A Little Taste of Italy

Today I was head chef in my lunch class. I created an Italian menu with the title of "A Little Taste of Italy". Here is the menu:

Spinach & Fennel Salad

with orange slices and black olives

tossed in an orange olive oil dressing

Homemade Cannelloni

grilled eggplant and ricotta filling

with sauteed broccoli rabe

Italian Cream Cake

with blood orange cream anglaise

Time was tight, but somehow we got everything out on time. SEPTA went on strike at three in the morning, so none of my back of the house staff arrived at school until 9:30am. Note that class starts at 8:30am. I was the only one there at 8:30am. So for the first hour, I started rolling out and cutting pasta into five inch squares for the cannelloni. One hundred and twenty squares later the rest of my staff showed up. By eleven the cannelloni still were not in the oven and I was getting worried. However, somehow between eleven and twelve absolutely everything got finished. I do not know how it happened, but it does not matter. All that matters is that everything got done. We even got to clean up a bit before we plated the appetizer.

Service went really well. My chef instructor trusted me enough to leave the kitchen and go sit down to lunch. Plating all the food went amazingly smoothly. All of my back of the house staff listened to me and did everything I asked. It was a quiet and peaceful kitchen and I absolutely loved it.

Everyone seemed to love the food as well. I know everyone in my class was fighting over the leftovers at the end of service. We had absolutely no food left over and it was great for clean up.

Overall I was super happy with how everything went today. Only thing I wish I had a chance to do was take pictures of the plates. Oh well, maybe next time. I think I am going to have to recreate the whole meal for my family and friends who could not make it to the lunch. Maybe I will have them help me!!

Welcome to November

I cannot believe that it is November already. Where has the time gone? I feel like it was just my birthday yesterday and it was already month ago. Time is just flying by.

This past month I have been super busy with school. Every one of my classes has been hitting me really hard with homework. I'm pretty sure that I wrote five papers last week and studied for three tests. It was absolutely ridiculous. I am so happy that I survived last week. Granted I did break down and cry a few times, but somehow I made it through.

This week, along with my lunch, I have another test and paper due. Tomorrow I will be spending about thirteen hours at school. I have to get there at nine, when the chefs get there to open up all the kitchens, so that I can make four, three layer cakes. The cakes have to be out of the oven not later than noon because at noon I have my French class. Class goes until five and then I have to do a base icing coat on the cakes and make about ten pounds of homemade pasta dough for my cannelloni. And sometime during my day I need to make sure that all of my food for the rest of the dishes for lunch is actually in the building.

I am trying to prepare myself for the long day tomorrow, but as of right now I am not thinking about it. I really should be studying a bit more for my test tomorrow, but I am just so not in the mood. I am also hoping that I do not forget to do anything tomorrow. That would not be good.

Game four of the World Series is on right now and that is about all I can pay attention to right now. Why are sports so addicting???

GO PHILLIES!!!!

A Rainy Day is a Great Day for Brownies

I woke up this morning to the pitter patter of rain drops hitting my air conditioning units. At first I liked the sound and the fact that my room was still dark. But then, after about a minute, the pitter patter of the rain started to annoy me. There is just something about rain hitting aluminum constantly that gets annoying.

I walked out to the living room and everything was dark. This is how it has been all day. The rain drops have been hitting my air conditioner for hours and I have finally started to get used to the annoying noise. I turned the television up a bit louder, made some brownies, and even did dishes to occupy myself so that I would not go nuts.

The brownies just came out of the oven and smell delicious. I made the Baker's One Bowl Brownie Recipe. It is the one I always make because it is so simple and I always seem to have the ingredients around. It is fool-proof too. I have added all sorts of random ingredients to the batter and the brownies always come out delicious.

Of course, I could have been doing homework, but I think that that would have driven me even more nuts. I have about 100 pages of reading to do for next week and with a four hour class tonight, I was not in the mood to have a headache all day.

The smell of the brownies is pulling me away from the computer and closer to a knife to cut them. Off to get my chocolate fix!

Ah...It's October

So I am officially no longer a teenager. Oh well. It has taken me a few days, but I have finally gotten used to it. Now I am realizing that it is actually October. Oh my gosh. I feel like it was the new year just a few months ago. Why is time flying by so quickly?

This past week the weather has decided to become cooler and windier. I have realized that I need to start wearing a light jacket or sweatshirt on my walk to class. No more cute sundresses and flip flops. I wore flip flops the other day and by the time I got to campus, my feet were freezing.

