Respect the Puff

Puff pastry is delicious savory or sweet. Packed with 1/2 pound of European butter, making it from scratch makes it even more derishous. It took us two days to make our puff pastry and from there we turned it into palmiers, pastry cups filled with pastry cream and fruit, turnovers, napoleons, and several other fattening and scrumptious things. Two days of mixing, folding, resting, folding and sheeting. Apparently, puff pastry was also the result of an accident. A lot of work for an accident.

A two day process that led to so many light and flaky pieces of goodness, I thought to myself, what's the difference between this homemade one and the already packaged one. So I bought some packaged puff and tested it out. Wow, once again, homemade things are just that much better than the processed stuff. It's hard to describe just how great the differences are, but if you should feel so inclined to make your own puff pastry, it is worth tasting the difference for yourself.

Though puff pastry is now for the most part commercially made, think about all those times when it was made by hand and those people who still do make it by hand. Two days to make about four pounds of puff pastry. Respect the puff.

Tip for the day: Fat in moderation for delicious goodness. Too much fat makes it melty and not as flaky. Don't squish the puff, you will lose the layers.

BreakIn' City Life

Today was one of my few days off and McAsian and I decided to really use the day. Through our sign ups for great deals in Portland, McAsian found coupons for ridiculously inexpensive sailing lessons. Unfortunately it was a bit on the cooler side and so we opted to use the tickets at a different time. So instead we stopped by a local billiards place for McAsian to apply for a job and perhaps grab some inexpensive food. They weren't open so I suggested a place that just opened up down the street from my house. A classy little restaurant and lounge called Element. After an exciting adventure of trying to find a parking spot we walked into the joint and our greeter seated us at the bar and turned out to also be our bartender.

Element is a local, organic, everything from scratch place. Tasty food, limited local brews but has some great potential. Our studly bartender provided us with some great conversation, cheap finds and recommendations to see and do. McAsian and I turned it into a business meeting...to be discussed later.

Our early afternoon adventures took us out to LH Park. It was like being in the 'burbs in the city, really nice and it looked pretty safe. We parked the car and headed out to the grassy knolls to lay in the sun. After some more brainstorming and several cat naps (about an hour) we headed back to the car so we could head to a local bar for a free show and some evening fun! As we approached the car, we noticed shattered glass all over the ground. After chatting with the locals, they told us that they had had several smash and grab break ins. Well add us to the list. Several calls to the non emergency dispatch and a hefty clean up, McAsian finally filled out her over the phone police report. It seems that PDX only sends officers down if there is an emergency...yeah. But all is well. No one was injured and the things that were stolen are easily replaceable with money.

Needless to say, our evening was cut short but we still had a great day. McAsian and I decided to start another blog to document "Adventures of our Favorite Four Letter 'F' Word...FREE!" so be on the look out!

Tip for the Day: Look on the bright side, things could be worse. And don't forget smile.

Star Wars Day

Today was a day that I connected with my true inner Asian. After a class of starting puff pastry, soft rolls and croissants, I headed home to finally play with the Star Wars cookie cutters I recently purchased after three months of waiting. While I made my sugar cookie dough and got the cutters ready I turned on some classic anime and danced along to Thriller during commercials.

After a stressful day at work, leaving an hour later than normal and calling the local authorities due to a suspicious character yelling at us and trying to open the door, I made it back to my cookies. Frostings ready and cookies all cooled. I popped in number III, Revenge of the Sith and started another Star Wars marathon. I checked my fb and found that my awesome sister completed my SWD by posting a subway improv skit of Princess Leia confronting Lord Vader in IV. It was amazing.

However, after continuing to decorate my cookies, I have yet another reason to be thankful that I am not a full time baker. Patience is not one of my stronger qualities but I will take the time to make quality Star Wars cookies. As you can see, I ran out of steam to finish decorating. I wish I liked sweets more in order to appreciate the time and effort that bakers put in to making pretty things like cookies and tarts. And of course there is an added cost of having to purchase frosting and cutters and icing, another expense. Regardless, of the baking downfalls...best day ever. May the force be with you.

Tip for the Day: "Control, control, you must learn control!" When decorating, patience and control makes for steady lines and even decorating, if not, they get all scruffy lookin'.

