Kitchen Cleanup and Organization

We do not have a very large kitchen and it is fairly out of date, so when my mom gave me my stand mixer for my birthday and I started baking a lot, I began to run out of rooms for all of my tools and attachments.  My ingredients were taking over the pantry, and the appliances were literally running amok around the condo with electrical cords trailing along behind them.  Every time I tried to bake I was running out of counter space.  I am constantly splashing water everywhere because the sink is very shallow and the water comes shooting out very fast and bounces everywhere.  If you have a stack of dishes in there and turn the water on, it will ricochet and fly across the room.  Also the floor is not ideal and the vacuum has a really hard time getting crumbs and stuff off of there, so we tend to sweep up and then mop.  Chris is a beast and broke the first mop we bought, so we had to invest in a heavy duty one for the Sasquatch.  We got a kitchen cart from Ikea to host the majority of my baking stuffs.  I started getting most of my baking supplies in bulk at Sam's Club to save money.  Whatever I can't find there, I usually have to go to Wegman's for, because it's specific enough that Walmart wouldn't have it either. 

Here is the kitchen before and after:

This is what happened after I went to the store with a list that included everything I would need to bake all of the like 50 recipes I had already set aside to test out for their potential sell-ability. 

Well more accurate would be that, this is what happened after I went to the store, put away everything perishable, and whatever I already had a spot for.  This shelf was up when we moved in with a little white desk and chair under it.  It's not really attached to the wall, so if you put too much weight on one side it falls of.  A great place for a blow torch.

Here is the pantry, complete with that huge bag of flour I got at the Sam's Club.

After a few hundred dollars spent on amazon and at bed, bath, and beyond with my stockpile of coupons, this is what we came up with.  I don't have any before pictures of the cabinets, which is a shame because they were quite epically stuffed with thing that I didn't even know we had.  Here is the after:

I labeled my containers with a washable sharpie.  The writing is still on them when they come out of the dish washer, but if you scrub it really lightly with a sponge, it comes right off and can be labeled something different.  So handy!

I'm very excited about finding those chocolate sticks online.  They're what you use when you want to make chocolate croissants, and those were one of my favorite things we made in class.  Cynthia said they were one of her favorite things to eat in France, so making croissant dough will have to be one of the next things on my list.

I had to go online to King Arthur flour to find some of the specialty flours i was looking for.  I was surprised that they didn't have pastry flour in the supermarket, they only had whole wheat pastry flour, which is cool, but not usually what I'm going for.  I got high gluten, semolina, and almond flour online.

Spices are stupidly expensive.  Thank you Alton Brown for teaching me how amazing freshly ground nutmeg is.  If you smell pre-ground nutmeg, and then freshly microplane one, the difference is truly remarkable.  You would think that since McCormick is literally so close that we can smell the spices in the air, that they would be cheaper at the store, but of course that is not the case.  Only one brand of spices (the crazy expensive kind) even carried whole nutmeg and any kind of cardamom. 

My collection of extracts, sprinkles, jimmies, and other random bits including my edible eyeballs.  (for making adorable edible cakes with faces obviously.  I don't just eat eyeballs for kicks, promise.)

The big jugs of oils, and 25 lb bag of AP flour.  The bottom of our pantry is always a mess because we leave the bag of onions on the floor and dry onion skin flies everywhere.

Also, we stupidly opened the rice by the bottom of the bag instead of by the resealable top (we do this all the time), so every time we picked the bag up, we would spill rice all over the floor.  So I put it in that big plastic container you see in the middle. 

The whole setup with my mixer and scale.  Garbage bags and soda on the floor, and my blue cake decorating toolkit with all of my food colorings, tips, and piping bags, etc.  We got two nice garbage cans from BB&B with the store credit we got from returning the wrong sized mixer attachments my mom got me for Christmas.  Thanks Mom!

 Now on to the cabinets:

We used these colorful cups for mis en placing in school.  They're from Ikea and only like a dollar.  I believe they're in the baby section with the tiny little spoons and such.  I got a couple packs of them.  They are great for setting ingredients aside and microwaving butter and such.  Those blue and yellow measuring cups on the top shelf are from my grandma.  They're very heavy and really pretty.  I'd like to use them as decoration some time when we get the chance to redo the kitchen.  Also, they're hiding a pile of old/stained aprons that my great-grandmother made.  Never giving those up.

