cash (or credit card), but . . . Or I could study for awhile, and do my laundry, and maybe eat something in which the primary ingredient is something other than sugar and/or chocolate and see how I feel (which is, of course, what I'm most likely to do). C is out of town again tonight--Rochester, this time, because of course the company that's firing 30-some people seems to think it's more cost-effective and time-efficient to fly two or three people to Rochester for one night. Apparently they are unaware of this invention called a "telephone," and this event called a "conference call." (Last night he was at his sister's, so he and she and his brother-in-law could discuss some work C might do for them.) Much as I miss him, it's also nice to just be able to rummage around in the morning and make whatever noise I need to make. When he's not here, my brain lets me sleep until the alarm goes off, rather than waking me up at 3:30 or something (the alarm goes off at 4, but if I wake up early I get up so the alarm doesn't wake C). Enough. I need a vegetable. Or a grain.

Moon Me

When C and I finally got home last night from our respective outings, I happened to look out our east-facing window, which catches a sliver of the lake. The nearly full moon had just risen over the lake, and, I assume because of the angle, had turned the whole lake into silver. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. And then this morning, as I walked west toward school, the moon was in front of me again, with wisps of clouds in front of it, but still amazingly bright.

Today was a free day, so I made a bunch of stuff. I made ginger ale mix yesterday, for homemade ginger ale, but I also brought some of the mix into school. I made a ginger chocolate ganache for dipping, but wasn't really enthusiastic about how it came out. I made caramels, but I think they didn't quite work, either, so I'll make them again tomorrow. I caramelized hazelnuts and put them into threesomes (so to speak), because I wanted to make sure I had something to dip if the ganache was too horrid for words. And I used more of the ginger mix to make ginger-peach pate de fruit, and THAT, my friends, worked extremely well, oh yes it did. I'll be making that one at home, I guarantee. Chef liked that one, too. My last partner made a lemon verbena ganache, some of which I want to steal for S, because he loves lemon verbena so, and she also made lime caramels, which were truly spectacular. Tomorrow I want to:

temper some dark chocolate
cast some of said chocolate into molds (into which I'll pipe the rest of the ginger ganache)
cut the ganache and hand-dip it
cut up the pate de fruit
cut up the caramels and, if necessary, remake them
make little circles of tempered chocolate on which the trios can rest, and then dip those suckers, too
practice with the sugar, if there's time

I'd really like to spend more time with the sugar, but I feel a little more confident about it and therefore want to spend more time on the more difficult thing. But if I can crank through those things above, then I'm definitely spending the rest of the day on sugar.

After that, we're theoretically meeting ("we" being my coworkers and I), but a location hasn't been chosen yet. If the choosing (and communicating) doesn't happen in the next 9.5 hours, then it's unlikely I'll be able to make it for the proposed 1:00 start time, as I'll have to come home, find out where the meeting is, and then get to it. On public transportation. No, I'm not spending my dwindling resources on a cab to a meeting like this one, and yes, I had better get a paycheck if there is a meeting and I'm there.

C's boss--who will not be losing his job, thank you very much, and who was brought in, along with a bunch of other people, by the current owners. The people were brought in from a big multinational whose CEO has been in the news and who has been touted as a genius, but who makes me want to smack someone. Anyway, Bossman had a meeting this morning and apparently gave a long speech about how people should be happy and cheerful and think not about the fact they're losing their jobs, but think about how wonderful it will have been to work next to each other, that that's the part they should focus on, and similar bullshit. It's a damned good thing I wasn't in the meeting, or I would have pointed out to the asshole that he, in fact, will still be employed come January 1 (or March 1, in C's case), and, in fact, is probably making a shitload of money to oversee the rest of the people losing their jobs, so he could just bite me. No one said that, but C said you could hear everyone fighting to keep biting their tongues. There was a lull, so C said, fine, let's get to it then, before Bossman could spew any more of his corporate management crap. Frederick Winslow Taylor, may you rot in hell.

