The List of the Good and Bad

Good Things About Not Being in School Anymore

No More Fire Drills

Got Rid of the Cement Weight Kitchen Shoes

No More Running for the Free Shuttle

No More 5:30am Wake Ups

Threw Out the Commis Cap (really stupid hat)

My feet are showing signs of life

No need to carry around the 20 lb knife and tool bag

No more being stuck with teams that don't work out

Sad Things About Not Being in School Anymore

No More Free Food

No More Meeting at Dos Pinas for $10 Corona Buckets on Friday's

No More Teaming Up with Teams that Work

Having to Take the City Bus and Pay

My Butt is Losing Feeling from Sitting a Lot

Still No Kitchen to Use the Knives and Tools in

A Lot More Real Life Stress

No More Counting on the Chef's for the Answers

Everyone's Gone....

Dollars into Dough

Today in Baking and Pastry my group migrated to the bread making. We made kalamata olive bread, baguettes, foccacia breads (2 diff kinds), bread sticks, and tortilla strips oiled with a tumeric oil for one batch and a paprika oil for the second batch. This was just for color. I prepped 15 large tortilla "baskets" to hold the mini breads. This was accomplished by oiling large flour tortilla's then sprinkling with salt and herbs. I used fresh minced parsley, minced rosemary and oregano. After prepping I folded them into metal mixing bowls to form a shape of a "basket" and baked them until they were browned golden on the top parts. You need to remove them from the bowls or they will continue to cook and bake.

When completed, we arranged the different breads artfully then we stuck the tortilla strips in between the breads so they stood up in lighten bolt fashion and then placed a rosemary sprig up in the middle for color. It looked great. It didn't taste bad either. (I had to make sure they were edible!)

We'll be doing this until Friday which is our competition day. We have to know all about all that we did in this class on that day. We, as a class, must complete the entire stock of what we have learned over these last 3 weeks. Should be interesting. I'm good with tempering chocolate now so that's out of the way. My blister from working with hot sugar has popped and peeled so I'm ready again for that. I LOVE making breads so that's no worry. I'm just not keen on the little bitsy desserts. Too annoying. I like cooking for cowboys. Big groups. Not them tini little thangs. I'm off for the big leagues.

Until then, I remain humble.....