Just when you think...

I had been proud of myself lately because I thought I had a solid plan that was going to move myself forward.  One little trip to a place I thought I didn't like too much and I have bounced back into a phase of changing my mind again. 

I recently visited my best friend in Montana...where I had planned on moving a few months back...and the same freeing feelings came flowing back.  The possibilities of restaurants and bakeries made my heart soar...plus it is a bigger town, but not giant, so my safety level wouldn't be shattered...and I would be around my friend, which I miss very much.

I am off to discover what sort of job I can muster up searching the land of falls...figuring out how to keep his pastry spark alive, and how I will manage to get breves at Bev's without breaking my bank ♥

Gaining New Customers Makes Me ♥ Happiness

The week brought a new cake customer and expanded my talents a bit.  I love getting cake orders where I get freedom to be creative and make pretties that WOW the masses. 

The cake I made yesterday did just that...and I got a tip!  I love getting tips...I don't expect it, ever.  That said, it is a great duty of mine to create memories in fantastically decorated cakes....those memories last forever, and in photo, even longer...so my "services" get 'tips' from the cake living on (extremely cheesy...yet fitting!).

I hope for many more memories to create...and practice to achieve!!  I love pastry, and the further I get away from that 'fine' job I once possessed, the happier I am in my career path...even if it is one inch at a time!

♥

Toffee & Passports...someone has been busy :)

Waking up to a raging snow storm in April makes me excited to leave Wyoming!  Even though everyone knows by lunch the roads will be dry, I would prefer to live somewhere where snow is a freak accident.  Keeping that in mind, I am going on vacation to Seattle this summer...and whilst abroad (okay only three states west of my current location) I plan on visiting the fine country of Canada...more importantly, Vancouver!  Travelling across US borders is no longer an easy task ('Thanks a lot Bin Laden.' --Allan, the Hangover), so a passport is a necessary investment.  Getting the said passport is extremely simple, if you like hanging out at the post office for an exorbitant amount of time.  However, this morning poses the problem of getting my small hands on my birth certificate.  My mother thinks it is fun to keep said birth certificate in a fire-proof box, which is smart and probably safe, that is, until there are no keys to get into this box.  Her method of organization depends largely on a 'penny jar' full of random keys...all of which do not fit the lock of the fire-proof box.  Indeed an interesting morning...needless to say, the certificate cannot be retrieved until her expertise arrives home from work.

With passport dreams on hold, I had an itch to create pastrylicious happiness...so I settled for toffee...of course created with a topping of ground espresso and almonds mixed together with bittersweet chocolate and coarsely chopped almonds and cacao nibs...as it cools, I blog :) 

I have been meaning to use up a bag of Meyer lemons we purchased at Whole Foods recently...but I haven't had the urge for a lemony suprise...I should zest the majority of them and freeze my findings for future use before the whole bag dries up in the corner of the fruit drawer in the refrigerator!!

Enough for now...I shall be off to taste my creations and cross my fingers for safe retrieval of the box key ♥ Happy Passports!

Manic Monday ♥

The weekend always proves that I love weekdays so much more!!  I get to create yummies and revise recipes that I learn to ♥ later.  Today I have had the privilege of creating fantastic buttermilk biscuits and granola. 

Since I haven't attempted a truly gorgeous biscuit since Lavallee's lab at JWU, I thought it high time to expand my pastry innocence and attempt a nemesis...and strangely enough, I have NO IDEA why biscuits ever became a said nemesis!!  Super easy and they turned out beautiful and delicious...perfect companion to use with my "A la King" version dinner I am making this evening!

