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

So. Much. Sugar.

Fudge, Divinity, and Torrone

I'm thinking that this might be a lenghty post, but I'm going to start by wishing my Mom a happy birthday! She turned a certain number of years old today  (I won't say how many) :-) Anyhow this weekend at school was a busy one. We did some decorative piping with buttercream, went on a field trip that took us to all sorts of neat places, made a lot of things with sugar, took our first written test, and received midterm report cards.
I'll start with yesterdays class first. We started with a test/quiz and had an hour to complete it. I'm going to be honest here, despite my best intentions, I didn't study... I had all sorts of plans to review everything and ace my test, but I procrastinated as usual and didn't get a chance. I quickly looked over the weight conversions but that was about it. I ended up being the first one done and was feeling like I had gotten a C or at best a B. I got stuck on a couple of questions and was just not feeling super confident. Well, the teacher graded them while we were in class and then we gathered around to get our grades. I was standing behind her so I could see the grades on some of the tests (this makes me sound super nosey...) I saw one test that said 49 at the top, as in 49 out of 100. So being the completely rational, sane, non-anxious person that I am, I knew for a fact that that test was mine. Until she handed me another test that said 94 at the top. Haha So I ended up doing really well and am hoping that I do just as well on the practical exam that will take place in a few weeks. I got my midterm grade today and it was a 98%. Alright enough about how extremely smart and talented I am (please, please note the sarcasm in that sentence, otherwise I sound like a huge jerk.)

After taking the test yesterday we broke out the buttercream and learned a couple of decorative piping techniques. We learned how to do shells, reverse shells, fleur de lis, and rosettes. I have been terrified of piping since before I started school. I am not very artistic and have just assumed that I am not very good at piping either. I feel like I didn't do very well, but the people sitting near me told me that my work was really good. (Truth be told I think I might be a slight perfectionist, so anything that didn't look absolutely perfect made me mad... hahaha) So I'm hoping that it was actually pretty good and that I'm just slightly crazy. The teacher didn't say anything to me about my piping (good or bad) but she was giving pointers to several people around me. This was our first foray into piping so expect many more posts detailing my mental breakdowns over shells that were too high!

After we were done practicing our piping we went on our field trip. This should probably go without saying by now but, I didn't get any pictures... I figured that I would include a link to each place so that you can see where we went. Our fist stop was just across the street to Eataly. Eataly is a huge place that is owned by Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich and it has like five restaurants inside along with a huge marketplace, a gelatto counter, a cheese counter, an espresso bar, a chocolate bar, I'll stop there because the list could keep going. I would like to go back sometime during the week when it's less crowded. That goes for most of the places that we went, they were all packed because it was a Saturday. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Kayla, it was crowded because it's Manhattan and there are millions of people in a relatively small area"... and you may be right, I'll report back to you after I've gone on a weekday.

Next we went to La Maison du Macaron, where I tried a pumpkin macaron and a croissant, which were both delicious. They had all sorts of baked goods which all looked amazing. I should also point out that the only thing that I purchased all day was that croissant, everything else was paid for by the school. After that we went to The Doughnut Plant. I ordered a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut (I was feeling nostalgic for the cider mills in MI) unfortunately they screwed up and sent out a creme brulee doughnut instead. I decided to just try that one, since I had never had anything like it before, and I must admit that it was delicious. From there we travelled up to midtown and stopped at a little ice cream shop on the way to a bakery. It was called Je and Jo's. They had some crazy flavors and as a class we decided to try cardamom with snickerdoodle cookie dough. It might sound weird, but it was so good! It tasted like a mug of chai tea! After ice cream we moved down the street to Sullivan Street Bakery where we tried pizza bianca, which was also delicious.