Dear Manboys:

Dear Manboys of LCB-

I am one of those people who values my personal space, this may or may not come with the selective cases of OCD. But more importantly, I value my personal space especially if I don't know you and have given you NO indication that it is ok to come within my bubble. With the tight areas in the kitchen, I have come to grips that we will all be working in close proximity to each other. However, this still gives you no right to come into my bubble uninvited just because you feel like "it will better your chances of getting to know me". I am having to constantly mentally and physically cleanse myself from your creepiness.

I am here to learn, I have no intention of spending time with you outside of class. Do not patronize me and speak to me like a child. Or anyone else for that matter. I am not a dog, so don't pat me on the head and say, "Good job, Dani" when I cleaned a table, it's part of what we do in the kitchen, you should try it too. My name is not Sweetie, Girl or hey you, I have the poor judgment to call you by your name to your face so please use mine. Yes, I know how to use a computer. Brush your teeth. Just because you don't do your homework or know what you're doing does not mean that I also do not know what I'm doing. Thank you for your help but I am here to learn and make mistakes. And you reading me the instructions isn't really helping, we've established that I can read now.

Being nice or standing next to you does not mean I want to be your friend or date you, I'm just standing there or I really am just being nice. When you ask me what I am doing on the weekend or on my time off, please do not invite yourself or take it as an invitation, I'm responding to your question. Stalking my friends and I is a guaranteed result in a restraining order and the end of your budding chef's career when you lose fingers. You are also here to learn and we are paying someone a lot of money to teach us, not for others to recite the entire lecture back to you.

There are 7 women in our class. Disrespecting us is not in your best interest as many of us have proven. Many places may be male dominated, it makes what we accomplish more unique and in many cases, less cookie cutter. With places like the VQ, women are proving we are an incredible asset to the kitchen and to the culinary world. We are a growing force in this industry and so far in this program, we're on top and proving you wrong for putting us down. We know we have faults and we are all still learning. And in the kitchen we set aside our egos and chauvinistic crap. We get our stuff done, accept constructive criticism, and treat you with respect, so don't treat us like we're below you. If you admit that you are wrong, when you are, it helps the learning process (ladies too...).

Thanks.

Tip for the Day: If you are eating food produced from our class I recommend eating food made by one of the women or the Carpenter. The majority of the others in the class do not wash their hands.

The Finger

I wish this was some clever tale about the homeless who flipped me off for not sharing my pizza from K Dub with him. Unfortunately this is just another my wounded finger story and an observation of Portland's medical experts. As mentioned in another social network, it has taken me 24 years and a few weeks too late for me to actually listen to my parents. When my dad told me I should go to the hospital after I was attacked by my paring knife, I really should have gone. Well, I DID finally go...my finger for the most part had healed but was still swollen and incredibly painful.

After calling around, I found a pretty reliable health care facility and headed there after class, in full uniform and knives. I would have to say the highlight of the day was getting my vitals checked by the studly male nurse, who reappeared several times during my hour visit. He was also the second person to ask me if my injury was going to be on workers comp. I also found that I have lost weight since started culinary school. Now with pastry and baking, one can only hope that it stays that way. The doctor came in, asked me again if this was a work related injury, again I replied no, as I refused help at school. After several semi painful tests, she could find no reason why my finger still hurt or wouldn't bend. Her solution and I quote, "Let me go look at my anatomy book to double check that the tendons and nerves wouldn't be in that area." Seriously?

She came back with the same response and then said, "Seeing as you're a chef or on your way-this isn't a workers comp, right?-I think you're going to need your fingers. I'm recommending that you go see the hand surgeon." Seriously? Seeing as you just had to double check with your book, yeah I'll take that recommendation just to make sure and thanks for covering your ass. So, hand surgeon on Monday.

Up until today I was totally convinced that the digit was fine and that by going to the hand surgeon I was making up for not going the first time, when my parents told me to go. Today, on a extended work day, I dropped a Breville blender on my finger, not even on my hand...on the finger. It's like the equivalent to a small Le Cruset pot in weight. I watched the cut split back open and I saw the inside of my finger. Before it could start bleeding, I regressed back the test and bandaged that sucker up. Clumsy-then I ran into the giant trash dumpster in the stock room. I'm like PoHo in a china cabinet.

So, lesson learned again...Tip for the day: before a long day, eat some carbs. No one wants to hear "Granola bar? I want a cheeseburger" or suffer several accidents throughout the day due to lack of awareness.