Curse of the Were-Emma

It's quiet around Emma's household right now, because The Kid and his father are off to a Boy Scout Mass at the Kid's church (C isn't terribly happy about having to attend that part of the program) and then to a Scout outing in Far Buttfuck. Not really how he'd prefer to spend the day, but the Kid is all excited about being a boy scout (actually, I think he's excited about belonging to something, plus Dad is an assistant scout leader, which makes the Kid very happy). I'm willing myself to go to the 12:15 yoga class this week (I didn't go to the 9:00 class because it costs money; I have some passes I can use for the later class). I haven't practiced in about three weeks, and my body feels like it's made of cement and tree trunks.

Everyone's cranky this weekend; things keep piling on. I got our credit card bill yesterday, and they slapped on a $39 late fee PLUS another $38 in interest--I normally pay the full amount, so I never pay interest, so that pissed me off extra--because the post office decided to take two weeks to deliver the check. I called and bitched about the late fee, and basically said, remove the fee or I take my business elsewhere. So they did. But it was still annoying, and it'll probably still show up on the credit report as a late payment. We went to see the Wallace & Grommit movie last night, which was entertaining, but then C and I had to have a big ugly fight, which was much less entertaining. We sorted things out before we went to sleep, but it wasn't much fun.

C spent most of yesterday at scout leadership training, which took two hours longer than they said it would, and which featured half-bright people droning on (and on and on and on) about stupid stuff. This did not improve his mood. (The Kid and I went to the farmers' market and bought honey and apples, and we cleaned house, and I taught him to play Mancala, which I played as a kid for hours on end.) Plus, C vacillates between panicking about the job situation and being over-confident. He recognizes that a middle ground on that would be a useful strategy, but middle ground isn't always his strong suit.

We talked about some of that last night. It's one of those situations where his intelligence works against him, I think. He's pretty smart, though with no formal education beyond high school (and he spent the latter part of high school altering his brain chemistry). Because he's smarter than your average bear, he can keep a lot of balls in the air without being truly organized or centered. This only becomes relevant when the number of things he needs to manage is greater than the number of balls he can keep in the air. Me, personally, I like to plan things, typically to within an inch of my life, and then let go and let the plan work (or not, as the case may be; shit happens, no matter how much you plan--but worse shit is more likely as the amount of planning decreases). C, not so much with the planning and organizing, and it makes me crazy. When he was with his ex-wife, his planning and organizing skills were so much better than hers that it didn't matter; with me, though, it's more of an issue. (This is not what we were fighting about, however.) I think it might be related to the addictive behavior, but I'm not sure; I'll talk to him about that tonight and see what he thinks.

Exams this week, on chocolate, sugar, and showpieces. I'm trying not to stress about it, but I'm not sure I can maintain that attitude. I want to do well--not for a grade, which I don't think matters all that much as a grade--but because I want to execute competently. I should practice some more gluten-free baking this weekend, too, seeing as how I have to give a presentation on that topic next week, and I thought I'd bring some samples. Maybe this afternoon--after yoga. Unless S calls for more handball. I'm sorry: this isn't a very interesting or thoughtful post, is it?

Freezer Burn

I'm still waiting to hear from my mother, regarding my dad's surgery, so no news on that front. But my freezer is full of ice cream, in a variety of configurations, so we've got that going for us, which is nice. Plus, Chef Bob gave me a really good evaluation today, which just made my damn day. It's funny--it's not the grade, per se, that's important; if he had given me a lower grade but said the same things to me (and explained how I could continue to get better, and so on), I'd feel the same way. I think the chefs get a little frustrated, having to assign grades to what we're doing, and I know I find the feedback--both in the evaluations and in the everyday assessments--to be infinitely more valuable than a number. But you want pictures, don't you?