We have three sets of nested mixing bowls, completely by accident, but it works out pretty well.  One set is plastic, with the largest, and sometimes seriously necessary bowl being that orange one we got for giving out Halloween candy, one ceramic set, and one metal set for double boiling things.  In the back you can see this badass red and white bowl that my grandma gave me, it's heavy but it's so cute with this little handle and spout.  I love it.

I have a collection of 3 springform pans, 4 9" cake pans, one tube pan, 4 8" cake pans, one 6" cake pan, several pyrex dishes, two loaf pans, a popover pan, 2 cupcake pans, 4 mini muffin pans, and an assortment of other mini pans like tiny loaves, tiny bunts, tiny hearts, and mini spring forms from my mom.  There's also 4 glass ramekins on the bottom shelf with our plates, and one 14 or 16" cake pan not pictured here, I forget how big it is really.

Bottom drawer has a pile of washcloths that I got at Ikea.  I've been using them as side towels.  There are those heart shaped cutters I just got, and my set of fondant/gumpaste tools. 

I have since run out of saran wrap and got a bigass roll of it at Sam's Club.  It's seriously huge.  We have a billion more ziplocks currently stockpiled in the laundry room.

An assortment of my baking tools.  My bread knife doesn't have a place in the knife block so I hide it in here.  My siplat hasn't gotten enough love lately, I'll need to break that out soon.  And the always important calculator, thermometers, cookie scoops, assorted cutters, and toothpicks.

The more frequently used kitchen tools are hiding out in the top drawer with our silverware.  I also have a collection of pens, markers, and scissors in here, along with the frequently used corkscrew, bottle opener, and pizza wheel.

We finally got our coffee maker back from Cuisinart.  We made maybe 10 cups of coffee in the thing before it broke.  We had no idea what was wrong with it until like 6 months later we finally got around to calling them and found out that the model was recalled.  They sent us a replacement.  We haven't really gotten any k cups for it, we decided to try to make our own coffee in the little filter thing that comes with it.  We have yet to make a decent cup of coffee in it.  But the thing boils water like a motherfucker.  I drink tea.  We retired the grandma thing that used to hold our spoons in college for a large metal flower pot thing that I found at target which holds our very frequently used tongs, spoons, spatulas, and whisks.

Our beautiful dirty broom next to our garbage and recycling bin.

The crooked shelves that my adorable but not very handy fiance so lovingly put on the wall for me.  Apparently the studs in our outer walls are metal and further apart than usual because the other side is brick.  I think that may just be an excuse because Chris doesn't know how to measure or use a drill properly, but whatever.  I'll let him try to be manly in whatever way he likes until things get so dire that I come over and grab the drill out of his hands.  Here we have my big cake pan, grill, waffle maker, cupcake tower, and other odds and ends.

That blow torch really makes its way around the house.  I'm in love with an ADD kid who likes to pick up random things, specifically semi dangerous things like matches, lighters, blow torches, knives, corkscrews, etc., and then play with them, fling them around, spin them, chew on them, carry them around the house and then leave them in some unknown location that is usually very far from their home. 

This cabinet used to be a mess.  I'm so glad I got a handle on it.

The mixer/liquor cabinet is currently also holding our beer mug and pitcher set, and my hand mixer.

My extra tip set and cake turner are living on top of the refrigerator at present.

Wine and margarita glasses are above the stove.  We break wine glasses like there's no tomorrow.  We had a set of 4 that we bought at the ghetto palace, we also have a plastic one in case someone is very jittery or drunk already.  Then Hannah gave us 4 for our engagement party.  We broke at least two of each of set.  Cynthia dropped and broke one of the second set, and felt bad, so she bought us a third set of 4 glasses.  Now as you can see, there are about 3 left, maybe one was in the wash or something, so 4 or 5 tops.  Probably none of them are matching.  We like our red wine.

