New Post?!?!

Excuse the punctuation in the title I feel delirious with exhaustion (I may have been using a little hyperbole there). I don't have much to write about because I didn't have school last weekend because of Thanksgiving. I spent Thanksgiving working, which I thought would be better than spending the day by myself stewing in loneliness (again an exaggeration), but it was actually tougher I think. All of these customers kept asking me my plans for the day. I tried to noncommittally answer so that they wouldn't feel sorry for me haha. ANYWAY, if you'll remember from a previous post, I have a regular customer who thinks that I'm Jewish. So for the last couple of weeks I've been agonizing over how to break it to her that I am indeed not one of the chosen people. I needn't have worried so much because it came out naturally, after she invited me to spend Hanukkah with her family, since I'm in the city alone. She also hinted at setting me up with her successful male cousin (I am kind of hoping that offer is still on the table... lol) I then let her know that indeed I am a gentile. So that was pretty much the highlight of my week because it made me laugh quite a lot. In other amazing news, my friend Charlotte is coming to visit me at the end of December and I am BEYOND excited! It is going to be so nice to see a familiar face.
Oh also, I have seen three movies recently so here are some thoughts on them (I know you didn't ask lol). First I saw a movie called "Another Happy Day." This was definitely a "Kayla" movie. Weird, sad, etc. If you need to know more about what makes something a "Kayla" movie, just ask Lauren. There was a period of time that she refused to watch any movie that I had selected because she knew it would not have a nice neat ending. lol. Anyhow, the best part about seeing this movie is that it isn't in wide release yet, so it was only playing in one movie theater in the whole of New York. So I ventured to said theater and watched it along with about five other people (also by themselves), one of these people was an old man in thick black frames and a beret. That's right, a beret. I almost cried tears of joy. It made me laugh because he looked exactly like some pretentious film buff and it was magical. Next up I saw a film called "Martha Marcy May Marlene," this one was also pretentious and weird, but was overall pretty decent. It had a very ambiguous ending and I wouldn't recommend it because I think that most of you would probably hate it, but overall I enjoyed it. I saved the best for last though and that was "The Muppets." It was seriously good and really enjoyable and funny. So, if you have a conundrum next time that you're at the box office, I say go with The Muppets - it's your best bet.
I think that that's all for now. I haven't forgotten about posting some recipes - I've gotten a little busy/sidetracked. I will probably post again on Saturday after school. Until then!
-Kayla

I should have stayed in bed...

Ugh, today was pretty rough, so please excuse this post as it might all be me complaining. Yesterday I had to go right from school to work and then I got out about 20 minutes late, so I didn't end up getting home until 11:45. I had to be up for school this morning at 7am and needless to say I was quite tired. It wouldn't be so bad except I had a lot of early mornings this week so I haven't been able to catch up on sleep. I left the house and locked the first door behind me only to discover that my keys were not in my coat pocket where they normally are. I would have just rung the doorbell to run back in and get them, but I was in a rush for school. So I get to the sidewalk only to realize that I've also forgotten my glasses... Needless to say I was pretty cranky this morning.

Wait, I should back track - I forgot that I didn't blog about school yesterday! OK, so yesterday started our module on Breads and doughs! I've been pretty excited for this part of school because I LOVE to bake bread! So yesterday we made a few basic breads and I only have one picture but here it is:

The above breads are just a very basic recipe. Simply flour water salt and yeast. Here's the secret to the lovely crusty bread that is pictured above: steam. At school we have these crazily expensive "deck" ovens that  have a button that releases steam. The steam gives the bread a nice crust to it and a deep rich color. Now, if you don't have thousands of dollars lying around and a huge space in your kitchen for new ovens, don't despair! My class had a quick visit from another chef at our school yesterday and though I was distracted by his British accent (seriously) I did manage to learn that you can get pretty much the same result by using a spray bottle filled with water. Sidenote: the British chef that came into our class is seriously good at making bread. He was on Martha Stewart and wrote the entire curriculum for this section of school. Also, he was the instructor of the class that I sat in on when I visited in the spring. Anyway, back to baking bread,  yesterday like I said we made just very basic one step breads and then one with a "pre-ferment" or "starter." We made a clover shaped loaf and rolls with golden raisins and pecans (seriously delicious), and then also a loaf with kalamata olives. I didn't get a chance to try the loaf with olives because I left it at work for my coworkers, but I can say that the olives were delicious by themselves ;-) 

