walking sleep

so michael laiskonis just wrote

I've often said that the day you don't feel that pit in your stomach as you walk into work, that's the day to start looking for a new job.

and it seems that several of us are taking such stock lately.

where am i? what am i doing here? is this the right time? how exactly did i get here anyway? what can i do next? how could i have made this better? how can i make [this person] do [this necessary thing]? these are the questions that plague us while we dice, saute, roast, bake, hunt for the chinois.

is it best to cook wholly focused on that one thing. or five things, should you be capable of managing cookies and custards in the oven, a pot of dairy infusing and a caramel at the same time. {this of course implies that you have oven space and working burners for multiple projects, nevermind pots} when you are not focused you make mistakes. your pot of milk boils over and while cleaning up the spill you burn your tuiles in the oven. i find myself working with some people who can only do one thing at a time and it reminds me of when i used to work that way.

and i am so glad that i do not work that way any longer.
and i am so glad that i have the presence of mind to multitask and still hold it down (not only the what/where but the what/now).
and, yes, i still do stupid things but i admit them freely. today my pot of cream boiled over while I was organizing my jars for pot de cremes, and i was pissed that it boiled over, because i had been keeping my eye on it, but i had the presence of mind to taste the cream (was it scalded? did it taste burned in any way? no, so continue) and then measure it (7.5 cups is no longer 8 cups, so correct and proceed).

in a way i'm glad my cream boiled over a bit. i'm somehow in the position currently of trying to teach several people lots of things. it's challenging enough to be mindful of what their backgrounds all are and their skill sets, and then temper my tone or advice accordingly (like, please don't ruin that dessert for service, k thx). if i can see where i came from (yes and sometimes we need a reminder) then i can hopefully be compassionate with these people i am guiding.

because i want to be compassionate. underneath the crusty exterior. and it's hard when service is coming on or when someone commits to making a mistake and fesses up afterward (because there's that moment when you're looking your your mise, and you're thinking something isn't right, and you can decide to go ahead or you can decide to ask a question, and you don't wanna ask a question cause you made this yesterday and you've asked 20 questions today already, and so what are you sposed to do?).

it's hard when you want someone to tell you your impulse is right. it's hard when you have to tell someone their impulse is wrong, that you know they thought about it but they could have made a more informed choice. because you know they can't just think like you. because you know the reason they ask the 21st question is that they want to think like you. i've been the one so many times, saying but...but...but as if my logic, wrong though it be, is going to win me brownie points for having given a second's thought to the matter at hand.

i'm not saying i don't get it wrong any more. no, not at all. but i am glad to be where i am.

confessions

If not offering excuses is the first step, then I'll say it here:

I fuck things up.

I am guilty of daydreaming, of being inattentive to things sometimes. My boss got very frustrated with me today because I overbaked some tart shells and then I underbaked these lil phyllo shells. I should know how to do these things better but I forget to taste and touch and smell and it's stupid. I shouldn't forget those things. I have a very physical job and I should be physically engaged with it, with more than just my hands.

I am not sure why this is happening because it's not like I ever overbaked a tray of cupcakes at my last job. But. It is, so then...

I hate disappointing people. Especially those who are my boss/my friend. People I respect. I hate expecting to disappoint them. I should stop it, right? Admit my faults, right? Because that is the only way to get better, and if I keep being mulish I'll only ever dig myself out of a kitchen, out of learning, not in.

And I want to be in. I want to be in enough that I ate some raw lamb the other day, and I have never eaten lamb and not eaten red meat in 14 years. But now it's in a dish on garde manger and I was disappointing the chef, and my boss, and B, and I knew I'd get in trouble for it if not that night then soon. Imminently. I had to be able to taste it and I have to be able to taste it now, each time I put an order out, and it may not be something I like at all but it's necessary.

I don't want this to sound like I'm whining because I'm not whining. I don't want sympathy or any sort of assurance. I don't like being told what to do but I don't like doing the wrong this just as much, so it would make sense that I learn to do the right thing, and do it, rather than think I know what the right thing is. It would make sense, yes. Stop being so pigheaded, jackass.

