School So Far

Pastry school, three weeks in. We've finished our first block, which is good. Since it was the introduction, the lesson plan was a little schizophrenic. Chocolate chip cookies to pastry cream to chiffon cakes in less than two weeks. Yeesh.

We started on January 5th with 24 students. In the intervening weeks that has dropped to 21. One girl left the program because it turns out that what she was looking for was a fancier version of a Wilton class, so all this talk of cost control and food chemistry was too much for her, another girl left because she broke her leg (although she'll be back in 3 weeks) and the third girl left because she got really, really sick and missed too much of the first block (she should also be back in three weeks). The other three guys in my class are still around, so at least I have some male company.

On the subject of company, I have made friends. Huge surprise, they're all girls. I could make some excuse about the ratio of girls to guys skews the probability towards that end, but that would be bullshit. I've always found it easier to make friends with girls. Which I guess is a plus in this field.

There have been a couple of bad days (literally a couple, and 2 out of 15 is not bad). But, by and large, I'm really enjoying myself. My chef is great. She's funny and very patient and an excellent teacher. We're all really happy that we've got her for our next three week block (breads! yay!).

Elswhere in the world: Obama is president (yay!), Bush no longer has the bully pulpit (double yay!!) and Cheney is apparently morphing into some hybrid of Dr. Strangelove (the character, not the movie), Darth Vader and the Penguin (wtf?). This is all great, but it is a little disappointing that 43 and his Stepford Wife are now permanent residents of my home state. Thankfully it's big enough that I'm unlikely to run in to him. Also, my mom is home from Vegas and her stupid little schnauzer has gone home.

I'm considering entering the Chocolate Expo at school in February. Seeing as how I have no real experience with chocolate, I'm thinking about doing cupcakes. I'm trying to be creative (yikes!) and come up with some interesting flavors and my lovely wife has offered to be my guinea pig and taste the potential disasters. So now it's off to Central Market to get stuff to experiment with cupcakes.

I'll try and post some pictures soon.