I'm not going to bother with the Pineapple Surprise: you cut a pineapple in half (including the leaves, keeping them attached), hollow out one side and dice the flesh from both sides, then candy it with simple syrup (and maybe a vanilla bean, which we did use); put a layer of raspberry coulis at the bottom of the frozen pineapple half; put in some of the candied pineapple a couple of days later; pipe in blobs of pineapple sorbet. The sorbet isn't bad, but the candied pineapple is way too sweet, and the whole thing is eh. I do like the presentation, if you really need to do some fruit sorbets and want to get a tropical theme going, especially if there's a buffet or some large tables rather than individual plated desserts. The chef put all of his desserts out on a display, then we cut up and ate the vacherin (see yesterday) and the chocolate caramel thing (see below). LOTS of sugar in the bloodstream today. Here's the chef's vacherin:

Second was a chocolate-caramel ice cream thing. Take a disk of hazelnut dacquoise (dacquoise is also evil: it's basically meringue with ground nuts folded into it; in this case it's topped with caramelized hazelnuts before it's baked), top it with chocolate ice cream and another disk of dacquoise, put the whole thing inside a larger ring and put caramel ice cream around it, then garnish it. Here's the chef's:

And here's ours:

Finally, there's the Chocolate Bombe, which involves getting a domed stainless steel mold and putting a layer of raspberry coulis at the bottom. Once it's frozen, fill the mold with vanilla parfait (basically an eggy custard mixed with whipped cream) and freeze that. Take a bigger dome and line it with chocolate ice cream, then press the (unmolded) frozen parfait into it. Seal the sides with chocolate ice cream, and press a piece of baked sablee dough into the bottom. Freeze the whole thing, and then garnish as you please. I had the idea of making a chocolate "cage" for the thing, and the chef went and found me the one dome mold that was bigger than the one we used for the ice cream portion of the program. I put some chocolate on it--drizzled it--but we could not, not, not get it to come off yesterday. (The plan was to use tempered chocolate, let it set, refrigerate it briefly, and then it would just come right off. Or not.) So I did it again today, and got to temper some chocolate for practice, which was useful, and did it on the inside, rather than the outside of the dome, in the hope that it would shrink a little when cold. The freezer didn't work, but the blast freezer did; even though the cage broke a little, I really liked that effect better anyway. Here's the chef's:

And here's ours:

I don't have pictures of everyone else's however, because I just didn't get to it. Some people drizzled chocolate on top of the bombe; some put white chocolate on it; there were other curls and garnishes and so on. They were really quite lovely. And, yes, we made all of the ice creams and sorbets I've been mentioning.

Update: Yeah, Dad's okay. Which is even nicer.

No, there's no puppy.

You're not gonna believe this one.

I get a message from C this morning, "Call me as soon as you get this message." So I go up to the lobby of the school, after I've gotten changed, and call him. His news? His company is closing their office here as of the end of the year. So, yes, he gets to look for a new job. Isn't that marvelous news? It certainly made MY day, and his, as well, I'm sure! We talked about it later for a little bit, and, apparently, as the powers that be were delivering the news they were referring to this dismantle-the-office-and-let-33-people-go effort as "this piece." He said the corporate-speak would have made me retch. That part of the program makes me as annoyed as anything else: If you're going to give me a shit sandwich, fine, whatever, but don't fucking tell me it's cotton candy.

He'll get some severance (not much), and it's not until the end of the year, so we're not in danger of starvation just yet, but that whole dream of becoming a pastry chef could go right out the window. Pastry chefs make $10/hour if they're lucky, which is fine if (a) it's temporary and (b) it's a supplement to other household income, but if I have to become the primary wage-earner, even for a little while, I have other skills that would (at least theoretically) pay more than that.

Also, my dad goes in for surgery tomorrow; they're going to roto-rooter his carotid artery, which is 85% occluded. So send out some good thoughts in his direction, okay?