I like to pretend that I'm tough, that I'm tough enough. I hold myself at a distance without meaning to and then when people see my vulnerability, I like to think they see it all the time. I like to think they know how I really feel/what I really think even if that wall goes back up because we're close now and it's sometimes scary. I have this problem with women, too; I'm detached enough to pursue the ones I'm not very interested in, and have such a push-pull with the ones I do like, because, god, would there be anything worse than admitting I might like you? And it might be all wrong, or you might not like me, or that it might not be enough to push aside the other things in life? I like to think I know the score, the inside information. Sometimes, it's true, I do. Sometimes all of what I think can turn out to be so not true, or half-true. Sometimes it doesn't even matter.

I am not where I could be. Not even where I should be, perhaps. In order to get there-or at least try-I need to give up a little on all of my ideas of certainty.

Because, clearly, I don't know.

I can be strong and stubborn and stupid. This can serve me well when, say, I have no savings, but a home and a stable job but desperately want to move across the country where no job awaits me, and nothing, and no one. But here, now, it's not working for me.

I'm so hungry. I forgot to eat this morning and I'm kind of sick so I don't have an appetite (or taste buds or a sense of smell). I ate a lot of staff meal but that was hours ago. It took me an hour and a half again to get home on MUNI cause my line stops running direct after 9 pm. And the bottle of cough syrup I had in my bag spilled , and then dripped from my bag all over my leg, so I was commuting home in chef pants with sticky wet goo all over me. I should get some sleep so I can get up early and go open tomorrow, but my mind's too wired. But I'll get up and go in early tomorrow, even if I feel worse than I did this morning, because there's no such thing as a sick day in my industry. Never mind running late. And you know what, no complaints. We have long crazy days. All the time we've overworked, running on little sleep or food or both, and it's just how things are.

I used to be such a good student in high school and college, even grad school, but I wonder if it was because I liked being taught per se, or I liked being rewarded for being smart and knowing things, or struggling together to figure them out...so it can't be that I don't want to learn.

I think there is a a part of me that worries that if I admit my faults I still won't get better. Irrational, perhaps? Of all the things my old boss said to me, there's only one that echoes in my mind, sometimes, like a superstition or a curse:

It's Clear You Have Potential, But No One Can Seem To Get It Out Of You.

the restlessness of the young bakers

When do we get there, wherever we're going? How do we know if it's the right time to go or to stay?

(how long are you gonna be in california...cause i might come out)

When is the last time you held someone's hand? When is the last time you drove for hours with no real reason but the pleasure of it? When is the last time you got on an airplane and left a piece of your heart at the end destination? When is the last time you took a chance? When is the last time you thought you were in control?

In college, Michael sat us down one day in class. You have, none of you, ever made a real decision in your life. Sure, you chose to come here instead of some other college, but that's not a real choice. You would have gone. It would be much the same. Those aren't real choices.

Have I made any real choices yet? Is this a choice? What happens when what you want turns into a string of ellipses, when the straight line at last is revealed to be a curve, or sometimes a circle, bringing you back to where you always wanted to be?

How do we learn how to fix our mistakes? How do we make better educated guesses?

Is it more empowering to know your place or to have autonomy but no direction? To make the decisions but be blind to the larger process, or to handle one small piece at a time?

How do we know when it's done? How do we know when to push or when to wait, whether we have enough for service or what surprises the day might bring?

It seems like most of the teachers are themselves not learned enough. That sometimes their snappishness is because they don't have the answers themselves. That some people are content to know that it works and some people need to know why, and maybe only on their thirtieth time making it do they need to know why.

The conversation last night turned to a fellow baker. There's something I never saw in her. I see it in my boss and sous chef all the time, a small act of authority behind every move and every decision. In her I never saw anything beyond me.

If I forget occasionally how lucky I am to be where I am, last night I remembered I have not one but two superskilled pastry chefs who tease, poke, prod us to be better. Sometimes gratitude is lonely. Sometimes revelations happen in the quiet moments. Sometimes it's in the letting go.

hangups

(still computerless, bear with me)

Sometimes when I'm doing something, especially something new, a big questions clicks into place. Do you really know what you are doing? it asks me. Why are you doing it this way? Why this amount of X and no other? Why X and not Y? What variables are fixed?

