Quick update!

Ok, this is just a tiny post to say that my friend Charlotte is coming to visit tomorrow and I am so excited! This also means that I will finally be playing the tourist in the city. So, I'm going to try and take lots of pictures and then post them for all of you. In the meantime, I hope that you're all doing well. Love and miss you!
Kayla

Busy Busy

Ok, I'm sorry that I didn't post at all this weekend. I've been crazy busy because... (drumroll please) I moved! I have been so incredibly lucky to work with some great people who I've become friends with. One of these new friends/co-workers told me that she had a spare bedroom in the apartment that she shares with her mom. So, I am in an apartment in Harlem now and paying wayyyyy less in rent than I was before. It is such a relief. And now for the best news: because I am saving so much money in rent I am coming home in January! I still have to book my flight but I will be coming home Jan 20-25. Yay!

Raspberry Pistachio frangipane tart

Port poached pears

Alright, now that that is out of the way, I'll recap my school stuff. This weekend was pretty relaxed and involved making a lot of doughs for tarts and pies. Here are some pictures:

Pecan Pie

Pear Gallettes

Linzer Tart

It all turned out really well and tasted delicious. Since it's been a few days since class I honestly cannot remember most of it. But at least I took pictures, right? Alright, I think that's it. I'll try to post again this weekend. Sorry this was so short.
-Kayla

This one's for you Aunt Kathy :-)

So today I went down to Rockefeller Center to see the tree, among other things, and take pictures for you guys to see. I also realized that I didn't post about school on Sunday (forgive me, I've been opening at work... ugh.) so this may end up being a long winded post, bear with me. I'll start with the Christmas stuff first. I took the train from work, which is uptown, down to 49th st, which is "midtown", and I wasn't sure where all of the stuff I wanted to see was (Read: the tree). So, I walked around and accidentally walked through Times Square, which was a nightmare as usual (no seriously, some weird woman "danced" over to me to give me a flyer for a show... "no thank you" was my reply.) I got out of there as fast as humanly possible (i.e. not that fast since it's packed with people who are moving extremely slow in order to gawk at all the bright lights, even when it's daytime and they don't look that great). I kept walking all the while feeling incredibly stupid that I couldn't find the Christmas tree - even after Googling it. So as I'm walking I keep going around the same three blocks in a daze thinking "Gee, it's got to be around here somewhere..." and then I walked straight into the area that's located in and didn't realize it for a good two minutes. At some point I thought "oh wow, that giant evergreen with all of the decorations and lights is probably the thing I'm looking for... thank God no one was witness to this moment of brainlessness." For further proof that you really can't miss the tree, I present a picture:

It sticks out in that "I'm a huge tree in the middle of a bunch of buildings" kind of way

Here are some other pictures of the surrounding areas decked out in festive cheer:

All of the trees had Christmas lights on them (it probably looks better at night)

Also, my morning started out weird today. I got onto the 4 train this morning at like 4:30am and there was a seat open like an inch from where I got on so I went to sit down, until some guy who was middle aged sprinted (yes sprinted) to the seat and stole it, while looking at me and saying "no no no no no." Early morning Kayla was not impressed (yes I did just refer to myself in the third person). I just gave him a look like "you seriously just did that?" and went to stand by the door instead. (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he's crazy.) It all worked out though because on my way home a nice man gave up his seat for me.(awww)

 Ok, that was my adventure for the day now onto school!

I really should blog right after school because now I honestly cannot remember what we did on Sunday... Oh yeah, we finished our croissants! I've got to be honest - my croissants were a pain in the butt. The dough was pretty dry due to the error of the scale on Saturday, so it was really really hard to roll out and form into croissants. I made it through though and baked some plain croissants and also some chocolate ones. (Edit: I forgot the best part about croissant making - you get to beat things with a rolling pin. More specifically butter. It is a laminated dough and so you have to roll like a pound of butter into the dough, but first you have to beat it with a rolling pin so that it's thin and soft while still solid. I recommend it if you are stressed or angry.)

They ended up tasting fine though, I took them to work and they were devoured quite quickly. The guy that I was closing with ate like 3 at least... hahaha. We also made danishes and my partner and I filled some with raspberry jam and some with an apple filling. Note: the toothpicks popped out during baking so they came apart, they still tasted good.

After croissants and danish, we made fresh fruit tarts. On the one tart it's just pastry cream and fresh fruit (and actually on the little ones too) and on the second large one it has orange curd in it. (By the way - orange curd is delicious.) 

This one has orange curd

Hmmm... I think that's it for now. I'm sorry if this is incoherent, I was up this morning at 330am and have not taken a nap today, because I need to be able to sleep tonight since I will be up again tomorrow at the same time! Yay! Oh, also I just wanted to say thanks for the cards/letters that I've gotten. It seriously brightens my day.