Alright, on to today. After the rough start to my day, I was ready to bake bread. First we started proofing dough for some baguettes and then we moved on to dead dough. If you're not sure what dead dough is you're not really missing out on much. Dead dough is a dough that is used for decorative purposes. Some groups made yellow/green (colored with turmeric) and the others (read: mine) made red (colored with beet powder and chili powder). Here's where my bad day continued. For dead dough you first have to make a syrup that will then be added to the dry ingredients. So we were supposed to put in 400 grams and I for some reason just assumed that one syrup batch was 400 grams. Guess what? It wasn't. So our dough was super wet when it should have been the consistency of playdoh. Oops. Luckily we added a bunch more flour and it turned out fine, but it just made me a bit crankier that I messed up. After dead dough we made hot cross buns and a braided bread. Unfortunately I forgot my recorder - so I couldn't serenade my classmates with that lovely song. 

I may or may not have "sampled" the missing one...

Braided bread!

All of this bread baking has made me think about possibly going a different route in my career and pursuing baking instead of becoming a pastry chef. We'll see though, I still have quite awhile to decide. Anyhow, here are some random thoughts:

- This week I got into an "argument" with a homeless person at Starbucks. (Don't worry it was not a dangerous situation) I was at work and saw an umbrella handle sticking out of the garbage can, so I decided to go and change the garbage. As I'm lifting the bag out of the trash this old man says, "that's mine!" to which I replied, "well it's in the garbage and is covered in trash..." "it's mine!" "... it's seriously covered in garbage..." "I was keeping it in there!" at that point he snatched it out of the trash can and took it - garbage and all. I was a little astonished, it was obviously broken since someone had thrown it out and also, his excuse was that the garbage can at Starbucks is his own personal storage space? As I was arguing I was just thinking that it would make a good story, so I wasn't too mad. haha

- Uncle Earl! I was just wondering if you had heard that Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is coming to the Detroit area. I was pretty excited when I heard and then bummed that I'm not going to be there.

- One of my best friends might be coming to see me at the end of December! I'm so excited I can't even tell you. I seriously miss all of you so much and it will be awesome to see a familiar face. (Although, please know that I am happy here and having a good time.)

-I read a new book this week called "We Need to Talk About Kevin" - it's being turned into a movie (a slightly indie and pretentious one at that) so I decided that I had to read it. I couldn't put it down and finished it in a day and a half (give me a break - I had to work ;-) ) I would recommend it, but it's pretty disturbing and creepy, so you may not like it.

I think that's it for this week. My aunt Kathy mentioned something about getting some of the recipes for the things I've made. I have Tuesday off so I'll try to post a blog with those. If there is anything specific that you guys would like a recipe for, just leave a request in the comments!

Lots of love,

Kayla

Relief

YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
Sorry, had to get that out of the way... Today was my written and practical exam. The written portion took place first and I had not studied very much so I was pretty nervous. After the written part we had to make a creme anglaise and then souffles. For the practical we worked by ourselves instead of with a partner. For the souffles we had to time things correctly because we had a window of time in which we were to present them to the chef. The creme anglaise was first and it is a pretty easy thing to make, the only way that you can really screw it up is if you don't temper the eggs properly which makes it so that you scramble them. I finished and the chef came to check it out and said that it was "very good." :-) So then I moved onto doing the mis en place for my souffles. I made the souffles and put them into the oven and was fairly nervous that they were not going to turn out so great. The good thing about this portion of the practical was that we only had to have one souffle turn out perfect to present to the teacher. Crazily enough, all of my souffles turned out lovely. I presented one to her and she stated that it was "beautiful" (!!!!) I was so excited! Then I got to see my grades for the whole exam. Drumroll please... Out of a possible 200 pts I received  198! I missed one question on my written portion, so that was the 2 points. I felt great after that and was thrilled with the result.