This concludes the tour of Chris and Julie's kitchen.  It is on the list of things to remodel, you know, after the wedding, and honeymoon, and a new car loan, and paying off student loans.  We would really like to, probably in this order; rip up the carpet and put down hard wood from the front door all the way to the bedroom doors, put down tile or something in the kitchen, repaint the walls and trim, get a new sink, new cabinets, new counter tops, and eventually new appliances.  I would really love to expand the kitchen into the office/sun room area and have a high counter with bar stools somewhere, but that will not be for a very long time.  After that I'm sure some of our furniture or appliances would need replacing and some of the process would start all over again.  We are very lucky to own our home, these are grandiose desires that will some day, with hard work, come to fruition.  Oh yeah, and I forgot the bathrooms, but, that's mostly just the lights above the sink and a mirror that could be done in a weekend if we were ever really motivated. 

We will probably not get the chance to do nearly half of that before we have a baby or two and need to fix a few things up to sell the condo and buy a real house.  Unless we had a down payment and were able to rent out the condo for profit, but that is even less likely really.  Whew, the day is almost over, and it's time for a mani/pedi courtesy of the in-laws Christmas gift.  So exciting!

Julibean <3

Life Changes

A lot of things have changed since the last time I did a real post here.  I have a lovely lady named Jes to thank for that.  She commented on my frustrated post with some really warm and genuine advice.  It was just the kick in the pants that I needed to stop whining and worrying about it and make it happen.  So thanks!

A week or two ago I decided that it was time to stop waiting for my life to change itself, and to start doing what I really wanted.  To be happy I needed a large project, something to keep me busy and motivated, something that I really truly enjoyed and had a set metric for progress and goals.  So one day I woke up, looked at Chris, and said, "I want to start my bakery".  He did not miss a beat.  He automatically started thinking of the techological aspect, bought my url and started designing a server for me on his old desktop.  He began researching rules and regulations for small businesses.  We went to the library and I took out a stack of cook books and small business ownership books.  We went to the Sam's club and I priced out all of the ingredients and found the unit price so I could get a ballpark for my materials cost.  I started talking to Elise about a logo and theme and she jumped up to the task.  I collected all the oddball ingredients I would need from Wegman's and started testing recipes or multiple recipes every day.  I started making adjustments and modifications, feeding people brownies, and getting really excited.  I bought a lot of tupperware and organized the kitchen.  I started writing a menu of offerings and organizing my recipes.  It feels amazing.

It's going to be difficult.  I can't really afford to rent a commercial kitchen or anything until I begin to turn a profit.  I can't take any orders until my website is active.  My website won't be active until I figure out what I'm selling and for how much.  Until then it will have to be classified as a "hobby" and I'll be feeding the people at Lauren's homeless shelter desserts until they beg me to stop giving them chocolate.  It's pretty time consuming.  Luckily I have a job that allows me to fill my day with other things, but you really don't know where the time goes when you're baking something every day.  My to-do list is out of control.

Chris was away this week so I tried to keep myself busy so I wouldn't be depressed.  I may have overdone it a tad, because now I feel like I didn't get anything done, but I did spend a lovely week with my valentine Cynthia.  We ate take out and watched Watson on Jeopardy!  We saw reruns of Big Bang Theory and watched the dvds of the fabulous BBC show she has introduced me to: Sherlock.  Seriously, it's amazing, go watch it, and try not to imagine Holmes and Watson having sex.  I dare you, try.

Another bit of my massive to-do list centered around cleaning the house and nesting.  I've been in serious nesting mode ever since we repainted the second bedroom and put the guest furniture and my desk inside.  We have so much more space and room in our closet.  I have my sewing machine out on my desk at all times and I can use it whenever I want for all of my sewing projects.  My stacks of magazines and notes to myself have a home that is somewhere other than out in the open of the condo.  Baking all the time means that the kitchen always needs to be cleaned.  In school, every day after class we would sweep the floor and then spray it down with water and disinfectant.  Then squegee the water into the drains on the floor.  Sadly, this cannot be done in my home kitchen, and if you walk in the kitchen you will inevitably track bits onto the carpet and throughout the rest of the house.  So we also need to vacuum and clean both bathrooms. 

