first week down

Started at Miette this week. 2 days a week. I knew going into it things were going to be pretty boring. The first rotation is all mise and grunt work. I spent my first day doing just that--scooping peanut butter cookies, mashing them with a fork and sprinking tem with sugar. in the end the cookies were harder than i would have liked--not very suishy or soft, but the taste was good and they're cute. after that i spent 3 hours zesting one crate of lemons. is that a long time or not? probably, but it was a lot of lemons and i was stuck in the back room trying not to let my hands cramp up or freeze. All of the miette workers are cutesy little straight girls, some with culinary training, some without...there are only a couple men. After the lemons, i went home to sit on my porch and have some lunch, and in the afternoon it was macaroon assembly time. i got to pipe the filling, and then smush them together. $1.50 for a little cookie! well, it's in line with the ferry building prices. can't afford them, but can snack for free on the misshapen ones.

Wednesday was better. I worked with the head baker who also lives in fruitvale. her husband's in iraq. she'd only ever worked alone and hadn't ever trained anyone, so she kept getting confused because we were chatting a little. but only a very little and i think she liked me. she made the batter, then i scooped and poured chocolate bunny cakes, chocolate cakes, gingerbread cakes and hundreds of cupcakes. the oven there is insane. it makes me really happy. it's maybe 7 feet by 10 feet, and it's got a giant crank that rotates maybe 4 shelves through the oven. you crank open a little door and feed things into it. i guess i'm doing something right if i get overly excited by the biggest oven and the largest hobart mixer i've ever seen and hope to use the dough sheeter soon. all we did was bake, cool, and wrap things. apparently all the finishing work is done by another station. working in stations, it must be weird. or what i mean more properly is it's got to be harder to have a relationship to the finished product. if all you're doing is icing, or baking, wrapping.

This weekend i'm working the baking for frog hollow, so i've got to get to the ferry building by 5 AM. at least for now. thursday i'm meeting with becky my new boss at the farm to talk about new menu items and whatnot. i'm looking forward to seeing the farm. strawberries and rhubard have started coming up in the pastries. i'm going to try one tomorrow. today i had a blackberry tarlette--too many seeds in the berries, but then that's what a berry is, right?