For a long time I have had a gelatin hangup. I don't eat much meat and so I don't understand gelatin in its purest form. To me, it's one of the oddest substances around because it can still something. But I can't get past the mouthfeel of it and usually I don't loved the gelled component of a dessert even when I am trying to forget that it's there (it's difficult at work because I know what gets put where). I have made some mistakes at work--like BIGass mistakes--because I don't understand how the ingredient works and I have tried to read as many books as I can (at home, in the library). Yes, I've gone to McGee and I've gone to culinary textbooks, but what hit home for me the most were Lindsey Shere's remarks in the Chez Panisse Desserts book. This is what we find usually works best, she said, following with a list of ways you *should* treat gelatin-based products. In that sentence fragment, curled within a paragraph of explanation on blooming, temperature, and the like, was an admission of mystery. We do this even though we do not fully understand. I loved it. I called up a friend and read it to him.

Last night I encountered another big question while whisking together a souffle base that contained a couple ounces of flour. While waiting for it to come together my mind trailed over to the chocolate chiboust we make. The two are similar enough in preparation. Liquid is boiled and tempered with eggs, the result is cooked down on the stove to thick, cooled somewhat, and lightened by swiss meringue. In the chiboust, you must whisk heroically and over medium low heat while the souffle base is full speed ahead hot, whisk it good but, you know, there's no fire. In the chiboust, you are deathly afraid of the starch turning grainy. Because then you will have to make it again. And you know you don't want to spend another half hour whisking. In the souffle, this is no concern. Why?

WHY I asked my boss and as she started to explain something about the liquid ratio she was called away by the chef, so my question bobbed about like a balloon and my sous chef, mopping the floor, picked up about the liquid proportions. But that didn't work for me. There was so much more liquid in the chocolate. Then she tried a different tack. What is in the chocolate base? Milk. Butter. Fat. It's The Fat, she said. The Fat And The Flour. There's No Fat In The Souffle.

Ok, I can buy that. But why? I pressed her later. Why flour instead of cornstarch or tapioca? Can you use another starch? If you change the recipe to cream does it come out totally different? How do you know this? (which means of course how can I know this, or when will I know this)

They all know that I get hung up on the details. You can just accept it, my sous chef cautions, or you can figure out the science behind it. If you really want to know. Cause that's apparently where the explanation lies. But unless I understand it how will I know whether flour is best or another starch, whether I should use cream or a combination of butter + milk, milk + cream, if the yolks are too many or too few?

Pastry. Sometimes I feel like there should be a plaque in pastry kitchens that says Bang Head Here. But that's better than a timer that beeps You Motherfucker Answer Me!

work meditations

I haven't been talking about this lately, as some have said, but it's still true:

I love my job.

I love that my coworker recites her rhyming poem about the pets she's had while we prepare phyllo-wrapped pastries.

I love that Al Gore came into my restaurant Monday night for dessert. And my coworker and I plated up the food he ate every scrap of.

I love that there's a line cook who makes me dinner when staff meal is nasty or all gone. And in return I feed her hot cocoa.

I love that I made the sous chef make the prep cook clean up the large mixer he made bread in and left a floury mess (every day he does this and never cleans it up). And that this prep cook and I had words about his needing to clean it up. I love my boss's response as I relayed the story.

I love that the chef asked tonight if we could wrap his phyllo dish rather than any savory cook.

I love that I made a list of all the desserts we'd made thus far, with all their components, and it was already so many things. Which we forget in the day to day.

I love that my boss missed her train tonight because was in the middle of giving me advice about a frustrating situation.

There's this server at work who got on my nerves for a while. Every day he'd ask the same, or similar questions about the menu.What is cardamom? What does it taste like? What does the phyllo filling taste like? What is anise? What is fennel? How are cocoa nibs different from chocolate? How should I describe this other phyllo pastry? Can I taste this, and this, and this?

One day it hit me, clear out of the blue. I was so irked by this guy's many questions, by his overeagerness, because it hit too close to home. He was me, we were twins cut from the same cloth. Not the most apparent realization. But sometimes you fight people the more when they resemble you too much. You see your faults writ large in their actions and words and you wonder, do I really sound like that? Is this how other people feel when they talk to me?

He's leaving the restaurant now (and the city, actually). And I'm kind of gonna miss him.

