5.25.2010

Why Does Everyone Keep Yelling At Me?

On my walk to East Campus I pass by the Mayfield, a private school for five to fifteen year olds. As I walked past the outdoor field my attention was drawn to a young seven year old who screamed out to me:

“Hey there funny guitar holding milkman!”

Is my uniform that bad? Apparently my bag of baking tools looks like a guitar case and my outfit is similar to a milkman’s? Who knows what a milkman looks like nowadays? Especially a seven year old?

I laughed.

When I showed up to class, I was ready to go. On today’s agenda: Biscotti and Strassburger Cookies—you know, the kinds you get in the Danish Cookie Tins? I worked at a pretty good pace today and to my pleasure there wasn’t any sabotage or drama. Both kinds of dough were made but we only had time to bake the strassburger. We flavored our biscotti with blanched almonds and orange zest. During a demonstration I asked Chef Guillard if I could garnish my strassburger cookies with more chocolate even though he is not a big fan of the stuff—what a shame eh? This question resulted in what I hope does not become a long-lasting nickname for me. “CHOCOLATE BOY.” It didn’t help that when I was garnishing the cookies he caught me lick my finger. He screamed out at me from the other side of the lab.

“ZONATAN!” I looked up at him like a little boy who was just caught doing something naughty. “WASH YOUR HANDS!”

“Yes Chef!”

Well, I guess being unsanitary is quite a naughty act in the culinary world. I just couldn’t help myself. The rest of the period flew! It’s a good thing my cookies turned out very well. Chef just took a look and said, “Great. You did a great job.” Phew! Today wraps up our unit on cookies. We have now mastered, hopefully, the three cookie methods: one-stage (throwing all ingredients in the mixer), creaming (creaming fats, sugars, salts, and spices, THEN add liquids, THEN dry ingredients), and sponge (whipping eggs and gradually adding sugars when foam starts to develop THEN fold in other ingredients). Tomorrow we have an exam. A written portion and a practical (meaning we have to bake something). No finger-licking for sure! After tomorrow’s exam day and the bake off of our biscotti we will start on the next section PIES and CUSTARDS! It’s going to be great! My ServSafe certification class managed to continue to make me paranoid about the places where I eat out. Do you people realize how many diseases are floating out in the world of fast food and dining? Maybe they share all of this information so we’ll be “inspired” to spend more time in the kitchen cooking for ourselves.

Strassburger Cookies (with the gross baking jam)

 Strassburger Cookies (chocolate dipped)

Strassburger Cookies (baton)

We made what I deem to be a successful recreation of the Café Rio chicken salads for dinner before having Family Home Evening. For our activity, we brought cookies to our neighbors—but not before I was able to snap a shot of all of them. FYI, I'm not too happy about this photo shoot.  I was quite rushed so please forgive the poor quality.  They still look okay.  Don’t be deceived, however, because these good-looking cookies were rather bland! Hence the delivery to the neighbors! ;) HA! Well, to the books then rest.

1 comment:

  1. Hilarious Jon! I can TOTALLY picture the face you made when Chef called you out. Guess I've witnessed all too well you as a little boy doing something naughty...LOL. And who the heck coined you "chocolate boy?" Does everyone really think you look like a boy and not a man? You're 24 for crying out loud! Although "chocolate man" doesn't sound much better. Haha! Hideous. Next time you pass the school start shaking your fists and start singing, "if I were a rich man." Then you'd really look like a milkman. LOL

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