I guess the good thing about the weather cooling down is that the kitchens are not as hot as they were during summer term. Soon I will be cold in the kitchen which is something I will definitely appreciate after surviving the summer term and the one hundred degree weather in the kitchens.

School is school. Lots and lots of homework. I feel like after every class I have to come home and do homework. I think every chef/professor this term is out to get all of us. I should actually be posting something on the discussion board for my online class right now, but instead I am writing this. I am hoping that this will get me in the mood to post something, but it probably won't.

Is it Thanksgiving break yet??

My Last Day as a Teenager :(

I do not know how I feel about this. I have enjoyed being a teenager for the past seven years and I am not sure if I am ready to give that up yet. It just feels weird. I cannot believe that tomorrow I will be twenty years old.

And what will I be doing for my birthday tomorrow? Well, probably not much. I have my lovely entrepreneurship class from 6-10 tomorrow night and then I will be heading home. I guess I can cuddle with my puppies once I get home. That will be fun. I am hoping one of them will sleep with me. Last time I was home R.P. did not sleep with me and it made me sad. Granted I did not have to worry about getting bit in the middle of the night. Sometimes he gets cranky if I move and attacks my legs. He is a crazy dog.

Anyways, I will be spending my Saturday night with a bunch of my girlfriends eating sweets and chilling out in our pajamas. I love pajama parties. You do not have to worry about how your hair looks or what your wearing cause you are all wear pajamas. How awesome!!!

Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

All I have to say is that the next 10 weeks of my life are going to be a pain in the rear end. Every waking moment I will either be in class or doing homework. I am taking five classes, 16 credits, this term which is pretty usual for me. This term is just ridiculous though. Every class I have requires so much outside work.

I sat down yesterday and went through all of my syllabuses so that I could organize my planner. Here is a picture of it. Every little round sticker you see is either a test or paper or assignment due. I am not going to have a life for the next two months. I already can't wait until Christmas break and it is only week two of classes!

And then there are the papers. One of my classes is online and is called Culture and Gastronomy. It is a very intensive writing class about the history and culture of food. It requires a lot of reading and a one thousand word paper every week. Luckily the information for the papers are posted on Fridays and not due until Tuesdays, which gives me the whole weekend, but that means I am going to be spending a lot of my weekends reading and writing papers on top of all of the other homework I have to do.

The first paper for this class is due this Tuesday. I have to "make a case for cooking not fire as a 'revolution' in the progress towards civilization." I actually feel like I could write a lot about this. I just need to sit down with all the books and articles we had to read and go over them making sure that I use as much information as possible from these resources. I think that this is what Chef Bottone really wants. He wants to see that we read what we needed to and used the reading to guide our response papers. I think I am going to spend a few hours tonight getting all my thoughts together and actually writing them down on paper.

I think my dilemma for all of the papers that I will have to write this term is how to begin. I always feel like I need a good opening to my papers and sometimes it can take me a while to find the right words. I wish that I could write my academic papers like I write my blogs. For my blogs I just start writing. I don't really think about it, I just let my thoughts flow. Obviously for academic papers you have to be more careful about grammatical errors and all of that stuff, but I think I need to just start our writing my academic papers like I write my blogs. Maybe it will help all my ideas come out of my brain a little easier, and quicker.

And Classes Begin Once Again

Well, fall term started today. I know some people are probably thinking it is September 21st, why on earth am I starting my fall classes today. Well, that is how Drexel's schedule works. Gotta love being on the quarter system.

Anyways, even though it is already September 21st, I still feel like I should have more time before I have to go back to school. I had a full three weeks off, that was absolutely wonderful, and I should be ready to come back to school, but I am not.

I think it is because there has been so much confusion with the schedule of my classes and the instructors. Up until last Thursday, we had no idea who was teaching which classes and when the were definitely going to be. And then there were the last minute e-mails telling us what books we needed to order and that we needed to have them the first week of class. Not cool. Sometimes you just can't get books in three days. Well unless you want to spend millions of dollars and I definitely do not.

And for the first time in my college career, I am taking an online class. I have had classes where most of the work was submitted via the Internet or we had to post on discussion boards, but I have never had a true online class. One where there is not a scheduled class time and if for some reason you need to contact the instructor, the only way to do it is through e-mail. That kind of scares me. I like being able to go to school and talk to a professor face to face if I have a problem. Oh well. I guess it is just something I will have to get used to.

Anyways, my first day of classes went well. I really cannot complain, except for the fact that I wish I was still on vacation!!!