The cake's all together. I love that I banged it out in about an hour and a half after work, and that I knew it would take that long, and that I did it before taking a shower or eating or doing anything. It's done. Other things...not on my mind tonight. Now I'm gonna have a big glass of wine and finish watching L'Eclisse, because there's few things finer than a sultry Monica Vitti stomping around with a pout on.

dragging myself out into the world, or trying to

Writing...which means of course *not* writing. At Philz. I'm going to work on the cut-up story.

Tonight will find me at the Sister Spit reading, deep in the Tenderloin, in a creaking and quasi literary bar. I went to the tour's last SF reading. This one should be packed with animated and angry dykes, trannies, queers of all sorts and shares, and a lion's share of writers with former drinking problems. The writers will be funny and fierce and reckless in their use of grammar. They may be published in journals you've never heard of or they may have books out. They'll make me want to be one of them. A slightly dangerous and more glamorous version of myself. Their words will be messy and juicy and breaking and I'll feel over-educated and timid and I'll want to write new stories about the world I live in.

I think the chef world needs more chronicling, but different chronicling. The voice of the pastry cook, so rarely heard. The girl in the kitchen, ditto. Queer cooks, how many do you know? What you know of my industry is Top Chef and Anthony Bourdain, but there's so much more than that. Who do you read? What do you read? What do you know of the kitchen? Why do you come here?

Like the chef, the writer is a mysterious and overly romanticized figure. The hazards of the occupation are fewer, but you will drive yourself crazy just as quickly and your quest for perfection will be misunderstood. Intense and overly analytical circles, my two worlds. Long hours toiling alone. More questions than answers. The deeper in you go, the more you realize what you don't know. You want someone to help you, to give you all the answers, but the process is far too complicated to work that way. Normal people don't understand why you do it. And you have plenty of normal relationships in your life but when you're with another writer or another chef, you talk for hours about things other people don't understand.

{talking about rice pudding last week, my boss said that If You Understand How Rice Cooks, Then You Will Understand Why You Need To Sweeten It At The End. It's the sort of koan that makes me want to not go back to work until I figure out why but then I'd never go back to work because there is always more to know about rice, and sugar. But don't you all worry I'll be at work tomorrow, claro}

I am lonely these days for a balance in my life. I cook, and then I read and think about how I should be writing. I ride my bike to and from work and think about biking around to other neighborhoods and getting to know my new city more. I used to be a balanced person before all this food stuff happened to me. I'm trying to remember that there are more things that I like to do. That I'm not just the girl in the Sox hat working the line {perhaps you are surprised that I get to wear my hat at work. I was, too. But customers talk to me all the time!}

Once upon a time I liked to read, knit, play scrabble, watch burlesque, play pool, hang out in cafes, go to all the major museum shows, ride my bicycle, play video games, go to literary readings, go thrift store shopping, grow vegetables, take my dog for really long walks, go driving around, maybe go on a date with a girl I might like. I wanted to learn to: keep bees, fish, be a better gardener/grower, make fucking sorbet which I still can't do, write a screenplay, be a cowboy, get out of debt, work with chocolate, speak spanish.

The last thing I wanted to do? Learn to work with seasonal and local produce. {&how long will it take me to learn all I should know about fruit? How many lifetimes indeed}

Writing. Happening now. I want to tell you a story about the FPFM, but I don't think I should.

plating versus production...?

Worked lunch today and toward the end of my shift as I was cleaning the station my sous chef came out to ask me if I wanted to make the sweat-inducing chiboust. If I Don't Do That Then What? I asked, cause if the alternative was something I'd been exposed to less I'd take that one. Or Clean, she said. So I took the chiboust.

I was Asking You Cause You Seemed To Really Like Doing It, she said.

Oh Yeah. I Do. Then I paused to clarify. It wasn't that I loved preparing this particular menu item. I'm So Much Happier Doing Production, I said. I Much Prefer It To Service. I Know I Have A Lot To Learn From Doing Service And I'm Down With That But It Doesn't Make My Heart Sing.

So I whisked frantically for some time and then we super cleaned the kitchen to Le Tigre, silently singing along cause neither of us can sing. I really like my sous chef and feel like we've kind of bonded. It could have started out as just a dyke thing but I tell her what I want, pester her to show me things I haven't gotten to do yet. While we were scrubbing everything down today I told her she was doing a really good job. Not That It Means That Much Coming From Me, I prefaced the compliment.