After the bakery we went to Rockefeller center where we stopped by La Maison du Chocolat which has chocolate and macarons for an absurd price. (I looked online and for two pieces it was $8!) I got a pistacchio macaron. We swung by Jacques Torres Chocolate and the class tried some sort of chocolate that had caramel brulee in it. At this point in the day I was ready to explode from all the sugar (I hadn't even eaten everything, I saved a lot of it for later or tried just a bite, but it was still a ton of sugar!) We stopped by Magnolia bakery after that. I didn't even go in - it was really crowded. My teacher wasn't buying anyone cupcakes because she says that Magnolia's cupcakes are disgusting lol. It is a really popular bakery though and you've heard of it if you've ever seen the SNL digital short Lazy Sunday (if not, you should because it's hilarious.) After Magnolia bakery we had one last stop which was Bouchon Bakery. They had a crazy amount of selection at this one. Unfortunately at this point in the day my brain felt like mush, and my stomach felt worse so I opted to take home a simple chocolate chip cookie.

This morning our lesson consisted of baking with sugar (this was almost the last thing I wanted to do after our sugar filled field trip...) First we made a simple syrup and then made lemonade with it. Next we made Divinity (I had never heard of this dessert), you can see the finished product in the above picture. Oh I lied, before we made Divinity, we made fudge. It felt really weird that no one mentioned Mackinac Island fudge - instead they talked about fudge from the Jersey Shore - which I can only assume tastes like fake tanner and tackiness. After that we made Torrone (another one I'd never heard of) and lastly peanut brittle. Peanut brittle and fudge are two of my least favorite things, so today was not my favorite day in class. Hence why I'm not elaborating on the desserts and why I only took one picture today (note that the peanut brittle is missing - it mysteriously found it's way into the garbage.)

Ok, I think that's it for now, I have to go to bed soon since I'll be getting up at 4:30 tomorrow morning, stay tuned because next week we're making creme brulee and ice cream! Hope you're all well!
-Kayla

Baking, Sore feet, and hat hair

Whew, it has been a busy few days. I closed at Starbucks on Friday night and then had school the next morning. One of my co-workers asked me to trade shifts with them and work on Saturday night. So, right after school I rode uptown to work and closed and then had to get up bright and early for school the next morning. I thought that my field trip was this last weekend, but it turns out that it will be this coming weekend. So I should have lots to blog about next weekend. We did a lot of baking in class this weekend and even though I only had a bite of all that we made, I went to work on Saturday night with a terrible stomach ache. Too much sugar! Right now we're learning about eggs and such, so on Saturday we made meringues and flourless souffles. We made "ordinary" meringues and also Swiss meringue. Oh I forgot we also made a chocolate mousse as well. The meringue was made into cookies which we sprinkled coco powder on.

This is the chocolate mousse with a meringue cookie in it

After the mousses and meringues, we moved on to our first souffles. The most basic souffles are flourless. First we made a chocolate one - which I didn't get pictures of, but don't worry they did not turn out great haha - and then we made strawberry ones (I should say that my partner and I made strawberry, other groups did different flavors. Here they are pre-baking:

and post baking:

It's pretty hard to get a good picture of a souffle because they start deflating right away. I had never had a souffle so I was pretty interested in trying them. Our chocolate ones didn't look great, but they tasted so good. We added coffee in with the chocolate and it was delicious! That day we also made buttercream frosting, which we again added coffee to and it was the best frosting I've ever had. After our meringue cookies were done, we piped some buttercream onto them. I think that's all we made on Saturday, onto Sunday!

On Sunday it was all about gelatin. We started by making some marshmallows:

You can't see it that well, but that is just a sheet of marshmallow (with a little powdered sugar to stop it from sticking). I put vanilla bean into mine. I made them all by myself because my partner did not show up for class on Sunday. After marshmallows we made panna cotta. I chose to do the vanilla instead of chocolate and the recipe ended up calling for too much gelatin, so it was pretty solid once it set (the other two groups that made the vanilla had the same result). I didn't get any pictures of that either. (Sorry!) After panna cotta we moved on to gelées (by this point I had joined a group, because the rest of the baking was a little more intensive). They're kind of like jello except not as solid. For these and the souffles we made later, we got to use sheet gelatin which was pretty cool. Anyhow, we made champagne gelée with fresh raspberries:

Hey you can see someone else's panna cotta in the background!

