I can’t believe it’s over…

As of this last Friday, I am completely finished with my 6-month internship at the French Pastry School of Chicago. What an experience. There were certainly days when I didn’t think it would ever end, but wow those 6 months flew by. I can barely remember my first week, running around wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself into.

My last day was the students’ graduation day. We worked through the buffet, serving treats and trying to control the chaos of lots of hungry people. The interns and chefs were all there finishing setting up at 6:30 in the morning (graduation was at 9). One of the nice things about being part of the set up is that I FINALLY have nice pictures of the buffet! For both of my graduations, I couldn’t get nice pictures of the set up because of all the people! But during prep, I could take as many pictures as I wanted! ;) So now, at last, pretty pictures of the buffet ;)

The chocolate sculpture that one of the classes made with Chef Josh
Even some of the bowls and platters were made of chocolate!

Sugar Candies!
The sugar sculpture made with Chef Scott
And one of my faves, pate de fruit! ;)

Tarts and Petit Fours

The bread pieces made with Chef Pierre and Chef Jonathan
And the crocodiles were back for another celebration!! With those toasted almonds for teeth…they looked like they really needed to go to the dentist… ;)

And finally, the wedding cakes made by the cake program. This is one of my favorite parts, I love seeing what everyone comes up with for their final!!
I love the 3rd one back in the picture with the poinsettia and the damask. So pretty!!

So we got to be at the first part of the graduation ceremony, so I met up with my mom and Jennifer there.

And the interns got a group picture…I’m way in the back ;)

A little bit into the ceremony is a little blurb about each of the interns and then we headed back the to school to finish prepping for the reception. Mom snapped a picture of me before I had to rush out with the rest of my group. I got ANOTHER rolling pin. I have so many… 

Then the reception. John was able to meet us there and even though I had to work the whole time I did get to see him and my mom and Jennifer and they got to meet some chefs and eat yummy food.

Once we managed to shoo the final guests away, we cleaned. And cleaned. It wasn’t toooooo bad I guess ;) We basically had to put the kitchens back together so that work could resume again as usual on Monday (the weird part was knowing I wasn’t going to be there…). Once that was finally over, the school treated us all to a sushi smorgasbord and we got to sit and eat and chat and celebrate another successful term.

It was definitely bittersweet to say good bye. I’m going to be honest with you, there were days when I didn’t want to be there, when I felt like it would never end, when I’d wonder why I was taking my time to do this in the first place, but looking back, I have a lot of amazing memories with the crazy ladies that I worked with as interns, I learned so much about working, time management and being able to just get the job done. I learned how to push through the tiredness, the crazy students and the cleaning. Oh the cleaning. I’m amazed I still have the motivation to clean anything anymore ;)

And now for the next adventure. I wonder what it will be?

All I want for Christmas…

is yooouuuuuu ;)

Well, I figure since I’m stuck home sick (but definitely on the mend) I might as well write up my letter to Santa. Because, as I mentioned last year, Santa is very technologically savvy and I imagine he appreciates it when I make my Christmas wish list easy for him ;) Besides, do you KNOW how much it is to pay for postage to the North Pole?? (I don’t myself, actually…but I imagine it expensive to pay for postal penguins and/or polar bears…) So. My Christmas list is here, because I’m 99.99% sure Santa is an anonymous follower. Again, for Santa’s convenience, I’ve linked my wishes to their site for easy shopping and ordering. Aren’t I wonderful like that? ;)

A Cooper kitchen thermometer. I am in desperate need or an accurate thermometer for my baking endeavors. All of my other probes have broken…due to poor quality, NOT user failure.

Air brush colors! From Americolor. When I was in the cake part of my pastry schooling, I received a totally awesome airbrush and compressor from my fabulous parents. (As students we got it half off!!) but I haven’t been able to use it because I don’t have of these:
 

Americolor Gel Colors. They also make amazing gel color for royal icing/fondant/etc. We use this brand at school and it’s awesome.

Classic Fluted Cutters – for my cookie projects ;)

I like the Square ones too

And last but not least, icing squeeze bottles. They come in two sizes, I’d use both ;)

And that’s it! Definitely a themed list, yes? ;) Well Santa, there you go! I’ve tried to be really good this year…

Ward Christmas Party!

The Good News: The Christmas Party was AWESOME

The Bad News: I’ve been totally sick since yesterday morning and was sick through the entire party…and I’ve spent the ENTIRE day in bed. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. And yes. I’m still in bed. I had John bring me my computer. I think I’ve gotten out of bed 4 times the entire day, for no longer than about 5 minutes. Blech. More good news would be the Ibuprofen kicked in and I can sit up and type. So now I can tell you about the party!

