Time Warp

The last month and change has been a busy one for me.  I got to take a trip out to the West Coast, my job has picked up in pace, and I started interning at a bakery two mornings a week.  Every Tuesday now I get up between 3-3:30am and I pack my stuff for the day and help an awesome woman make batters and cakes and frostings, croissants, etc.  I love it.  Once 8am rolls around I take off my apron and head to my day job with a quite satisfied feeling.  I go into the bakery on Saturday mornings as well.  The way I see it is that I like baking and cooking enough that I want to incorporate it substantially into my daily life, and if I can learn techniques and skills I wouldn't normally have access to, without a culinary study program, in a great environment with beliefs I share, then I am over the moon.

This seems unnecessary to point out, but because of all this, I am Le Tired most of the time.  I look forward to Thursday nights when I go to a friend's house to chill and have an 'Office Party' to watch The Office and 30 Rock and get  a little stupid and relax with friends.  Every other night during the week I am either going to sleep early or at the gym or trying to find a month's worth of laundry that has piled up.  I know the situation has become dire when I start forgoing underwear with certain outfits.

Anyway, so baking at home has become 'strategic' in nature.  If I can whip up a frosting while I'm making dinner I will.  If I can find 15 minutes to get  cake batter ready and pop it in the oven, I had have the next 45min to get something else done, and so on.  I baked a green tea cake for my friend's birthday strategically over 2 days, cut it in half and frosted it two different ways; One half had royal icing with marzipan shapes I rolled and cut out and colored and the other half had cream cheese frosting topped with toasted coconut.  I had just enough time to jump on a bus and deliver them to the Beat Kitchen where she was celebrating that night.

On the whole, life is really Super Good right now.  I am doing and learning awesome things right now, I'm experimenting and writing and doing a ton of stuff I've said I've wanted to so for years.  The ball is rolling.  The next major hurdle on my list is surf camp, but that's harder to carve time away from baking for.

Short and sweet (and savory)

Well, I had a whirlwind weekend in Nueva York with my Bestie and Hetero-life mate. Whew. I had a crazy-early flight on Friday following a company holiday party, so by the time I boarded the bus from Newark to Times Square...I was already beat like a high school drum.



ANYway, the weekend was awesome, more on that later, but it refreshed me for getting back into the kitchen. Tonight is meatloaf night. It's cold, it's winter, it seems like there's no end in sight, (Come on Global Warming!) so it's time to glob some ground beef and turkey together with spices and egg and crumbs and onion, throw it into a loaf pan and into the oven. Of course, it will be more nuanced than that, but the general idea is that it's comfort food and heavy and warm and delicious.



Sometimes I like to go through my cabinets and see what I can use and what the least amount of additional ingredients I need to buy is. Tonight I scored big, and would have been all set to go had I not thought the frozen red wine chicken sausage in my freezer was actually ground turkey. Boo to that. So I'll stop at the store on the way home, grab a pound of lean, and then get to mixing all my ingredients.



Detour Thought- which is sort of on the way with this post- I have started the habit of not letting my boyfriend see what goes into my recipes, the reason being that he'll see something HE thinks is weird, and then go, 'You're putting okra in that? Really?' etc., or something to that effect. He's never not liked something I've made -and I make him be honest with me- but he'll get squirmy or doubtfull about some of my ingedients when he really has no idea how they're going to add to the flavor.



SO, tonight's meatloaf is getting a shot of bacon from Paulina St Meat Market, a place I love to go, and some ginger, corn bread, worchesetershire sauce, brown sugar, and maybe even some rosemary. The bacon is something I purchased before my NYC excursion and then froze. The ginger root I bought randomly at Trader Joe's because I like to have things like that on hand...just in case. Corn meal is something else I have in the cupboard, along with everything else I mentioned. I might even have a leek hanging around I could chop in. I have sweet potatoes I'll slice thinly and bake in the oven with the meatloaf. I think I'll toss them in grapeseed oil, parmesan, salt, pepper, and this great smoked paprika I got from The Spice House on Wells before they go under the broiler. Pics will come once everything is made! YUM.

New Blog!

But I'm at work, so no 'real' entry yet. I'm currently hungry and dreaming of all the delicious things I could make with the contents of my cupboards...