Chris fixed up the TV cabinet and rewired everything so that it was nice and neat (I begged).  Put up a new towel rack and toilet paper holder in the second bathroom, put new hinges on the chest, and repainted and moved the furniture into the second bedroom.  All is going rather well.  I had so much energy on super bowl Sunday that I also organized the laundry room and our closet.  I placed everything strategically in the second bedroom closet, and my next plan of attack will be the coat closet.  Also, hanging the curtains in the second bedroom and  making a cushion for the chest so people can sit on it, and throw pillows for the couches.  Did I mention we have new couches?  My boss very kindly gave them to us when his wife was redecorating.  We have a like new, blue microsuede reclining 3 seat couch and love seat.  They are a bit too big for the room and carrying them into our place was among one of the most difficult tasks I have ever completed (so heavy that my arms literally gave out and I fell down a few times), but our place looks so much more like a home now.  We pulled the dining room table out so that we could actually eat on it. 

I actually got myself to a meetup from meetup.com and met a group of lovely ladies from all over the Baltimore region.  I will hopefully be going to another meetup soon to get to know them a bit better.  I reconnected with my friend Hannah from college which also feels AMAZING.  I am so incredibly happy to be talking to her on a regular basis.  We are emailing pretty consistently right now and I am going to try to do the same with Morgan and possibly Matt (who is currently recovering from heart surgery in the hospital). 

Wedding plans are going well.  I'm talking with our photographer now about when to schedule our engagement shoot and what our theme/ideas are going to be.  Elise's NY shower is booked, I have a flight booked for her NH shower and great ideas to help Amanda with some of the stuff she has planned.  Her bachlorette party is also booked and will be super fun!  We are going to the 80s prom in the city and getting all crazy 80s dressed up.  Heat up your crimping irons, this is going to be epic.  It feels like our calendar is filling up very quickly with all of these things.  So glad that we have a vacation booked for April.  We will be going to New Orleans and then on a few day cruise to Mexico, then back to NO.  I'm very excited to hang out on Burbon street and eat some bignets. I'm helping Elise book her hair stylist now.  We are going to my house on Long Island this weekend to help her put together her invitations.  Laura and Jason will be there as well, and hopefully I'll be able to catch up with Jaclyn and Jamie as well. 

I have a lot of pictures of things that I have been baking and a before and after of the kitchen organization to post next.  Hopefully I will get those up tonight.  Thanks for reading!

Julibean <3

A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie - Engaged Couple

I'm trying to think of interesting posts I could do once a week, kind of like news segments.  Elise already has the monopoly over Manjoyment Mondays, Wedding Wednesdays, and Dance Party Fridays, so I'll have to try to come up with some of my own.  So here is the beginnings of a post series called...

"A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie"

...in which I am going to re-enact a scene from this week in which we did something insane, funny, so mundane that it hurts, or just plain drunkenly ridiculous. 

So here we go:

Setting - The condo
The Scene - Thursday is our big TV night in which we try to watch everything on DVR including; Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, Project Runway, and The Jersey Shore.  I am falling asleep in Chris' lap on the couch.

Chris:  Are you sleeping?
Julie:   No

ten minutes later...

Chris:  Are you sleeping?
Julie:   No
Chris:  You're totally sleeping!
Julie:  No I'm not!
Chris: Why don't you just go to bed?
Julie:  What time is it?
Chris:  It's only 9:30.
Julie:  Okay I'm getting into bed, I didn't even see any of what just happened.
Chris:  You said you weren't sleeping
Julie:  No I didn't
Chris:  Yes you did
Julie:  I don't remember saying that
Chris:  You just said you weren't sleeping and then got offened that I would even ask
Julie:  Well I was lying, obviously.  I'm going to bed.  I have period week fatigue.
Chris:  Fine.
Julie:  I want some chocolate.
Chris:  I don't have any chocolate here
Julie:  Why?  Do you have some at work?
Chris:  Yes but you wouldn't like it.  It's butterfingers and reese's
Julie:  But...why wouldn't I like those?  I love peanut butter.
Chris:  Oh, well I don't have any here.
Julie:  You have candy in your desk?
Chris:  I couldn't stop myself.  Halloween candy was $2.50 a bag.
Julie:  Okay fine, goodnight.

ten minutes later...
Julie:  You want to go to the store and get me some chocolate? 

Chris walks into the bedroom and hands me a bag of chocolate chips from the pantry.

Chris:  Goodnight snugglemuffin.

I Can Haz Job?