I am mostly here to tell you how I ROCKED the decorations. When we first met as a committee and the chair asked who wants to do what, I immediately raised my hand and said “I want to do decorations!” So decorations it was. We had decided early on we wanted to do a Charles Dickens/Christmas Carol/Old Fashioned Christmas kinda thing. And we wanted to keep it pretty simple. So we got several ward members to lend us some fake Christmas trees and lights (white only: I’m a purist). I got some pretty Christmas ribbon (50% off at Michaels! ;) to go on each tree as well.
I put together some centerpieces with some cylindrical vases, curly ribbon and ornaments from the dollar store (gotta love that place for mass production of party stuff) and then placed fake poinsettias (also from the dollar store) around the vase to complete the look on the table.

I think the best part of the set up was the stage where santa was going to be and where we had the spiritual program at the end. We had santa talk to the kids at the beginning of the party and give out candy canes. One of the committee members has this enormous 9 foot tree that was covered in lights and I added ribbon and some of our extra ornaments from home (I totally bought too many at target while black friday shopping, so this was perfect). I also built a faux fireplace to go next to the tree. It turned out great! I couldn’t get it done over Thanksgiving weekend, so I had to work on it a little at a time in the mornings before I went to work. Someone brought in stockings, and we got to hang them off the mantle! It really pulled it all together. The gift wrapped boxes were for donations for needy families.
I love the tree and the fireplace together!

Overall, I’d say it looked pretty good!! ;) We had a great turn out, yummy food and I was also in a group of carolers that went around and sang carols. We also sang the music for the program at the end. The only bummer was that I felt sick to my stomach the whole time. But the program went really well too. As a committee, I think we were all really pleased with the way everything went.

And now I’m off for now to listen to the Christmas devotional! 

A Feast of Epic Portions

Yes, I did mean portions. ;) So I’m now here to tell you about my turkey!! Now, I’ll tell you now that I have the hardest time cooking for 2 people. For a while before I left home, I made dinner a lot for my family of 6. So I’m used to bigger groups. So we have leftovers a lot. It’s a good thing though, because we always eat the leftovers for lunch at work and stuff. And I hate planning lunches to begin with. I think it’s worse than planning dinners. But I digress…

So for just the two of us, I made a Thanksgiving feast! Like I mentioned earlier, before we were invited to dinner for Thanksgiving, I had gotten a turkey, thinking we’d have our own little turkey dinner. I do have a cool story about buying my turkey too. When I was at the store, I was over at the turkey bin (you know, the big reach in freezer they keep them in…) and the price sign said they were priced at $1.69 per pound. I’m thinking that’s not too bad, so I find the smallest turkey I can find (that being almost 10lbs...). When I look at the price tag, however, it’s been weighed at $2.25/lb. Hmmm…

So I decided to give customer service a shot. I just said that the sign was different from the price of my turkey there and that I was wondering what was going on. The lady at the desk was super nice and called over to the meat people for me and she said that smaller turkeys were more expensive per pound (um…why?), but that since the sign was misleading, they’d re-weigh it for me at the meat counter. SCORE! So I save 6 or 7 dollars on my turkey! Bear with me, I get excited about this kinda stuff. ;)

So then we get invited to dinner and I still have this 10lb turkey taking up a LOT of space in my freezer. So I got to work planning our feast :) While John was still out on his camping trip, I made my turkey! Now, I have to amend my earlier statement about my mom’s lame “turkey secrets”, because she told me to use a bag, and I did, and it was DELICIOUS! Of course, now I have to tell you that when I went to the store to get a bag for the turkey, I had no idea what I was looking for. A bag? For a turkey? It wasn’t until I saw the label “Turkey-Sized Oven Bags!” did I realize what I needed…;) Anyway, I did add my own spin to it though. I added some cloves of garlic and chopped some onion and put those in the bag. Then I softened some butter and added some pressed garlic, salt and pepper to it then schmeared it allllll over that turkey before I put it in the bag. It smelled heavenly about an hour in the oven.

I learned several things while making this turkey.
1. What a “turkey bag” is
2. That I didn’t actually have to pull the innards out of the turkey (I’d gotten some gloves for THAT job…), they were nicely tucked into a bag at the bottom of the turkey. Why is this? We just throw it all away anyway…
3. I haven’t a clue how to carve a turkey once it’s finished.