The granola also happens to be extremely fantastic!  I found a generic recipe, to get an idea of what ingredients/ratios I needed and just went to town.  I recently bought brown rice syrup at Sunflower Market and substituted that for honey (thumbs up, by the way)...also, I used Daz Bog coffee beans and cacao nibs instead of nuts and seeds.  I did, however, incorporate a generous helping of flax seed into the mix so the granola seems healthier :)...Espresso Nib Granola is AMAZING ♥

My pastry-ness has been exercised for today so I am off...passport photos and applications to follow!!  I am super excited for the trip of a lifetime in JUNE♥♥♥

Red digits are totally un-pastry like...but inevitably ME ♥

One of the hardest aspects of attending culinary school was the idea that I wasn't allowed to wear makeup or fingernail polish.  I am a girly girl to the core, and appreciate dolling up and fixing my hair, so the thought of no makeup and 'ugly' hair made me feel almost sad and kind of sick.  I had to find a way around it. 

Guidelines at Johnson & Wales University state that females are not allowed to wear makeup, perfume, or any type of nail polish as it is unsanitary for food production.  I can respect refraining from nail polish and even perfume (as it really is distracting), but makeup held a place far too important in my heart, and I just couldn't let it go.  I decided to do a neutral palette of powder and concealer...as I was blessed with the hell known as dark undereye circles, and to go without makeup (especially under my eyes) is just wrong.  The move-in checklist for me included new makeup sponges from Sephora and a translucent powder to set my 'culinary makeup.'  I was doing this, no one was going to stop it.

Somehow, fooling even myself, I as able to get away with the military-like inspections of hair, face, uniform, and socks...the first few months of labs felt very strict and like I was walking on thin ice, afraid to step out of line...even so, I was never afraid to not wear my 'culinary makeup.'

By the second year of labs I had culinary makeup and hair down to an art...and I had little care what I looked like...wearing ugly checkered pants and going to lab at 6:45 a.m. will do that to a person.  After leaving JWU and seeing the provided uniforms employers used, I realized the ones from JWU were designer gear...however, I refrain from ever bringing those checkered pants to see the light of day.

When I did graduate and move home, I still wasn't allowed to wear any nail polish or have my most treasured feature, the acrylic nail, but I was full board on the makeup and hair front...owning a swoop bang and pony poof everyday...because I could and can :).

Now that we know my circumstances, I sit before you proudly sporting sets of acrylics or red polished natural nails (if they are long enough!)...and as I get ready to travel to Montana next week to see my Sally, I have a set of french tips prepped and ready to adorn my small hands...eager to look chic and love the clicckketty claccckk noise they make on EVERYTHING ♥

The end of sorts...definitely not an era!

When does a job become something that we insist on being obsessed with?  I pursued a degree in Baking & Pastry Arts later than average students because I was not sure it was my path...I wanted it, but I wasn't willing to part with the cash, then, one day, I woke up and had to have it...FINALLY!  I tried to go away to culinary school a total of four times, with the fourth being a major success.  Grades were a success and it pointed out to me that I was supposed to travel this road.  Graduation came in the blink of an eye, and moving back home to small-town Wyoming was my option, for the time being, because I had bills to pay.

Money makes people do weird things, and I, clearly, am no exception.  I saw an ad on craigslist for a line cook opening at "Gillette's Finest Restaurant" and took a chance.  Explained I was graduating soon from culinary school and that I was a pastry freak.  Had the interview...and creepily discussed one worker in particular and how she had met her peak for desserts and needed to move on to other things in her career in that kitchen.  I had no good feelings in my stomach from the place, yet I needed a job, and the pay was right, and I didn't have to hunt, it all was falling into place!

When I left Denver, I cried for what and, more importantly, who I was leaving.  I missed my life...Gillette didn't offer what I had grown accustomed to, and mostly, it didn't have my friends who understood and breathed pastry.  I longed to find that in anyone in such a small town, but I soon realized I would be a lonely soldier in that battle.  Starting work at "Gillette's Finest Restaurant" did not offer any welcoming arms.  I was greeted with silence and jealousy, clearly fueled by someone's personal insecurities, as I was very wet behind the ears and had no idea what the 'H' I was supposed to be making for such a "fine" establishment.