Meanwhile, we've been making ice cream and sorbets this week, and then making cakes out of them. Yesterday's was a Vacherin: a layer of meringue (topped with slivered almonds and baked), a layer of raspberry sorbet, a layer of mango sorbet, another disk of meringue & almonds, and the whole thing covered with whipped cream and meringue.

Color of the Day

As you can see, today's color is purple. I must have mis-hit a shot tonight in such a way as to bruise the shit out of my finger. It'd be hard to say when--I mis-hit so many tonight--but I don't usually have bruises to show for it. That particular finger has taken abuse on other occasions, too; I think I cracked it once, by sticking it straight into the wall in an attempt to hit the ball. My bruises don't last very long, though, so the finger might be normalish by tomorrow morning.

No, in answer to your question, I have not received my September 30 pay. And it seems pretty unlikely that I'm going to get my October 15 pay any time soon. It looks like the investment is going to happen, which is all marvy keen, but my favorite part of today's update is the waffling about whether there will or won't be a bridge loan to cover payroll, etc., until the investment papers are signed and the money comes through. Those loans are "expensive," we're told, and so on. You know what? I don't give a shit. Get me my fucking paychecks. Now. I'm not the one who mismanaged the company. It's true that there's plenty of blame to go around--it's not all the current president's fault by any means. Oddly enough, as I may have said below, this has all given me a certain confidence: if these bozos can "run" a company, then I sure as fuck can.

Nothing Much

So today I checked out the kitchen-for-rent. (A person who graduated from my program two years ago started this operation where you can rent kitchen space by the hour--there's a ton of equipment, even if much of it is a little on the battered and it's not as nice as the kitchen we use by a long shot, and there's some storage space for rent, and there's a perfectly lovely cafe storefront where people can sell some of their stuff, but there's not enough foot traffic to rely on the storefront for your business, and it gets around the laws against making food for sale from your home.) I still have to do a few things--get my local sanitation license and get liability insurance, for two, and get supplies to do more recipe-testing, not to mention the actual baking and packaging and so on--and it'll probably have to wait until I get paid or C gets reimbursed for travel (that took place in fucking April), because remember that $1500 auto repair bill? But there are things I can do to prepare, if/when that money shows up.

Speaking of not getting paid, we got another in a series of updates today, and a longer one over the weekend. The weekend update gave us our new office address (not a place that most of us have seen, but who cares at this point), but not a move-in date. There was also a lot of cheery happy-talk about how we can All Work Together to Make Our Space Happy and Productive! And all I could think was if you want me to be productive, PAY ME. Let's start there, shall we? It's amazing to me how out of touch one person can possibly be.

Yes, I know, we all know people who are a little out of touch, who aren't quite as grounded in reality as perhaps we (or the rest of the world) would like them to be, but how many of them are the president of a company? How many of them are in charge of raising millions of dollars of investment money? How many of them seem unaware that when the lease is up, you have to move out? Financially, it makes sense for me to stay with the company as long as I possibly can (and as long as they pay me), not least so I can get my 4.5 months of back pay--but spiritually, or whatever you want to call it, it's a real challenge. It makes it hard to know what to do: I don't have money back on which I can fall, so saying "fuck it" and walking away isn't a simple decision by any means. And I have yet to put together a package of earnings that enables me to move forward and still, you know, eat meals.

Whatever. Enough whining. Several of us had minor ailments today, but Chef Bob has a hole in his back that goes to the bone--he had an abscess removed, apparently, about ten days ago. He was on major painkillers, but still obviously in pain, so any tendencies we might have had to whine about whatever were immediately nipped in the bud. (I'm like him, though--given lounging around the house in pain or trying to work in pain, I'll usually take the latter, out of boredom as much as anything.)

What counts as slacking, really?