No, It Does, she said. Surprised. And now hours later I want to tell my coworker who is new to the industry that she's really brave. And I just emailed my boss some things that had been on my mind like how I love my job, because I think it's fairly obvious but it might not be. Is it a good idea or is it a bad idea to email things like that to your boss, I don't know, but it's honest. This post has me rethinking all communication lately, not just fictitious.

I called a cook friend on my way home and we fell into talking about work. Plating. I'd Rather Be In The Back And Mise Ingredients For YOU To Make A Cake Than Plate Desserts I said. Production calms me. Even if I am only punching out cookies on a sheet pan it makes me happy.

I know that plating desserts is important. I also really like my chef's style of plating. It makes sense to me, aesthetically. At Sonsie I was always befuddled by the choices my boss made in terms of plate components and in terms of plate design. We'd do a piece of mousse cake atop a giant peanut meringue, with a tiny line of chocolate sauce like a moat around the meringue. The meringue made sense because it was crunchy and added a texture but who wanted to eat an enormous meringue with really rich mousse cake and who wanted only a dabble of sauce? No, this job is not like that. The plates are lovely and there is a certain pride to it. Each time I draw the glassy, glistening caramel down the edge of the plate in a clean line and don't mess up the edges, I'm totally happy. Placing the fig garnish in a neat line makes me smile. I am even getting into the rhythm of plating again, after nine months without restaurant positions. Lunch is actually a lot faster than dinner and having the tickets pile up while I was still trying to unmold shy panna cottas from their ramekins didn't make me nervous.

So it isn't that I don't like plating. I just don't love it. I understand that it is necessary and I understand why. Production I love. Even when it's boring. Though I'll admit I loved it a little less at the cupcakery, because nothing ever changes.

But my friend made me see it a little differently. You Will Learn So Much About The Products, he said. Each Time You Handle That Cake You'll Understand It Better In A Way You Never Would Only By Baking It, he said. And it's true that I know how each piece feels day in and day out. That a component has different value to me when I see it as a tool.

I Think You'll Get To Like It Better, my friend said.

Will I not truly understand a panna cotta until I can unmold it efficiently? Because...and this is funny...my arms are aching, actually. So all you do is warm the outside of the ramekin in a bain, loosen the top edges of the custard, and then invert it onto a flat plate and shake the plate (with your thumbs on top supporting the ramekin) vigorously. Ridiculous sounding, yeah? My sous chef actually laughed at me when I told her my arms were sore.

Do I prefer production because I see myself as less good at plating? With all of its fussy precision. Do I prefer production because it's somehow, and this is ridiculous too, more butch to heft large Hobart bowls someone my size really shouldn't be lifting anyway, to bust out all the bread the restaurant requires for the day? I'm Getting In Touch With My Femme Side, I told my sous chef after I rearranged our flowers into two tiny vials of the ones that were still alive, keeping the prettier one for the pastry side of the pass. Between that and the handwriting.


Maybe...maybe it's not a versus thing. I'm willing to consider that it will teach me not just about precision, consistency and efficiency of movement but about the raw materials I'm working with.

the girls do it better than the boys

Bread, that is. Some lonely like cook wandered into our kitchen a couple days ago to use the big mixer, and I'm not sure what he did (or didn't do, more appropriately), but all of a sudden he was shoved aside and my boss was coddling his bread dough.

There was no salt, for one. So while she explained to him about the importance of salt, what salt's role is in dough, she finessed the right amounts of water and flour. He left. He didn't come back for a while, so she continued, taking the dough out of the mixer, kneading it into a bowl, whispering sweet nothings into its yeasty lil ear. One of the sous chefs came by and was like We're Supposed To Get It Like A Windowpane, Huh? That's What You're Doing?
Short answer, yeah.