I am employed! I am now working as an administrative assistant for LBC Solutions, LLC, which is a government contractor that comes up with ways to implement new initiatives of CMS which is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The work is dull. I spend most of my time sitting around proofreading extremely boring and seemingly insignificant articles on the Medicare Learning Network website. However, I will be getting a paycheck next week if the payroll goes through, so I can't really complain. The pay is decent, the working environment is nice. It's quiet, I sit alone for the most part and can play music on my new computer. No one calls and no one really comes into the office either. The upstairs office is new and we spent most of this week putting together furniture and hanging walmart pictures on the walls. Those would be pictures bought at walmart, not actual pictures of a walmart building, for those of you who were wondering.

I'm finishing up my first week here and so far so good. LBC Solutions is owned and operated by Cynthia's grandparents. They have fewer than 10 employees and the owners mostly work from home so there's not really anyone in the office except Cynthia and me on any given day. Hopefully this isn't the end all be all job for me, but it has benefits and pays really well for my first full time job, so I will be sticking it out here for at least until after Chris and my wedding.

Speaking of which... our wedding has officially changed dates to Sunday, January 8th, 2012. It still sounds really far away, but I suppose it will creep up on us ever so slowly. Since Chris was baptized in a Christian religion we were required to be married in a Christian church. We were thinking that my church would not be an option because it was almost an hour from the wedding reception area and I had given up on it being there anyway since we agreed to have the ceremony in the reception hall. Once we realized that getting married in the Thatched Cottage wasn't going to be a legit Catholic wedding (which is required by my mother), I put my foot down and said that if we had to get married in a church anyway, I wasn't going to get married in just any church just because it happened to be closer to the north shore. That just seemed silly to me. I have a really great connection to my church, I have been going there since my mother had me baptized there, I'm a well known parishioner, and I wanted to be able to include my Folk Group buddies. Also, did I mention that it's beautiful? Here's a picture.

This is what the alter looks like on Christmas.  I'm hoping there might not be quite that many poinsettias, but the trees and lights are really beautiful that time of year.  

Here's one of the outside.  It's actually quite a large church.  If you ignore the red traffic light, it's rather nice.  So our ceremony is scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. then we'll take pictures and everyone will be able to return to their hotel for an hour or so.  We will be chartering a nice bus to pick everyone up from the hotel and take them to the reception hall.  This way, no one gets lost or hurt driving if it happens to be snowing, and then whoever has been drinking will have a sober right back to their room.  The reception starts at 6 p.m. with a cocktail hour, and then a 4 hour party ending around 11 p.m. 

I'm pretty excited in the first place that the wedding isn't going to be in the afternoon.  I want my college friends to be able to get completely drunk and have an awesome time and I don't really expect that to be happening at noon.  Well I'm sure some of them would hit it pretty hard at 10 a.m., but not everyone. 

The next thing on the wedding planning agenda is to look for a photographer.  There are a few in the area that we could definitely take a look at if we ever actually took the time to sit down and decide on a few.  Word on the street is that Chris' parents will be paying for the photographer and we're going to try to keep it around $2,500.  That sounds like a lot of money, but when it comes to wedding photography, it really isn't.  Both my sister and Jaclyn's wedding photographers were in the ballpark of $5,000, but Chris and I didn't feel the need to go that crazy with it. 

Today is the first day of October and later this month Elise and I have an appointment to go look at wedding dresses at Kleinfeld's in the City.  I think it is going to be a lot of fun.  Elise is losing a lot of weight and looks great, I am not really.  They say that they have a really great selection of plus sized dresses, so hopefully we will be able to find something that I feel good in, nothing has really been fitting or looking that good lately.  It's really discouraging to try to fit in a wedding dress sample that is clearly like 3 sizes too small for you and then try to make a decision based on how you think it will look if it was the right size. 

Elise is hitting the job applications pretty hard and will hopefully have a few things to look at in the next couple of months.  She is really needing to get her stuff together and move down to Virginia to start helping Jason out.  Chris and I are really happy in the condo.  We could use a little more space, but in a few months or however long Cynthia will be staying with us we will not have use of one of our bedrooms and half of our living space.  Once we have that taken care of we may decide to get a puppy, which would be really exciting. 

Our tasks for this weekend are to install the Ensor's new family computer, pick a few photographers to make appointments with, and get the addresses filled out on our wedding guest list.  If we can get all of that done it would be great.  I am really loving all of the fall air around here and hope it starts to get cold soon.