A relevant question today, because I have, once again, managed to talk myself out of going to a yoga class (it's been two weeks since my last class). The original plan was to go to the 12:15 class instead of the 9:00 class, thus giving myself time to put away the summer clothes and get out the winter clothes--and, in fact, I have accomplished that part of the program (woohoo!). However. The get-off-my-ass-and-go-to-the-12:15-class portion of the program doesn't seem to be occurring, and I only have two tiny excuses (I think I'm fighting off a cold, which normally would NOT keep me from doing anything at all and therefore doesn't count, and I've done something weird to my shoulder, such that some movements make me recoil in pain/spasm, which normally wouldn't stop me, either, though it probably should). Really, though, I just don't feel like doing it. I feel like having done it, which is different, but that requires the doing.

I'm trying to convince myself that I should at least do some recipe-testing today, if I'm not going to go anywhere or do anything, and perhaps I'll actually accomplish that, fer crissakes. Meanwhile, however, I promised you some sugar showpiece pictures, didn't I? (The pics are courtesy of my last partner.) Remember I said I had the rose mojo going on? Here's the best rose I made:

In addition, Chef Fred taught us how to make "ribbon." Take three equal-length sausages of sugar, pressing them together at each end. Pull the whole thing slightly (i.e., stretch it), then make a U; press together the top end while pinching the bottom/back of the loop together; turn the whole thing over and unfold/flatten it. Repeat about twice more, then rub/pull the whole thing across your pantleg a big until it's nice and long and satiny; cut it quickly into the size pieces you need, using a hot knife if the sugar gets too cold. Hold the pieces under a heat lamp to soften them before you shape them. Or just ask Chef Emma to do it for you:

We also learned how to blow sugar. The trick to this, it turns out, is patience, which mostly means not blowing very much, as demonstrated by the bird:

And here's the whole thing:

I believe that clicking on any of the photos embiggens them.

The Hulk

Yes, as you can see, I'm apparently turning into the Incredible Hulk, one digit at a time. In reality, there must have been a leak in my glove when I was airbrushing blown sugar today. Of course, I forgot to take the camera (in reality, I couldn't find it quickly and left, in the hopes that it was already in my locker: It was not). One of my classmates will email me a picture of our showpiece, but meanwhile you'll have to settle for a green finger.

Sugar was fun today, too. I made ribbon (which you'll see), and a bird (which you'll also see) and all kinds of crap, all of which was glued onto the thing with, yes, even more sugar. And I had some serious mojo working today, with regard to the roses, as I hope you will also see--all of the problems I was having yesterday just disappeared. Amazing what a nap, 2.5 hours of handball, a little beer, and a decent night's sleep will do for a woman, isn't it?

This weekend's task is to find edible rice paper and make some nougat; meanwhile, I'm gonna do the laundry. And try to pretend that the fact that C's car is in the process of getting $1400 worth of work that we can't afford, but about which we have no choice, isn't part of my current reality. I know! More beer!

If the Shoe Fits

For some reason, my brain decided that 2:15 am was a good time to wake up today. I finally got out of bed around 3:15, I think, but, yes, right now I'm exhausted. I may even try taking a little nap before heading out for handball.

Meanwhile, I've been having problems with my left foot--my heel hurts, hurts, hurts (I think it's plantar fascitis), especially when I do things like play handball three days (soon to be four days) in a row, two of them without heel inserts, and especially when I don't practice yoga, which I haven't done for a week and a half now. I can dull or even, sometimes, eliminate the pain with anti-inflammatories, which I've been doing, but the surest solution is . . . put on my chef shoes. Really. I suspect the elimination of the pain has more to do with the fit of the shoes than with any cosmic significance, but, hey, you take your cosmic significance where (if/when) you find it.

What, you ask, have we been doing? Making a sugar showpiece, which, it turns out, I love way more than I expected to love. We've learned to blow sugar, and pull sugar, and cast sugar, and it requires infinite patience, and I still pretty much suck at it, but I really love it. I'll try to bring the camera tomorrow for pictures. What I love about the sugar showpieces is their immediacy and, for all of the elaborateness possible, their simplicity: They're sugar, water, maybe a little color. That's it. And sugar doesn't require the fussy shit that chocolate necessitates--no tempering, no special molds.