As I was hastening to get my second pot of goodness on the stove, I saw how the sous chef was shaping the bread. I stopped. I've got about nine months of day to day bread experience-rolls, focaccia, cornbread, crackers, light wheat, potato bread, biscuits, pizza dough-on my resume. And he was treating the bread like he was a kid playing bouncy ball by himself and he had all day to shape those out-in-the-air lil rounds as if they weren't gonna get crusty. I planted myself next to the prep table, picked up a round of dough. Spun it in one hand, feeling the contours of the dough ride up against my fingers and tighten. Like A Baby's Bottom, my old boss used to say. It's a body memory.
Like This, I said. Feel This. Now Feel Yours. His were flabby. We loved this dough into existence for him and I was not gonna let him do the next step without giving him something to aim for. I barely had time for a mini explanation before my arms were overloaded with dairy and I was back to work.

There's this chiboust I've been making every day at the new job. Ostensibly it begins as a pastry cream, but all the body memories of pastry cream are stripped form it and the project's turned inside out. Yolks and flours, flavorings are whisked into hot milk and the entire thing is cooked on the stove, on extremely low heat.

But mostly it's being whisked like you're Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is after you. Did You Break A Sweat? my boss asked the first time I made it. Well You're Not Whisking Hard Enough.

if you can talk you're not whisking hard enough
if you breath in-out you're not whisking hard enough
if you can think you're not whisking hard enough
if your muscles aren't straining burning, if your hands aren't calloused
you're not doing it right

One of the guys said if he had to make this every day he'd hate his job but I just shook my head and bent over my task. Each time I come to it I notice something new. Each fresh batch is a chance to whisk it better, to see how it reacts each time some level of starch or dairy is cooked out and the mixture thickens. To take it less seriously is to risk ruining it. I was trying to explain to a friend while biking home last night why it needed this level of care. That's Crazy was all he said. I've got boys shirking at the thought of whisking something with all your might for the better part of half an hour, but you know? You figure out what the purpose of movement is, what it really means to whisk something, what you bring to the kitchen and what kind of compromiser you are.

Each time you try to do it with all your heart.

Oh, and per the bread: there is no jest here. It's the sort of thing where if someone told you that you'd be in a kitchen where talented chefs were doing amazing things, and coaxing every molecule of yeast into its full potential, and everyone around you would be all flushed and happy and you couldn't wait to get to work every day, you'd laugh because you wouldn't think it could ever be true that you oculd be handed such gifts.

things we did + didn't say

There are a lot of things I want to say right now but I can't (some of them I just said in an email).

5.13 miles tonight on foot from the Ferry Building basically to home, because I didn't really feel like getting on any of the early BARTs and then by the time I hit Civic Center Vas Ness wasn't much further up or Mission and I could always catch a bus, only if I was at 13 then my home wasn't all that much further away plus now I could see it, that odd hill with the misshapen trees on top that look like some African safari landscape, the fog still holding off. By the time I arrived home the fog was coming down moving fast now.

3.92 miles each way on my bike Friday night (from the hillside through the Mission's flatness eke across Market zigzag around the Lower Haight hills suddenly all the way down Fell cruise the Panhandle for some time and then turn around, in reverse, stopping by Bi Rite for ice cream on the way home)

I put so much energy out in my last post about what I want and what I'm looking for and so many responses came back from the world. But the words to discuss it I can't find or I can't say so I've been restless. Moving not in straight lines. Right now is the quiet time, I understand it even if I don't want to accept it. Waiting for the results of all that energy to manifest in the form of, if not the ideal, something closer.

{I thought I knew what the ideal was but it is not to come to me now, in the most commonsense way, so then what?}

How did I forget that part, that it is my weakness I am impatient for change? That I want to be better yesterday?

And what I enjoy is this: the moment when a question arises or a subject. Buttercreams. Caramel. How to stir ganache. Whatever. And then everybody gives their answers taught to them by some chef or boss or food television personality, who knows. It's a dialogue, a debate, certainly learning. But I don't want to take the authoritative voice or be the center of attention and so I don't call myself teacher.

There is one more this I want to say but it's best not to say it. Exercising my rarely if ever used filter.

what I'm thinking about these days

projects in the works, desserts appearing soon perhaps, etc.

sweetness: am I supposed to bake a variety of products with different sweetness levels to please different people?

do I overuse vanilla?

