hoping

the past couple of days have been completely crazy and yet fairly fabulous at the same time.  yesterday i got up and did a practice run of my pate brisee (pie dough) that i have to make for a quiz in class this week.  the catch is that i only have 25 minutes to prep the ingredients, mix the dough, and clean up my work station!   it is amazing how quickly time flies in the kitchen and i have to admit that i am more than a little nervous about our first set of quizzes.  i got my dough done in 22 minutes yesterday and am going to do another run tomorrow morning before i go to class to see if i can speed it up just a little bit more.  i also spent a significant portion of the day reading over my notes and studying for the written portion of my quiz.  i am nervous about the quizzes, but really ready to get them over with because then i will know what to expect for future quizzes.  

every week two students act as the kitchen management team (kmt) for class in order to keep everything going in the kitchen and to give an idea of how running a kitchen actually works.  the kmt is responsible for prepping all of chef amy's demonstrations as well as getting the ovens going, setting up proper sanitation and dish washing stations, and making sure that all of the supplies and ingredients that will be needed are available and ready to be used.  our time as a kitchen manager is graded and included in our overall evaluation at the end of the program, so i want to make sure that things go well.  we will get multiple opportunities to be kitchen managers, but as with anything, i want to make a good first impression.  while i know that all of this is a learning opportunity, i really wanna kick butt in the kitchen this summer.  the chef instructors that we are working with have amazing contacts and will be excellent references in the future so i want to make sure that they see what i am really capable of in the kitchen.  

today i got up and went shopping for cake ingredients and supplies because i get to bake my first colordao cake this week as well.  i am making an airplane cake for a birthday party and that is going to take quite a bit of time.  luckily my friday evening class has actually been moved to sunday, so i will have all day on friday to finish it.  it should be a really fun cake and the big design element is the 3D airplane that will be sitting on top of the cake, so once that is done, life will be good.  i'm going to bake tomorrow just in case my high altitude recipe adjustments don't work, but it is a lot less hard to bake here than i thought it would be.  :)

i went on a job interview this morning trying to find something low key enough that i can manage it and school.  i haven't found anywhere pastry-ish that isn't frightened by my school hours so i finally gave in and started applying for jobs outside of the culinary world for now.  i interviewed for a position as a caregiver for a man with a traumatic brain injury that would be kind of a no-brainer for me while i am finishing school.  it was a really fantastic interview and i think it would be a really neat position, so we'll see what happens with that.  keep your fingers crossed for me.  

we've also had some action with our house in champaign this week and it would be truly fabulous to get it sold and not have to worry about it anymore.  coming home to pack and get everything put in storage in 3.5 days will be a little stressful, but luckily i was blessed with great family and friends, who i am sure would love to come suffer the IL heat to help me move when the time comes ;)  and yes there is a subtle wink, wink, nudge, nudge vibe to my previous statement, but i'm attempting to draw out the pity and compassion, so the impossible might not be so impossible.  oh, by the way, anyone who might have access to boxes at work, please oh please start saving me as many as you can.  feel free to go dump them in my garage if necessary.

well with all the excitement happening in the next few days, i should probably close my eyes for a few hours.  lots of kitchen time is coming up quickly!