Over the course of my life I have realized that it takes me two months to grow comfort to anything.  Two months to be happy and open in new relationships and friendships.  Two months to be okay living in Denver, after leaving home for the first time.  Two months to ditch a crappy friend who left me high and dry (it led to many more months to try to move on and forget his 'A').  And two months to feel more 'at home' being back  home and working at "Gillette's Finest Restaurant."  In those two months, my training was non-existent...just make 'whatever,' so that is what I would do.  I didn't feel open, ever, to make anything worth Johnson & Wales' value, EVER.  I made things that I was proud of, but my heart still yearned to be in Denver where I had Chefs that loved me and mentored me into a better pastry artiste.  I spent the entirety of my 'fine' employment figuring out ways to get by.  I had to prep cook more than I pastry cheffed, so getting dessert production down to two hours a day was a trick I mastered.

I slid by at a job I wholeheartedly hated, and felt empty performing, with little in the way of friends to hang with I began to think my life was a sad pit.  I missed my aforementioned 'crappy' friend that moved away to California more than I could handle, and going to a job day in and day out that I had any sort of disdain for seemed ridiculous.  Of course I stayed in contact with my Denver friends, and visited them when I could, wherever they were across this fine nation...really it only landed me back in Denver and in Great Falls, MT, but still, I travelled to hang out with people who made me smile.  I missed them, longed for a happier lot, and wanted a way out of the tangle of feelings I had developed being back home.  Let me clarify, 'home' is great, everything with my family is normal and supportive and, for that, I am very lucky, but the part of 'home' that had turned me into an evil minded pastry slave was "Gillette's Finest Restaurant" and that little chunk definitely needed a change.  I had a plan, along with my best friend in Montana, that I needed to move away from "Gillette" and get a new perspective.  Looking on the DL for jobs in my off-time seemed the best sort of release from feeling so miserable at a job...and I found interested candidates worthy of my response, so it was all sort of falling into place again...there is nothing like seeing things happen in your life and realizing that they are happening for a reason; so much has been this way for me now that I am aware, and it makes me know that there is always a greater plan than anything I have figured out for myself...anyways, I was off on a tangent that I would soon be moving to Montana and leaving the dump known as "Gillette's Finest Restaurant," so I had to figure out how I was going to cut the cord...Christmas had chugged by and I had made it to 2010, with a very mangled idea of pastry, and a heart that felt sad and longed for the past.  Low and behold, mid-January the chicken shit Chef decided that he needed to hire people in at a lower wage than he was paying everyone and kill the employment of his expendable employees, and guess where pastry falls in on that list...number one.  Needless to say, I was laid off, not without harsh comparison of desserts and personalization of problems with business...is it really the pastry chef's fault that servers are dipshits that don't know what anything other than cheesecake is?  I hardly deserve the weight of that problem, or any of it for that matter.  It was a horrible slap in the face, and truly a deadening event that took me how long to get over?  That is correct, two months :)...of course, I was freaked out, and had no idea what the 'H' I was going to do, then I started getting cake orders...and I made them...and came out with the best decorated cakes I had ever made!!  In that time of sadness I made better products than I had the entire year after I graduated from JWU, it made me realize that I truly had been in a pastry dictatorship where I felt scared to make anything great...and the lay off made me liberated enough to embrace my pastry talent again.

My journey is far from even starting, and at this point, I feel completely okay with the idea that I get to hunt for the best place I deserve to land and get the career I desire going!  I have plans to travel West and enjoy new scenes and maybe, just maybe, find that place where my heart beats bright and I learn the true love and joy of pastry art.  Maybe it doesn't exist, and at that point, it will be up to me to create it for myself...but travelling is half the battle, because you can't figure out what you want until you test what you can handle.  I can handle a lot more than I ever thought possible, and crappy jobs at 'fine' establishments have taught me that a job is just a job...it cannot consume you or your happy place, because if you lose any part of you being with a company or for the sake of the job, you have lost something much more precious than you will ever realize...or at the very least, that you might realize in two months ♥