These look really pretty but tasted soo boozy it was ridiculous (it might have to do with the fact that there was a whole bottle of champagne in them). Although once we added a quenelle of whipped cream it was pretty good. The last portion of our day was spent making flour based souffles. First we made chocolate (sorry forgot pictures), second was pistachio (again no pictures), and third was lemon:

These had already fallen a bit because I had to wait to take a picture, but they came out perfect!

The lemon were so good! I actually ate a whole one rather than a tiny bite, we even put a raspberry in the bottom which made it even better. So far this is my favorite thing that we've made, I recommend making lemon souffle if you're looking for a new dessert to try. They weren't very difficult to make either. I think that's it as far as school goes.

This weekend I had a revelation that I will never have a good hair day in New York. I have to wear my hair up and a hat at Starbucks and at school. So my hair pretty much looks like a disaster at all times. I'm happy to report that I haven't forgotten to wear my glasses lately so I've actually been able to see, which is nice. Otherwise things are going pretty well, getting a little homesick every now and then but still liking it here. Things are going really well at Starbucks, today my manager asked me if it would be ok to schedule me between 34 and 40 hours every week, which was awesome. I've had a couple of funny interactions with customers this week, so I thought that'd I would share.

Funny story 1:

There is a regular who comes in every day and he is probably mid - late twenties and he's pretty nice. Well last week when he came in there was a horrible construction noise happening which prompted the following conversation.

Customer: "Oh my gosh that noise is horrible..."

Me: "yeah it's been going on for a good hour, it's driving me crazy."

Customer: "It's sounds like robots farting..."

Me: "..."

Customer: "it definitely sounds like robots farting."

Me: "Well, that seems to be the only logical explanation."

Customer: "either that or it's the noise from Inception."

After he walked away I laughed so hard I almost cried. He must have said "robots farting" at least five times. I was dying. haha

Funny story 2 and 3

The next stories actually take place in the same day/shift and both were customers hitting on me in really lame ways. The first customer was around my age and had ordered two drinks. He said that the one was for a girl he liked that probably didn't like him. Then he said that if things didn't work out with her he might have to come back and give the latte to me, which prompted this:

Me: "Well, actually I get drinks for free here, so that's not very tempting..."

Customer: "Well, there's other stuff, like I'm really good at giving hugs and stuff too."

Me: ... (as I hand him his drinks) "Good luck with that girl!"

Weirdly enough this didn't come off as creepy, the guy was really nice/sweet, it just made me laugh really hard. 

The second customer to hit on me that night was some older guy who asked me if I wanted to split his coffee with him... I again had to state that this was not a great offer, since I get all the coffee I want for free. So work has been pretty entertaining to say the least. I think that's all for now, I have to go to bed soon since I need to get up at 3am tomorrow to open :-( Hope everyone's doing well! 

-Kayla

P.s. I got a private mailbox so I can get mail! I don't really want to post the address here, but if you'd like to get it you can email me at kaygriffi@gmail.com

Spotted: Five rats in the subway

I feel like these posts are going to continue to start out with me apologizing for not posting as much as I should, so how about that sentiment is now just implied with every post? Ok? Great... So, I didn't have school this weekend and instead decided to hit up the local mall in Queens. It felt like I was back home in Michigan which was nice. I walked around there for awhile and then went home and watched the Tigers game. They're not doing very well in this series which is pretty disappointing. Anyhow, on Sunday I went into Manhattan and went to Barnes and Noble and also Trader Joe's. Can I just take a moment to say how much I love Trader Joe's? I am able to get a bunch of groceries for pretty cheap. After the weekend it was back to work for me. I worked yesterday morning and then this afternoon/evening. I think that over the next week or so I'm going to look for a second job, so wish me luck! Oh, I should probably explain the title of this post: when I was waiting for the subway train to take me to the mall, I saw three rats... and then the next morning on my way to work I saw two rats. I hadn't seen any rats or bugs up until that point, so that was exciting. I just pretended that they were like the rats from the Disney movie Ratatouille.

I think that's about it, I have to be back to work at 630 am tomorrow, which involves waking up at 5 am. :-( I should have more stuff to post this weekend because of school. I am going on a field trip on Sunday, so I will be sure to let you all know about that. 

Lots of love,

Kayla

(above picture was found on Google :-) )