I also completely forgot to take a picture of my finished turkey!! I know. I’m soooooo sad. I pulled it out and as soon as I saw that it was the right temperature, I got to carving (I was also in the middle of making the mashed potatoes and stuffing…so I was a little distracted…). So here’s a picture of my turkey carcass. I know, why show you the carcass? Well, that way we can laugh at the absurdity of my showing you my first ever turkey carcass ;)

Again, I have no idea how to carve…I basically took my chef’s knife to it and did the best I could. I think I got most of it off though…

Not too long before John (finally – bummer traffic…) got home, I had everything ready! And we are so living off leftovers for the next week…I think I made enough for at least 6 or 7 people…but seeing all this food and how we barely had enough room on the table for it really put into perspective for me how truly blessed we are :)
And here is my turkey again…the yummy part we were eating :)

And yeah…our fridge is totally stocked with all the yummy leftovers we’re going to have for a while… ;)

We also decorated our tree! And it is time for the unveiling of the “yes-sew” ruffly tree skirt! Are you so excited?! Because I’m excited to show you! We went with a red and gold theme and we love it!
And I love love LOVE my tree skirt!! I can’t wait to get presents down there!! ;)

One more thing before I finish up. (I know, it’s taking FOREVER, wasn’t I supposed to just be telling you about my turkey?!) We went up to Wisconsin today for a baby blessing. John’s mission companion that we met up with at Jelly Belly was blessing his baby boy today and invited us up. And they seriously have the coolest church building I’ve ever seen!

It had actually been built by church members too! Then they sold it. Once the church started to grow there, the church bought it back. Cool huh? Man, I wanna be back in Europe right about now… ;)

And that is the end of our whirlwind thanksgiving adventure! Next weekend is the Ward Christmas Party, so hopefully I’ll get some good pictures to share with you! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!! - And A New Friend

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I know we sure did. We stayed in bed until 9 (super late for us!) and it was so nice to know we didn’t have to run off to go run errands and we didn’t have to be anywhere that morning. When we finally got up and going, we chatted with the parental units, which was very nice. John’s grandparents were at his parent’s place, so we got to talk to them a little bit too. Gotta love Skype.

Then came the great heavy cream quest. We were invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with a family in our ward so I of course offered to bring the dessert. It’s just what I do ;) I had found a delicious looking recipe for chocolate chip cookie dough fudge that I really wanted to try, so that was the plan. I had looked at the recipe a few weeks ago and I thought I had everything that I needed, but when I looked again that morning, I had no heavy cream! Fine, no problem, we live right behind a Jewel Osco, and John was going over anyway to pick up some stuff for the scouts’ Thanksgiving campout. A few minutes after he’d gone though, he called me and told me they were COMPLETELY OUT of heavy cream! I was so disappointed! I had a back up plan, so it would have been fine, but I really wanted to try the recipe this weekend. John came back and suggested we try another Jewel. So we did. And THEY were out of heavy cream too! So we tried the super Target. Closed. We tried the Walgreens. They don’t carry heavy cream. Finally, we tried a grocery store called Tony’s that I go to to get my produce. I was power walking in there and John was joking that we had to hurry so no one takes the last one! Turns out, we get to the dairy section and there was one. carton. left. In the verrrrrry back! John had to shake the shelf a little to get it within reaching distance. I clutched that last carton of cream close as we waited in the express checkout line for 20 minutes (did I mention that it was INSANE over there?!). We finally got to the checkout and the cashier, laughing, asks “You waited all this time for that one thing?”. “YES.”

We got home and I made my fudge. And the because I wanted some, I made some peanut butter rice krispies. And I had some cookies from the big cookie project at work leftover that I’d brought home, so I decided to take those to dinner too. And lastly, I threw in some caramels that I had made to practice for a consulting gig I’d had last weekend. I think our hosts got more than they bargained for when they said I could bring dessert ;)
I brought some bacon (yes, bacon) oat chocolate chip cookies (back right), some chocolate cherry almond chunk (left) and some apricot rosemary shortbread cookies (front right)
And my fudge was great! (I know, it better be, after all that work for that stinkin’ 1/2 cup of cream!!)
Oh yes…and my peanut butter rice krispies. I seriously love these. They used to sell these periodically at the creamery on 9th at BYU and every time I saw them, I always got one (or two…) I couldn’t find a recipe for the longest time, and then I found it on Pinterest! Oh pinterest, what did I do without you!?

We had a lovely time with our friends for Thanksgiving and had yummy food and played games and quoted Brian Reagan endlessly. It was so fun :)

Friday morning I was up to do some shopping!!!! I scored some great deals too, but I can’t really tell you about them because they were on Christmas presents. Just know that they were awesome deals ;) But one of my most exciting purchases was my new food processor!!!!! My in-laws had given me a gift card to Williams and Sonoma back in June as a graduation gift and I had gone and gotten a juicer attachment for my KitchenAid, but didn’t really know what else I wanted. So I waited. Then, I decided I wanted a food processor. So I waited some more, because I knew that black Friday would be the best day to go. And I was right!! They were having a sale on all kitchen electrics! So I scored my sweet new 11-Cup Cuisinart food processor! Say hello to my newest kitchen friend!
Beautiful, yes?