Until then

Julibean <3

New Condo

Chris and I have been in search of a new home for the past few months. Until now we had really been looking too early, but planners as both of us are, we wanted to get a good idea of what kind of place, and what price range we would be looking for. We had a few main criteria for this new place:

• It should be a condo. We decided that we were too young and had too much other stuff going on to have to deal with being responsible for the upkeep and repair of a whole house, and that we were planning on staying in the same place long enough that an apartment wouldn't be cheaper.
• 2 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. We wanted to be able to have a guest bedroom/office. And let's face it, the 2 of us have quite a lot of crap to fit into one place.
• It should have a much shorter commute for Chris. Currently it is taking him a while to get to and from work. About 25 miles each way.
• It should be close enough to a city (either Towson or Baltimore) that would have enough opportunities for me to find a job once I'm actually looking for one.
• It had to be under $200,000 otherwise we couldn't afford the mortgage payments.
• It had to be in a safe location, or else my mother would flip out.
• We would prefer it to be on the first floor so it might be easier to have a dog, when that time comes.
• We would prefer if the patio faced the back of the building into the woods, as opposed to the front of the building overlooking the parking lot.
• We were also hoping to find something renovated, some of the older ones were quite sketchy.
  

So after quite a while of looking for places online, getting e-mail updates from our realtor, and doing a lot of math about our financial outlook, we finally found a place. Or may I say, Chris found a place. I haven't actually seen it, but it was the best one we had seen, it had an extra room a den of sorts, new granite counter tops, nicely renovated, 2 miles from Chris' office, 10 miles from Baltimore, first floor, facing the woods, in a nice building that locks, in a complex that we couldn't afford. It was seriously under-priced because the seller was foreclosing, so I told him to jump on it, and I'd see it afterward.

Apparently when you're dealing with a short sale like this, the bank that owns the seller's mortgage has to approve the price that we buy it at because they have to agree that it is enough to absolve the seller of his or her entire debt. So we put an offer and a deposit down. The seller accepted our offer, but we still have to wait on the bank. Supposively Bank of America takes their sweet ass time with these kinds of things, and the last one our realtor has done took the bank 10 months to close. We kind of need to close in 2 months to be sure that we get the first time home buyer's tax credit. So Chris is telling me not to get my hopes up, and that if it takes too long, we may have to get something else. But I'm still excited that we are one step closer to having a home together!

Julibean <3

Pastry Orientation

Wednesday was my first day of actual class at CALI. We didn't do much in the way of learning, it was more like an orientation day, even though I had gone to the technical orientation last week. My teacher is really awesome so far. She is young, loud, boisterous, funny, and extremely talented. I think she is exactly the kind of person I want to learn from; fun, tough, no nonsense, wants you to succeed and loves what she does. I can't really take my eyes of her in class, she just absolutely holds my attention, which I'm sure as any college student would know, that is not an easy task. Chef Katie is an 100% Italian single mother of a 2 year old boy and suffers from type 2 diabetes, celiac disease (intolerance to wheat), and extreme lactose intolerance. If anyone was going to be sensitive to what I want to do, bake for people like my cousin Jaclyn who have deathly allergies, she was going to be the person.

Our class hours are 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. every Monday through Friday from now until mid-May. That's 4 months of classes then a 2 month internship at a bakery, restaurant, catering hall, etc., for a total of 6 months. Each month is its own section. First is pastry and baking basics, then cakes, then breads, and then advanced techniques including chocolate tempering, spinning sugar, and plated desserts. The syllabus sounds amazing and delicious. I can't wait to learn how to make my own rainbow cookies, custards, mousses, eclairs, wedding cakes, baguettes, coissants, bagels, challa bread, danish, truffles, crepes, and SO much more. The first week is spent in the classroom learning about basic products, equipment, bakers math and measurements, knife skills, and kitchen sanitation. From then on we spend every day in the kitchen except for one classroom day at the beginning of each section going over the basics and the syllabus for that section.