I never wrote about last Sundays lesson so here you go! We took the choux (puff pastry) that we had made the day before and filled them with pastry cream. We ended up making cream puffs, eclairs, paris brest and some lovely swans. One pastry cream was vanilla and the other was praline (it pretty much tasted like Nutella - so in other words it was delicious). We took the cream puffs and assembled them into a croquembouche. A croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake and is a tower of cream puffs bound with caramel. The ones that we made were pretty small - and also not very nice looking. Without further ado here is my personal croquembouche:

It doesn't look great and it cost me a blister and a singed fingernail, but it could have been worse I suppose. We only did one lesson last Sunday because the second half of the day was spent with career services updating our resumés and discussing our options down the road for externships. Well that's it for school, I'll leave you with a couple of funny stories from work.
1. A Jewish lady that comes into my store thinks that I'm Jewish... I think it has to do with the fact that she heard me saying that I don't eat pork and also because I said that I love to bake Challah. Either way it's pretty funny and I'm not sure how to break it to her that I am indeed not Jewish.
2. One of my coworkers thought that I was Spanish... She swears that she heard me speaking Spanish to a customer. I had to break it to her that I indeed am the whitest person imaginable and cannot speak Spanish to save my life...
3. My coworkers keep telling me how funny I am. In my head they're saying "Oh my gosh you're sooo funny - you should be a standup comedian!" While in reality they might actually be saying, "You're so funny... I think you might be mentally ill." I'm going to keep thinking the first one. ;-)

Hope that you're all well. Love and miss all of you!
-Kayla

P.S. I wanted to quickly put all of your minds at ease. I always close with the same shift supervisor at work and he also lives in Queens. So, we get to ride the train together and I get off the train before him - so I'm never on the train by myself late at night, so you can all breathe easy :-)

Yikes, it's been awhile since I posted...

... Don't worry though, I'm still alive ;-) I know I didn't post last week about school, but I ended up being called into work both Saturday and Sunday. So last week I worked all 7 days and 43 hours. So, I was pretty busy to say the least. I can't quite remember all of the things we did last weekend, but I do have pictures. (Hopefully this will make it so that you overlook the fact that I have no pictures from todays class.) Last weekend was all about egg based desserts. Such as, custard, crème brûlée, and other things that I have forgotten about. Oh! Also ice cream! Here are some pictures, (one of which has a guest appearance from yours truly) Oh gosh, I forgot we also made cheesecakes.

You can't tell, but it started snowing like crazy!

We made bread pudding too!

The base for our ice cream - it has coffee grounds in it

Finished bread puddings

Someone let me use a torch...

Creme brulee - not quite burnt enough

Cheesecake! 

So we made all of those things last weekend, on Sunday I got called into work, so I went right from school to Starbucks and closed. I got home around 11:30 and then had to be back at work on Monday at 6am, which involves waking up at 5. It pretty much took until now to recover. Hahaha That brings us to today. Next weekend we have our practical and written examinations for this term. We will have to take a written exam and then make a flour based chocolate souffle and a creme anglaise. So the last 45 minutes of class today were spent reviewing. This morning we made some frozen desserts. First we made static frozen desserts (they are poured into moulds and then put into the blast freezer) and then we made bombes. It was a layer of vanilla bean ice cream, a layer of raspberry, a layer of chocolate chips, another layer of raspberry, and finally a layer of chocolate. It turned out well and tasted quite delicious. Then we made pastry cream - half vanilla and half praline - and then we made choux. Choux is just puff pastry, tomorrow we will fill them with the pastry cream to make cream puffs and eclairs. The second half of class tomorrow is going to be dedicated to career services. We are going to start discussing possibilities for our externships and do resumés.

I had a funny moment at work the other day when I had to wash the windows. The windows are pretty tall and there is a very long window washing tool that you have to use. So there I was outside on 3rd avenue with a long pole trying to wash windows while people were trying not to trip over said pole... The customers inside were pretty much staring at me hahaha. Also my dad called me this week and as soon as we hung up I burst into tears... haha The day to day here is fine and I don't find myself feeling sad or anything, but as soon as I talk to someone from home it makes me feel terribly home sick :-( So, if I haven't called you lately, it's probably because I know that I will immediately begin to cry and not because I hate you :-) I should also mention that it probably also had to do with the realization that I won't be able to make it home for Thanksgiving or Christmas - my store is in a Jewish neighborhood, so it's open on Christmas day.

This week I went and saw a movie (Like crazy) and started reading a new book. The movie was really good and I am almost finished with the book which is also good. The book is called "Is everyone hanging out without me? (and other concerns)" and it's by Mindy Kaling who is on the office. Well, I think that's it for now. I miss all of you and hope that you're all doing well.
Lots of love,
Kayla