Baking and Not Baking

This week marked our start of our second session and the beginning of Pastry and Baking for some of us. After two days of baking biscuits, pies and tarts, I'd have to say, I must be one of the worst bakers. Being down a digit also makes the process a little slower as well. One doesn't realize that you do actually use all of your fingers to do every day things. As far as my finger goes, heading to the doctors tomorrow to find out if I will need surgery an/or physical therapy. Woot! So for the time being the digit is in a splint and we have ceased on the self appointed physical therapy.

Yesterdays biscuits were a bit overworked and huge. But they make pretty great sandwiches. Today...ha today we used some of our pie dough to make derishous apple pie! Or what we thought would be derishous apple pie. Mama MER and I have sat next to each other and started our own little group like in the last class. Today we broke up the ingredients to get and got ready to bake. After we got all of the ingredients we started putting everything together to make our pies. I put our topping together and MER got our filling together. Then after a while, I started to look at my filling mixture and noticed that it had started to bubble, in the bowl, just bubbling and looking really gross. But seeing as I was the last one to finish the day before, I decided to just keep going. Bubbling couldn't be bad. I thought we may have a weird ingredient in the mix or maybe not enough. We put our pies in the oven and continued doing our doughs for the following days.

We checked our pies and noticed that they looked different from everyone else's...they were over flowing with goo, like really overflowing. After talking to Chef we decided that it was due to too much liquid from our lemon juice and not enough cornstarch, all of which MER got for us. Now, as a side note, cornstarch is what thickens and makes the pie have that syrupy part to it. So, if you don't put the cornstarch in or have enough it'll be too liquidy. After about an hour we took the pies out and took a look. Not bad, just super gooy and crispy on the outside. MER tasted hers and said it had a funny taste. Well it was our first try and all. I decided to take it home anyway, maybe I could salvage it when I got home.

MER decided to walk with me and then she asked, "So, what container was the cornstarch in? The round one or the plastic container?" I almost smacked her. "The cornstarch was in the box, with the picture of the corn on the front," I told her. Well, that explains it all; the weird melting, bubbling, gooy mess and the weird taste, we must have put something not right in the mix. The world's worst bakers at your service. "So, what did you grab then," I asked. MER gave me a guilty look and said, "Baking soda." Are you freaking kidding me.

TIP FOR YOUR LIFE: READ THE LABELS. What if you wanted chicken but were allergic to apples and the chicken was served with carmelized apples and you ordered it anyway because you didn't read the whole thing. I should have double checked but seriously read your labels to know what you're working with....Needless to say, I would not give anything away that I myself would not eat, so the pies were promptly thrown away.

Happy Birthday America!

After spending the last few "Freedom's Birthdays" in the West and various countries, I have to say spending this one in Oregon was one of the more interesting! For the past few weeks there seems to be a parade for just about anything here in Portland. It's America's freaking birthday, was there a huge parade heading through downtown? Ha, no! Interesting. Though a parade does not illustrate our patriotism, I still feel like Freedom's birthday ranks a bit higher than the Rose Festival (oh she didn't! yeah, yeah I did).

Other than that, 4th of July in Portland is pretty entertaining! We all enjoyed plenty of sweet music by our local bands and then got ready for our rooftop bbq and fireworks show. For the first time, everyone who came contributed to our fine feast and we had plenty of libations to go around. The communal grill was lite and getting its use all day. For the most part, everyone up there shared their food and each others company. We got to watch a half field of the Beaver's victory over the 51s. As the game came to a close, the rooftop started getting pretty packed and it started to get a little chilly.

So, we hunkered down in our prime places and got ready for the after show fireworks. Before our show in Portland started we started to see all the fireworks in Washington. From my rooftop we had a 360 degree view of everywhere and could see the whole horizon just exploding with fireworks. Then suddenly there were tons of fireworks going off right behind the building, level with the deck. I don't think I've ever been that close to fireworks before. Then the Waterfront Show started and then the PGE Park show started. We had almost two hours of fireworks all around us, it was awesome! The night before people had set off fireworks for hours and the party continued all night long on the fourth. After several adventures, we made it to the beginning of the morning. Happy Birthday America!

Picture: Our spread for the day, homemade zucchini (from the farmers market) bread, fresh caught the day before grilled salmon, Omaha burgers, grilled portabello mushrooms with caprese salad toppings, grilled zucchini with Parmesan cheese, chips and salsa and baked sweet potato fries.

Tip for the Day: Again, clean as you go. It makes the night more enjoyable and the next day a little more bearable. Also, it is easier when cooking, to utilize all of your cooking methods, so as great as everything looked, there was a lot of grilling going on. So if that's your plan, always have a back up plan, in case your cooking method bails on you...

