I Don't Know . . .

. . . But I want to be a part of it.

Happy Birthday Julia!

She told America that it was ok to mess up in the kitchen...in ways she actually reminds me of Ms. Frizzle from Magic School Bus ("Make mistakes! Get Messy!") I love her outlook on life, and how to approach cooking.
"Never apologize!" Always rings out in my head when I think of her.


She also taught me how to cook on hot summer days:

Happy Birthday Dear!

Four.

The number of days left until July, one of my favorite months.

The many places I have lived in the last year.

The number of different ice cream cartons I am contributing here: (don't judge us!)

There are twelve in all, in case you were wondering. For five girls. Ha.


The date of my second Favorite Holiday:

(after Christmas.)

The number of stations on the line that I am working this week: Pantry(Salads), Broiler, Bar Apps, and Middle.

How is your week going?

Before Blogging. And Email.

There was this. (photo via here)

Did you ever have a pen pall? Do you still write letters?
I do, although my reply's are few and far between I am afraid.

Spring is in the Air. Literally.

The barista at Starbucks this morning told me that I (specifically my hairdo) reminded her of Paris. Morning Made. That's about the best complement you can give me. (It kinda looked like the girl above..)

The weather here in Chicago has been ridiculously beautiful. People are walking the streets with a kind of dazed look that I can only assume is a reaction to the weather.

I am at Work most of the week, and spring is out in full force.  These are some pictures that I took on my walk to church last Sunday:

An interesting fact about my walk to church. There is a little street that I have named Memory Lane, because I noticed something quite fun; the house numbers are years and as I walk down the sidewalk I go back in time. 2003, 1964, 1958, 1945, 1948, 1937, etc. Just thought I'd share. :)


When I got back to my apartement a few weeks ago look what had blosomed while I was gone:

My Christmas flower! 

Enjoy the weather! xoxo

It's beginning to look a lot like Christma..Uh, January

As everyone in the Midwest knows by now, we had a big wonderful snowstorm mosey on through the area yesterday.

I don't have class on Thursdays or Fridays (I know, I know. It's amazing) So I spent the morning doing uneventful things like laundry and other house(apartment?)work. The storm didn't even get down here until almost noon, but by 1pm the snow was really coming down.

I made plans to visit a fellow Wisconsinite that afternoon to go to the park and enjoy the storm. It was a little after 3pm when I left to get on the bus, and the snow was lake effect by then. I could barely see to the end of my street.


I didn't get any good downtown pictures, but I did get some of random streets as we walked to the park:

 Meet Baby. It wasn't quite packing snow, so we made due with what we had.
(She is about a foot high..)

I hope you all are enjoying this snow, too!

Next; to find a good sledding hill. And a sled. Heh.

Behind the Scenes

 

Of my favorite movie. Looks comfy.  (How to Steal a Million, 1966)

This Week

Was fun. It was Autumn-y. I'm pretty sure it rained part of every day except for today.

I had a Practical in my Lab class, where I had to:

I'm happy to report that I am winning the battle against Knife Cuts.

If you couldn't tell it was fall already, just take a look at my nail polish.

Little treat that was left hanging on my door the other day with a Happy Halloween wish from the company that owns my apartment:

Nummmy.

I discovered I can't run in heels.

Someone asked me if I was Russian. (Was it the hat I was wearing? The way I couldn't pronounce Gyro?! I need answers mister!!)

This is Scarlet. He watches over my plants for me and helps me remember to water them. I had to scold him a bit this morning because he has been ignoring the basil.

Off to check the Mac n Cheese that's in the oven. (more on that later)

Mayonasie and Power Outages

Hi.

I have  a lot of talking to do.

First off, I occurred to me the other day (because I was getting emails from people asking me) that you would all like to know what the heck goes on in school for me.

Is it really like those scenes in Sabrina where they all line up and show off their soufflé? Do you get yelled at? Why are you cutting carrots? I thought you knew that?

Here we go. I'm in my second quarter right now, and my first "Lab", which is what they call the classes that I have in the kitchen. The lab I'm in right now is the beginners class. Everyone has to take this, no matter what their major(Culinary, Hospitality, Pastry).

It goes through the basics and proper industry techniques of, well,  quite a lot. So far we have done stocks, knife cuts, soups, mother sauces and small sauces.

Here are some pictures of the last few weeks:

Chef demoing how to truss a chicken.

The handiest thing you'll ever have. I give you the . . .monkey bowl. Yes, that is really what they call them.

Ginormous pot used for making stocks. And a shot of my glamorus footwear.

Prep for soup. By the looks of it this is for split pea.

The other more "normal" sized stock pots.
 So thats a peek at the last few weeks. I'll try and keep you all updated.

Also. Last week had some crazy weather going on. Wind gusts over 60 mph+40ish degrees =

 

It usually looks like this:

I got back from class on the day of this storm to discover that half my block was out of power. That was around 4pm. We didn't get it back until around 2am. I'm hoping that this isn't going to be a theme for this winter.

Thank goodness I had a bunch of candles. I made a quick trip to the grocery store for super and then watched The Kings Speech. Wow. Amazing movie.

I haven't had much time for cooking/baking lately. But I did manage to squeeze in a little baking a week or so ago. I made the previously mentioned Chocolate Biscotti.

I used Smitten Kitchen's recipe, which you can find here. Then only change I really made was switching out hazel nuts for almonds.
Oh, and if you really want to make it the way I did you will do the following:

❖ Decide to make half a recipe, because there is no way you are going to eat that all yourself.
❖ Mentally cut the recipe in half instead of writing it out like you should (can we say lazy?)
❖ Once you have added everything and are at the mixing stage, find yourself thinking"I know she said that this dough would be sticky but this is ridiculous.."
❖ Realize that you forgot to half (halve?) the eggs.
❖ Quickly dump another half of the other ingredients and hope that it doesn't get too crazy in the oven.
❖ Shape the dough, bake, cut, bake.
❖ Eat, eat, eat.
❖ Give away some because there is no way you are finishing that.
❖ Refuse to share with geese.

The End.

I'm not a Stalker

Really. But if your going to sit in front of me on the bus and go on your computer, I can't help if I can see the reflection in the window. Everything is backwards, anyway. And I'm pretty sure that your Facebook is in Korean or some other like language, so there's no chance I'm going to figure out what your writing. I'm just having fun watching you look at that picture of the cute girl, then scroll down, start writing something, delete it, repeat.

I think you've done this about 4 times now. Mister, let me give you a word of advice. Just tell her you think she's cute and move on. Seriously.

This was June

June was a crazy month for me. July is going to be insane. I'm not going to think about that now though. I'm going to sit at my dad's old high school desk - which is now mine- drink my all of my coffee, and look at photo's my sister and I took over the last month.

I say my sister because she took more than me, and better ones than me, and somehow my pictures always end up being food photos. Huh.

So I'm going to borrow some of hers to fill in the gaps.

A look into the Past

I am cleaning my room today, and doing some advanced packing. Why is it that on days when I plan on soaking up some sun it rains, and when I need to be in my room all day its sunny and warm?

So instead of getting the dust elephants out from under my bed, I'm on here. Brilliant.
I'm in a nostalgic mood.

Flowers

Amelia Kay takes the most beautiful, breathtaking pictures. I love the soft, dreamy feel. And the photographs of food.

Beautiful!

( Note: Amelia has no I idea that I'm doing this and doesn't know me from Adam. I just like her stuff. The End.)