yes, those are checks!

Walking past this thrift store tonight on the neverending apartment hunt, I found a male mannequin dressed in a blue vest and the regulation houndstooth. When i saw the checks I thought a uniform store, maybe, so maybe I could get new duds, but it was no such thing. I would seriously love to see some dude sporting the checks as part of a fashionable ensemble. I do, weirdy enough though, see many uniformed chefs swarming around the Civic Center BART. 4 total in a week. What do they do there? Will they take me with them in my baker-regulation jeans and dirty black clogs?

Today at Frog Hollow we scooped free samples of cherry granita, and I told them I'd sell it at Market if they got me an ice cream cart. Actually, my first suggestion was that they approach Ciao Bella about carrying granita +/or sorbet under the Frog Hollow name. There isn't enough collaboration in the FB and I think it could do better that way. Of course, I did almost deck my supervisor when she suggested we serve ice cream every week, but before I had to grit my teeth and explain how I wasn't going to be able to bake if I was spending Saturdays scooping, she reassured me it wouldn't be my job.

I made custard for bread pudding today, and vanilla simple syrup to lighten it. I bought pan de mie from Acme

Amazing how much easier it is to make bread pudding when you're not dealing with a custard base of 8 quarts cream, 2 c. milk, 90 yolks plus chocolate, making 96 servings at a time. Considering a peach leaf bavarian with peach gelee and peach compote. But the goal for tomorrow is pared down, nothing to finish or Saturday. Simplicity. I am not going to worry about not having enough, because I really can't count on finishing things on Saturday anymore. I'm going minimal for a few weeks, at least to figure out the rhythm of market days now that there's actually fruit.

I'm nervous about the bread pudding. I want it to be creamy, vanilla-laden, tossed with cherries and manybe something else. But I so rarely like bread pudding. In fact there are two I like: the brown butter milk jam + mulberry concoction from Oleana, which should one day appear in a national foodie magazine or else Sara Moulton's cookbook, and the white chocolate challah from Figs, even though I'm not into Todd English. And I know that it will be fine--really good, in fact--whether or not I like it, but I so want to like it.