No more breaks

While doing my undergrad work, I couldn't wait for weeks off and breaks and even during the first few weeks of LCB I couldn't wait for our first three day weekend. However, now for the first time, I can't wait to go back to class. Since my hours for work during break are less for some reason, I am even more bored. Up until yesterday it was great being outside and walking around and exploring parts of Portland that I didn't have time to get to before. Now it's raining, again. I've been told that it'll warm up after the 4th...I've heard that before (it'll warm up right after the Rose Festival).

As nice as not having a schedule is, I'm bored. I'm so bored that I have started to set up my schedule for the upcoming cycle...waking up at 5:45am. My work out schedule has been a little quirky and so now I have to rework it into the new schedule. The ever impending rain makes it really hard to be outside and Poho (K Dub's dog) and I are beginning to suffer from a bit of cabin fever. While it was raining, the apartment complex decided that this would be the day/days that they would pressure clean the outside of the building. So, all the windows have to be closed tightly...dogs aren't allowed at my place so we're stuck at K Dub's with the one little fan recirculating the hot air.

I think I have watched at least a season of the various TV shows on Netflix, watched Poho watch me from across the room, cleaned, done the laundry and contemplated surviving the next six weeks just on pastries. I have also begun my self appointed physical therapy for my finger as it is finally starting to heal but no longer bends on its own. Right now I have no time line or deadlines to get things done so I got most of my errands run at the beginning of break. This would be the time that I wished I had a car so Poho and I could take a trip to the coast or anywhere really. And for the most part everyone is still on vacation or hanging out with their families.

Oh my god, the sun is poking itself out! I think we're going to try and enjoy this for a bit.

Tip for the Day: Don't try and clean with a dog following behind you remaking a mess. Lock them in the bathroom, clean and then clean the bathroom. Sorry Poho...sorta.

Dancing, Death to BP and some SCAC

This past Tuesday, McAsian and I headed to the very interesting bar of Dantes for one of my favorites, Slim Cessna's Auto Club. Based out of Denver (woot) they are group of energetic guys playing up some alternative country. They are currently on tour of the West Coast and home. So if you get a chance to see them, you should http://www.slimcessnasautoclub.com/ .

When we arrived we soon discovered that we were the pretty much the only people there and we were pretty sure that the ones that were there thought we were lost. Again, my color coordination with the city of Portland never ceases to make me stand out. We picked out a table to hang out at before the bands started, me wearing white and sitting with the only other girl in the bar. The place reminded us a little of Dantes Inferno and we reminisced about the days of the Honors Program from our undergrad days in Wyoming. We ordered some PBRs and waited.

The first band, and for the life of me I cannot remember their name, was a sweet four person local band that performs weekly in the NE. My favorite was their chicken renditions, made me want to get up and dance all by my lonesome self, but alas we did not. The second band...oh my. We found out later that the lead singer from the second band was a local regular to the bar and though he had been vetoed many a times to play, he still was right there up on stage. If he wasn't cussing, he was talking up on his soap box about something ridiculous. His adultery, man whore ways, his song about death was dedicated to the CEO of BP were only the tip of the ice berg. If you removed him, the band was actually not too bad. Though some of us had to excuse ourselves from hysterical laughing during their performance, we got through it without getting punched in the face.

Then SCAC came on, and I had looked forward to this show all month. Right off the bat they were drinking, singing and having a great time. And our little group of misfits in a bar were having the time of our lives, dancing our little hearts out right up front. At one point I looked up and realized that the rest of the crowd had given us two feet on every which side of us to avoid our dancing. The show was a little shorter than I would have liked but they did come back for an encore. I hadn't danced like that in a while. Even though I hadn't seen them in a couple of years, they were just as much fun as the first time I saw them in Denver (thanks C & S).

After our adventurous walk home (no interstate hopping this time), we made it back to K Dubs to kick it with Poho and ended up crashing there. The next morning we realized just how active we had been but was thankful that it was nothing too bad. McAsian had apparently been dropped on the floor and was suffering from a bruised elbow, my ab muscles, either from laughing or dancing are still sore as are my feet, our friend was short a debit card and no one was in jail or broke anything. Success. The pictures...oh the pictures; dear future employers...

So, thank you once again Slim Cessna's Auto Club for a sweet night in Portland and good luck with the rest of your tour!

Tip for the Day: Walk through the city in groups, you have more fun...