So of course, then I wanted to, you know, “process” something. So this morning when I did a little grocery shopping, I intentionally bought brick cheese so that I could shred it in my new toy. Ta da!! Beautifully shredded cheese. :)

It’s actually very exciting, I promise ;)

So it’s been a busy weekend. John is at a campout for scouts and left yesterday afternoon, so I’ve been left to my own devices (I believe I have shared my feelings on scout campouts during the holidays to lots of you already…so I won’t go there for now) but I’ve gotten a lot done. I cleaned the apartment and finally got to work on some crafts I’ve been holding on the back burner. I got some vinyl done for some Christmas gifts and I made a tree skirt! An adorable RUFFLY one :) I got the idea from pinterest. (Have I mentioned I LOVE pinterest?!) Pictures to come because we actually got a real(fake) tree this year and I’m so excited to decorate! So I’ll get the full effect for you once we’ve decorated. It turned out super cute, even if it did take me several hours. Maybe I just like to torture myself, but the instructions online said it was a “no-sew” ruffled tree skirt, but I guess I just didn’t think that the hot gluing method would last a couple of years, so I turned it into a “yes-sew” ruffled tree skirt. So it took forever. ;) And when I decided to finish off one of my rough edges by hot gluing some ribbon on there, I decided I was glad that I didn’t hot glue the whole thing, because that one round of ribbon took a ton of glue! But I’m excited to show you pictures because I LOVE the way it turned out!

Today I’m trying to get some stuff done for the ward Christmas party NEXT weekend! Eek! John and I are on the Christmas party planning committee. I’ve really enjoyed it, but I hope I can get everything done! I’m also making a turkey. Yeah. I know. But before we were invited to Thanksgiving dinner, I bought a turkey thinking we’d have a big turkey dinner and live off leftovers for a week ;) So now I have a 10lb turkey in my fridge that I am going to make today. And have no idea how. Working on that still, because my mom doesn’t really make turkey, and so she had lame “turkey secrets” to share. ;) So we’ll see how it goes! Wish me luck!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I have been feeling so grateful for my family, my wonderful husband and my Savior Jesus Christ. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the holiday weekend!

Cheese and Jellybeans

and of course, more vinyl ;)

Okay, so I’m a week late, but we hit the ground running after last weekend was over so no time for blogging.

So anyway, last weekend we went to the Jelly Belly warehouse in Pleasant Prairie, WI. (I know, what a name, right?) It was totally goofy. They give free tours every 15 minutes or so and you ride a little train around the warehouse and make stops to watch videos about the company and how they make jelly beans. It was pretty fun, but we were in the first car, and we could totally see out “conductor” reading off his script ;) But we had a good time. At the end of the ride, we got a free bag of jelly beans and perused the jelly belly store, where they had free samples! ;)

We also saw these awesome jelly bean art pieces. All made of jelly bellys!
Did you know that when Ronald Reagan started to make jelly bellys super popular (he did get them to the White House) Jelly Belly developed the blueberry flavored jelly bean so that they could make a red white and blue mix?

I saw one of my favorite things there before we even got inside! :)
We met up with one of John’s old mission companions and his family there too, as they live just outside of Milwaukee. It was really fun for John to see him again and it was cool to meet him and his family. This is his companion and one of his little boys :)

After Jelly Belly, we stopped for dinner with them at a place called Mars Cheese Castle. What is Mars Cheese Castle? Well, let me just show you ;)

With a freeway sign like this, what would you think?Ta da! Ha ha ha, crazy huh? It’s basically a glorified grocery store…that has mostly cheese. But since it was Saturday, there were free samples! So we walked around and had cheese samples, I had my first ever cheese curd (aka squeaky cheese) and had some dinner at the little café they had in there. All in all…a kind of weird experience. ;)

On our way out, there was a tour bus parked in the parking lot…which is apparently owned and operated by teddy bears

An interesting night, to say the least ;)

On another random note, I’ve added more vinyl to the apartment!!!! LOVE. In the bedroom there was this blank wall space that I really wasn’t sure what to do with. I was thinking maybe a large picture that we have, but I was worried it would look too crowded with the frame sticking out and the dresser and the bookshelf right there. So, in a stroke of (what I would call) genius, I realized I could put a monogram there! I’m in love with monograms, by the way. I have an M monogram in the living room on a tile, but you can do first name monograms TOO. So I did an A and J! (I know, cute, right?) I’m getting quite handy at putting together large pieces by breaking them down into the limited cutting space I have, so here’s what I put together!
I love it! I think it totally brings that space together :)

AND by way of information, I only have FOUR weeks left of my internship! That also means Christmas is FIVE weeks away! We actually got a Christmas tree this year and we’re so decorating it this weekend after Thanksgiving! YAY!