Our first class we introduced ourselves for like 3 hours. There are about 20 people in the class, that's the largest these classes ever get, because the kitchen is already crowded. Most of the students were around my age, just out of high school or college and looking for a change or a career, some were much older looking for a new career after they were laid off from their previous job, or moms or grandmothers just looking to pursue their love of baking professionally. There are about 5 men and 15 women, all from very diverse backgrounds. Chef Katie is a huge talker, so going through just a few simple questions of; name, hometown, reason for choosing CALI, career goals, favorite food, least favorite food, allergies, "issues" with food (like I don't touch mayonaise, or I can't smell avacadoes without throwing up, etc.), and where the last place you ate out was, turned into an entire day of tangents from Chef Katie about everything from, "omg my son won't eat ice cream either!" to, "you went to Sacret Heart too?". All in all it was a really fun day. We went through our syllabus and then we got our books.

Everything at CALI is included in the tuition so that day I got a CALI chef's bag, professional baking textbook, notebook, and calculator. Before we go into the kitchen we are all equipped with chef pants, shirt, hat, shoes, and a huge yellow toolbox with everything you could ever need... knives, thermometers, pastry bags, you name it. I cannot wait to get my hands on that. She said she hands them out at the end of math day, as a reward for trying to learn conversions all day.

We are assigned a bit of reading from the textbook every class, and given some hand outs. I can't tell you how much fun it is to read about the history of wheat and basic baking appliances after you spent five months gouging your eyes out reading about contracts and civil procedure, and torts every day. What a change a month has made!

Chef Katie was trained at the French Culinary Institute and has been working in the baking industry for over 18 years. She has been teaching this particular course since it began in 2005 or something, so I have no doubt about her abilities. The class is kind of structured like this. Let's say we're making cookies one day, chocolate chip cookies. First we go over the recipe, then she demonstrates how to make the cookies, step by step, and we take notes, then we make them ourselves with a partner. This goes on and on, as we do more complicated recipes, then there is a written test and an individual practical at the end of every section. We each pick a recipe out of a hat and make it ourselves, then Chef Katie eats it and tells us what we did right or wrong and we get graded. This is the same for all sections, some of which have special projects, including menu writing, plate decoration, and wedding cake decoration. After all four sections we have a day of final practicals where we all pick a few different recipes out of a hat and make them all without notes, textbook, or instructions. We are only given an ingredients list and the ingredient ratios. All in all it sounds pretty badass to me, and I'm excited for class tomorrow.

This weekend I will be traveling to the MD to see the fiance for Valentine's Day. We're not doing anything in particular since we are trying to save as much money as possible for the condo down payment. I think we're probably just going out for sushi Saturday night for a "date", and having dinner with his parents and grandparents on Sunday afternoon. I'm bringing him a delicious cake that I'm going to be decorating at our Wilton class tomorrow night. I think he's going to love it. The way to any man's heart is through his stomach, and the way to Chris' heart is definitely through peanut butter.

The most exciting part about this weekend is that I'm going to see a few friends from college as well. My good friend Morgan was also going to do Baltimore this weekend to see her sister, so I'm going to stay at her place Friday night and then drive her down to Maryland with me. I've missed her so much since graduation and I'm really glad that I finally get to spend some time with her. Since I have Monday off I'm going to be taking her back to Philadelphia and then we're going to meet up with Jim for dinner. I love them both so much, and everyone from college/a cappella. I just wish we all got the chance to see each other more but traveling is just so damn expensive and everyone is so busy. Even though I haven't really started at CALI yet, I'm sure I'm going to be less busy than I was at law school, and that makes me insanely happy.

I hope it doesn't snow any more while I'm gone this weekend. "Snowpocalypse" has left Maryland with about 5 feet of snow over the past week or so. Chris has been having trouble getting to work, and once he does get there, everyone else has taken sick days. We're both hating on Patrick this week who gets off from work at the NSA for basically anything. Chris is really frustrated at work lately because he never has anything to do. It's really hard to prove that you are awesome and deserve a promotion/raise when your boss is always away and doesn't leave you enough stuff to do. Apparently Chris also kind of fucked up on his taxes this year and we're not getting any money back like we thought we were going to. This may cause a serious problem. If we end up not having enough for a down payment, we won't be getting a condo this year and will have to get an apartment until we can pay off more bills. Being an adult blows.