Kayla

How to fail at croissants and other life lessons

It was another one of those days today. I think that now I can pretty much tell if it's going to be a not so great day by whether or not I forget my glasses. Today I forgot them. I once again procrastinated on homework/studying for a quiz so my plan was to get up early so that I could take a shower and get to school early in order to do said homework/studying. I decided it was a better idea to sleep. Somehow though I managed to get up, shower, and get to school early. I finished my homework in, like, three minutes and got some last minute studying in. I was in such a hurry though this morning that my glasses got left behind. Anyhow, today we had a quiz first thing and I was feeling not so great about it. When I finished I was thinking that I got a B. At the end of class we got our grades back and I got a 97%, which means that my overall grade is still a 99%. haha
I just realized that I never posted about last Sunday's class and I have pictures! So, I will just combine the posts since I didn't get any pictures today. Last Sunday we made doughnuts, bagels, pretzels, brioche, pain aux raisin, and probably something else I'm forgetting. For the bagels my partner and I decided to make cinnamon raisin bagels (sans raisins) topped with a cinnamon/sugar topping. I don't want to brag, but they were delicious! Here's a picture (they kind of look like doughnuts)

As for the doughnuts, my partner and I made lemon with some icing and sprinkles on top. I am not a huge doughnut fan and if I am going to have a doughnut I prefer a plain cake doughnut, not a yeast doughnut, but what can ya do? Anyhow, the doughnuts came out looking super cute, I tried an unfrosted one and it was pretty decent, not too sweet which was nice. Here's a picture!

Today we made a few doughs that we'll be baking tomorrow. We made croissant dough (which I screwed up), danish dough, and a tart dough. We also made shortcake, biscuits, and scones. We only had a little while to make four doughs so me and my partner split the duties. So she made the chocolate chunk scones and tart dough. While I made the cheddar and chive biscuits and the shortbread. They all turned out great. The cheddar and chive biscuits were amazing! We were the only team that made that recipe so a bunch of the other students were sampling them and singing their praises. (Not literally of course, that would be weird) Anyhow, the croissants almost gave me an aneurysm. My dough came out super dry and sort of crumbly. In school and professional kitchens we don't use measuring cups to measure ingredients because it's not super accurate, instead we use scales. On our scales there is a lock switch on the bottom, it's always supposed to be unlocked, but mine was loose so it was toggling back and forth between the two without my knowledge/consent. So, my measurements were all slightly off and my dough came out super crappy. We laminated the dough (with butter not plastic) and I don't have high hopes for it tomorrow, oh well, at least it wasn't some stupid mistake that I myself made. It was equipment error I tell you! (I'm not bitter, I swear...) On the bright side, I got to Macgyver my scale so that I won't have the same problem in the future. 

Random things from my week in the city:

This is just a building that is right by my school and it's really pretty; the picture didn't turn out great but it has a really pretty clock on it.

There is a homeless lady that frequents my store and she is always giving us clothing from thrift shops. This was my gift (seriously, it had a bow wrapped around it.) On the one hand it's really sweet and generous, and on the other hand... well you saw the picture. 

I just started watching "The Walking Dead" on the advice of a co-worker and it's really good - so check it out if you're interested.

I went and saw the movie "We Need to Talk About Kevin" last night after work. I read the book a couple of weeks ago and the film was pretty good. It was slightly different from the book but still managed to be a decent adaptation. I also noticed that the theatre is hiring, so I think that I'm going to apply and see if I could work there as well. (It seems like a good fit - independent theatre that only plays indie movies? sign me up). 

I think that's it for today, Aunt Kathy - I'm going to try my best to get some Christmassy pictures this week!

Kayla

Carb coma, Dry eyes, and other hazzards of culinary school...

Too. Many. Carbs.
That's a phrase that I didn't know I had in my vocabulary since I've never met a carb that I didn't like, but dear lord after today's class I feel like I've od'ed on them. Today we made savory breads/pizzas and by jove they were delicious. (I have no idea why I'm speaking/writing in this manner, I think that my brain may be slowly rotting). The first thing we did today was to get our report cards. Guess who's got a 4.0? Obviously me, I really wouldn't be blogging about my classmates good grades... Anyways, after getting our report cards, we started on making a ciabatta dough. We turned half of the ciabatta into focaccia. For the ciabatta half of it was mixed with rosemary and shaped into "rings" and the plain dough was made into loaves. For the focaccia we divided the top into quadrants and put tomatoes in one section, potato in another, onions and olives in the third section, and rosemary in the fourth. So it looked something like this:

We ran out of rosemary so I just did another section of olives and onions. My eyes hurt so bad today because they had chopped like 20 onions (other students, not my eyes) and after the pizza baked there was a lot of smoke in the air so it really dried my eyes out. The good news though is that I didn't burn myself or cut any fingers today. Here's a picture of the ciabatta:

After we made those breads we moved onto pizza! I decided to just do a very simple pizza with my favorite combination of sauce cheese and basil. It turned out really great.

I think that's it for today, hope everyone is well.
-Kayla