What sugar does require, however, as noted, is patience, which isn't always my specialty, but there's this incredible feeling when you take this lump of molten sugar and turn it into an apple, or a pear, or a banana, or a fish, or a rose. Chocolate you don't really mold by hand; you have to cast everything, which is a little easier with chocolate (e.g., you can make a mold quickly out of gelatin if need be). With sugar, though, it's you and the sugar, and some heat and air.

Okay, I really want to try to take a little nap, so I'll quit the rhapsodizing, but did I mention that I've really been enjoying the sugar?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I've never been much of a fan of Stephen King's writing: it's a genre that doesn't do a whole lot for me, is the main thing. There are two pieces, however, that have made me wonder if I should reconsider. The first is a book he wrote, published in 2000, called On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and the second (though it's first, chronologically) is King's chapter in Mid-Life Confidential, an account, written by many of the band members, of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band that Dave Barry was in and about which he said, "We play music the way Metallica writes novels," or something to that effect. (I actually saw the band, and was completely entertained by them.)

On Writing is really quite lovely. The first half is a short autobiography, and I really liked the clear, straightforward way that King told his own story, including the story of his recovery from addiction (though that is by no means the theme of the narrative). The second half is advice to would-be writers, and it's extremely clear and helpful. But Larry's comments to the post below made me think of King's piece in Mid-Life Confidential, in that obscure and roundabout way that is characteristic of the way my brain works sometimes. King's piece is called "The Neighborhood of the Beast." The title comes from one of the more creative pieces of graffiti that he (or I) had ever seen:

664/668
THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE BEAST

What's the connection between Larry's comment and that bit of graffiti, you ask?

On one hand, as I've detailed here (perhaps ad nauseam), I am, compared to much of the world's population, living in the lap of luxury. I've rarely wondered from where the next meal would come, I've never been homeless, I've got a shitload of education, and so on. Thus, characterizing myself as "deprived" in most important ways is just wrong on the face of it.

At the same time, what I've seen, as I've attended elite schools, gotten elite degrees, and met people who have more money than the deity of your choice, is that all of the things I "have" really aren't quite enough. (I don't mean "not enough" in the sense of "not enough stuff": I'd be pretty ecstatic if I could do what I love and have approximately the same standard of living that I have now. I don't need, or even particularly want, to make buckets of money or have lots of stuff.) That is, I'm not tied into the right circles or networks (and I've done enough network analyses to recognize the importance of that), I don't have the right experience, I'm profoundly deficient in several attitudinal areas, and I don't have a lot of money--not enough to buy a piece of property, for example. The things that people of privilege take for granted--such that they can't even see the privilege--are the things that make me depressed, when I let myself wallow in that mud. I don't have any capital, for example, despite the fact that I've been working for 30 years, despite (or perhaps because of) my degree, and despite whatever intelligence I bring to bear: I chose the wrong areas of interest, in part because I had no idea which ones I was supposed to choose, lo those many years ago, in order to start my own business now. Let me hasten to add that I would not have been much interested in the areas that would have been useful now; it's not all the fault of some conspiratorial set of others that has put me on this path.

In short, there is at least one glass ceiling, but it's not the one that results from my sex that's relevant--that one has been less problematic for me (though it has probably affected my choices, for example, all along the way, and perhaps in ways that I can't easily see) than the ceiling of class (or whatever: call it what you will). Larry bemoans the fact that the greedy and/or well-off among us aim to get--and generally succeed at getting--as much as they can, while they participate in (or, at their worst, create or support) institutions and institutional arrangements that de facto create a permanent underclass. And I'm on the knife-edge between. I've been in the neighborhood of the beast, the neighborhood of the wealthy and powerful and well-connected, the people who know people, the people who can make a bunch of money and then take a break and then go make a bunch of money somewhere else, doing something else. And I know I'm not one of them, and I can't be, for an assortment of reasons, some having to do with my own conscious choices, but some having to do with only having been near the neighborhood of the well-connected, rather than a member of it.