Until next time, Julibean <3

I like cupcakes

Hi! To those of you who don't know me, I'm Julie. This is my first official blog post on my first official blog! I graduated from a techie college this past May after spending three years on my Business degree, and went off to live at home for my first semester of law school on Long Island. I had always wanted to be a lawyer since I participated in mock trial in high school, but as I went through college, I began to think that it just wasn't for me, but the economy was shitty and I couldn't think of anything else to pursue so I went for it. To make a long story short... it was awful. I hated pretty much every second of it.

I moved into my older brother's old room in my house. It was much too small and cluttered and I filled it with far too large furniture. I had been depressed through my last semester of college, fueled by my anxiety about stretching myself far too thin, my LSAT preparation, and my general lack of direction, and it followed me to law school.

I didn't talk to anyone, didn't make any friends, didn't like my classes or professors, and in return received my worst GPA in my educational career. I was living 4.5 hours long distance from my boyfriend who then turned fiance that October. I hadn't been to a therapist since I had left college, hated the commute, and the parking situation was horrendous. I didn't really understand anything save from one class. Criminal law was my favorite with my favorite professor (the only professor I wouldn't have again the next semester), but other than that I basically wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep every second of every day for 5 months.

So here I am thinking, I wasn't sure I really wanted to do this in the first place. I don't want the lawyer lifestyle. I want to be a mother and a wife and spend time with my future children and husband. I always wanted to help underprivileged women and protect women's reproductive rights, and I was never going to make enough money to pay back my massive amount of student loans doing something like that. The fiance was already worried that I was going to be more stressed and more depressed with that kind of lifestyle and I couldn't help but agree.

During the last week of winter break I received my first semester grades. And it did not look good. I had gotten my first ever D and would have to take remedial classes with extra homework. That was so not going to happen. I had had it. So I withdrew. The parents didn't love it, it was a scary decision, and an expensive one at that, but I didn't want to get too much deeper before pulling the plug.

Over the past month I have been researching other graduate programs, applying for jobs, and basically sitting around. I stumbled upon a culinary school on Long Island and decided to give them a call. They had me come in that day and take a tour of the kitchens. I read the syllabus, and I was sold. I love to bake! LOVE IT. and this was my perfect opportunity to get the training I would need to pursue my lifelong dream of opening my own bakery. I had applied for a 6 month intensive professional pastry and baking arts program. Only one catch. I was wait listed.

I had applied a little too late and the class was full. I have been sitting around waiting to hear if I was accepted or not, not knowing if I should look for a full or part time job or what would happen to me in the next few weeks. In the meantime I visited the fiance in Maryland and picked out a condo that we will hopefully be making an offer on this month. I plan on moving there once I finished the pastry program and his lease was up on his apartment.

I was told to attend orientation just in case I was given a spot, I would already have been measured for my chef's attire. We met our teacher Chef Katie and received our syllabus. I could not have been more excited. The waiting was killing me. Luckily my admissions rep called today and told me I've finally been given a spot!

So here I sit, in my bed next to my sister writing up my first post. I have made a complete 180 in the past month. I'm going from law student to pastry chef and I could not be happier. Classes start on Tuesday so I have a few more days of freedom until then. Then it's off to my first week of classroom, learning about basic terms and baker's math.

This blog is going to serve as a chronicle of my time at bakery school and beyond. I'm going to face a lot of challenges in the next two years, but I really can't wait to start! I hope to succeed in the following:

1. Go to Pastry School, learn a lot, go on my internship, and enjoy myself.
2. Lose weight at the same time. This is going to be a toughie as I will be frosting things and throwing chocolate around all day every day. My anti depressant meds and general depressed/lazy stupor has caused me to gain almost 50 pounds in the past 8 months and I am not very happy about it.
3. Buy a condo with my man and move into it.
4. Plan our wedding that will be less than two years away on 1/7/2012. All we've got so far is the reception/ceremony venue booked.
5. Make some renovations on the condo and settle in.
6. Hopefully get a puppy!
7. Find a pastry job or business position that will help me pay the bills until I can find some relevant baking work and/or find investors for my business!
8. Get my sister and her man to move to Maryland. I can't really take living far from her for too long.
9. And last but not least... Marry the man of my dreams!!!

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek I can't wait!

Go FUCK yourself San Diego!

I mean... Making the world better, one cookie at a time

Julibean <3