I always imagined heaven was made from buttercream one of the writers said to me just the other day.

who tags cake, and why?

flan for the FB: how am I supposed to make flan without ramekins? Manager suggested making it in disposable molds but custard needs something firm so as not to be damaged. Flan in muffin tins? Flan in silpat? How to get ramekins from the farm?

herbs: I'm getting half a pound of lemon verbena tomorrow at the market. Current plan is to macerate some strawberries in it for the shortcakes but what else am I going to do with the bundle of lemon verbena that is left?

politics of FB: Manager said nobody carried organic lemon verbena except for one vendor who tended not to bring it to the saturday market as the was no market for it. But this is just not true...who gets to decide who we buy things from because is doesn't seem to be me.

New berries: ollalieberries, huckleberries, fraises des bois, tayberries, boysenberries, want to try in raw form if possible.

new project: why are the cable stitches so much harder to knit after I slip them back onto the needle?

mushrooms: how no one ever told me that if you cook them long enough you cook out the water and they smell deliciously like teriyaki, or char from the grill. how if someone had told me long ago that mushrooms taste like lapsang souchong, like teriyaki, like crunchy caramelization, like earthy woodsy slightly buttery vegetation I would have been much more prone to eating them. how they possibly tried to tell me that but I would not listen.

how i can remember bacon, but not pork.

how goodreads has made so many people feel better including me.

gelatin: totally gross, but really amazing at the same time.

potato bread with a pesto swirl.

retro kick: interested in making bubble gum ice cream, and actually I bought some today at Mitchell's. I remember it being bright pink and with bright gum that was really chewy when you ate it, but one of the cupcake girls thought it was bright blue. The Mitchell's stuff was bright blue with this disappointing gum that was more like jawbreakers. Quite expensive for a scoop of extremely aerated ice cream. what does it it taste like after all? cotton candy, sort of, but what does cotton candy taste like?

today our sourdough starter began smelling like nailpolish remover. was it the cake flour? the raisin water?

how to be better, faster, more productive.

how plums are really something special...and the santa rosas, they're decent but they're not my plum. how I really like the Jade nectarines...but we only had them for a week.

how the other day one of my crushes told me she could tell i was from the east coast.

how i cross the streets when i shouldn't.

how i left virtually everything back east, and when will i get it, and how?

the plated dessert game

butterscotch pdc with pecan shortbread, fleur de sel, chantilly

carnaroli with cherries, cherry vinegar, vanilla shortbread

veloute with malt ic, dacquoise, graham

ricotta cheesecake with rose geranium, mesquite flour, rhubarb

pate a choux with choco sauce, vanilla egg cream, nibs

lemon sherbet with bay gelee, candied zest, meringue



t i r e d baker

citrus sorbets

aaah,a tip, from the archives of Shuna Lydon's blog I just can't seem to stop reading even though it's growing late.

It is best to eat citrus sorbets soon after they are churned. They tend to freeze rock-solid.

{If you find that this is true, "temper" your sorbet in your refrigerator for about 20 minutes or as long as it takes to come to desired temperature.}

On a similar note, I noticed my strawberry ice milk was also better/softer after about ten minutes of sitting out. When initially removed from the freezer, I could barely scoop it but ten minutes later the iciness was mostly gone and it had a rather creamy mouthfeel after all.

I made a second batch of ice milk tonight that had been doctored with 3T peppermint schnapps and, when mostly frozen, chopped thin mint cookies. Pissed off after the strawberry experiment I figured the extra sugar would help it freezer better. We'll taste the results tomorrow.

I'm going for Vietnamese food in Oakland tomorrow night, for someone's birthday party. I have to be in Berkeley tomorrow afternoon--maybe I'll stop by Sweet Adeline's or the Berkeley bowl or somewhere I probably won't get back to once I move to SF.

I really like Shuna's blog, and I really hope that she writes me back and that I can help with one of her cooking classes. I feel like I'm always struggling to learn more or better but I don't have other people I can bring that dialogue back to. Not even the pastry girls, really. Sometimes, sure, but not really. In culinary school I wasn't caring about the whys of what I was doing so much, so I think they'd be really surprised at me...if they knew I got Food Arts and ate at all the best restaurants I could (not) afford to go to, and arranged unpaid stages with amazing chefs and relocated my whole life for food, if they knew I made lists and try to really understand the thing (cardamom. sorbet base. dough.), well, do they do the same thing? I don't know.