Still, I keep fighting for this little bit of space--and I want to share it. I want to find ways to share it with the people who can't even imagine having any space at all, not because I'm so fucking generous or magnanimous, but because, damnit, it's the right thing to do. There's another story, by Ursula LeGuin, called something like "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (I thought I had it somewhere but can't find it right now). The ones who walk away are the people who discover that the price of their happiness isn't one they want to pay, because the price of the lovely, happy community in which they live involves the misery of someone--someone specific. Everyone is required to find out the price they're paying, and many, perhaps most, choose to stay in Omelas anyway--because life there really is quite nice--but some people cannot bear the knowledge that their happiness is bought with the flesh and blood of someone else's dire suffering. It's the best critique of utilitarianism I've ever seen, in some ways. And, too, I do believe that we ought to (in the moral sense of "ought") share what we have. If the chefs were unwilling to share their knowledge of the art and craft of French pastry, for example, then it would be less able to survive and thrive.

But the Larry in me rears its head and reminds me that my success is unlikely. All that knowledge and education I've got, it's nothing in the face of the networks I need for this dream to actually become a reality. That's what Larry's voice says, and some days I worry that he might be right.

Storage

Yes, well, so Friday we moved the last of our belongings out of the office space. Said belongings have presumably gone into storage with the moving company, as we do not yet have a signed lease on a new space. (B is taking care of my computer, for which I thank him, and I backed up a lot of files, including the ones that I might conceivably want.) Lest you think any of this was somehow a surprise--which, given that the LEASE WAS UP on Friday--I should add that the management company got an eviction notice for us about six months ago. They didn't evict us--obviously--but, for anyone who was paying attention, it might have served as a little heads-up warning, doncha think? But my anger is bounded today, mostly because I have very little energy. I didn't play handball yesterday so I could make apple pies with the Kid, I didn't go to yoga class today, and I'm almost completely without motivation. I'll work up some energy tomorrow morning for school--we're doing sugar showpieces, though I think Chef Bob is out with back surgery and Chef Fred will be filling in. Plus, even though my Phillies won, the Cubs couldn't manage to beat Houston, so the baseball season is over for me.

Today I bought a bunch of gluten-free stuff that I can use to do some recipe-testing, and I'm trying to commit myself to doing a lot of the legwork this week. Unfortunately, some of said legwork requires cash, and that's something that's dwindling around here. I'm supposedly getting my September 30 check by October 4th, but we'll see. Yes, it's difficult to get excited about anything--the only thing that keeps me going, oddly enough, is that I've been working my way through David Shipler's "The Working Poor," and, while it's so very depressing, it also reminds me that I'm not nearly as bad off as the whiny voice in my head would have it. Reading these litanies of woe remind me, too, about the thing that makes me crazy about the supposed compassion of the conservatives.

Their whole approach rests on the notion that, if one works hard and makes wise decisions, then one's virtue will be rewarded. Shipler shows two things: (1) how manifestly inaccurate that is, i.e., hard work and wise decisions can still be steamrollered by bad luck, and (2) how very small choices have enormous consequences. For those of us with middle-class lives, luck, parents, whatever, we can screw up once in awhile, make a bad decision (or just a decision that turns out badly, like spending money on graduate school, in my case), or have some bad luck, and there's some kind of cushion. It's not always a very big cushion, and sometimes some of us go through difficult times, but, in general, we're insulated. It definitely helps stem the tendencies toward self-pity (and gives me a rejoinder for the Kid when he's moaning about how terrible his life is).

Chocolate (but not the edible kind)

Well, technically, you COULD eat it, but you don't want to.

Here's the first "showpiece," courtesy of my partner's camera:


Here's the one my partner and I did together (I hated it at first, but hated it less after it was done and after the chef's critique):