I have a bit of a backlog of school stuff to talk about. First off, though, a little on the knitting front. I’m all finished with my re-knit of my Morrison Cardigan and it’s blocking today. It’s really humid here right now so I don’t know how long it’s going to take to dry but I’ll probably seam it up next week and then I’ll have a much improved cardigan. In the meantime I’m dedicating all my knitting time to my KnitPicks project and just trying to get it done so I can get paid.

Now, the food. I keep forgetting to take pictures of my food in my savory cooking class, but I’ve managed to remember in the last two classes. First, we did pan fried chicken thighs and legs and I made some French fries and green beans and carrots as a side.

The next week was eggs. Now, I hate eggs with a passion. They taste nasty, the texture is gross, and they always smell awful. That said, my eggs came out perfect, I even tasted them but they were just as gross as I thought they would be.

Sorry for the dark picture, it’s from my phone. From the top left, these are over easy, scrambled, sunny side up, and over hard. I even learned how to flip my eggs in the pan and it was more exciting than it should have been.

To round out egg day, we made Eggs Benedict. This has a toasted English muffin, Canadian bacon, a poached egg, and is topped with Hollandaise sauce, which wasn’t nearly as hard to make as I thought it would be, and there’s some home fries on the side. It’s all sprinkled with a little green onions and the potatoes have a little parsley. The poached eggs were fun to make, to see how they came together in the pan. They were pretty easy, too. The trick is to heat your water and vinegar just to boiling, about 180F, and then crack your egg very low over the water and just let it sit for about three minutes before you fish it out. I tasted the egg, didn’t like it, but the Hollandaise was pretty good.

Now, on to baking, which is my favorite. We’ve done puff pastry, pies, and biscuits, muffins, and cream puffs.

I thought I had already blogged about these, but I guess I forgot to. There are some cherry turnovers and squares with cherry and some cinnamon and sugar snails, which were my favorite. They were all really good, flaky and crispy, but I should have used more filling on all of them.

The next week we did pies. The one in front is coconut cream filling with Italian meringue, that I burnt a little bit. In back is cherry. These were both really good and the crust was nice and flaky. This was my first time making crust from scratch and it was easy. I need to make another cherry pie soon.

Last week we made cream puffs, blueberry muffins, and country style biscuits. The biscuits were so good, light and flaky and buttery. They would be really good with some black pepper and cheddar cheese mixed into the dough. I was going to make some more cream puffs today but I’m out of milk and didn’t feel like going to the store this morning.

Next week we’re making cake in baking and doing beef and veal, which I’m not looking forward to at all, in my cooking class.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend! I’m gong to see Reverend Horton Heat Saturday night and I’m really excited and nervous about it since I’m going alone. I’m sure there will be people there I know but I’d rather go with someone. Next week sometime, I think I’ll go see The Hunger Games at the IMax. I started re-reading the books Sunday and finished the third Wednesday. I was going to wait a few weeks to go the movie but reading the books made me want to go now, so maybe Tuesday. Maybe.

I feel like I’ve been running a thousand miles an hour this week, it has flown. Today in school I made some Béchamel sauce that I turned into Alfredo sauce and served up with some fettuccini and pan fried chicken (my cooking partner made the chicken and I didn’t eat it). The Alfredo sauce was delicious and super easy to make. I actually felt a little like this:

the whole time I was cooking, but it came out okay. Today I learned that Béchamel sauce is totally not as hard to make as it looks when you read the directions.

Monday was a whole other story. Get me baking and I’m fine, in the savory part of the kitchen I’m lost even though I cook at home all the time.

Case in fact: double chocolate bread pudding. This stuff is yummy. It’s like a super rich, moist chocolate cake. Actually, it started out as a dense fudgy cake that was broken into chunks and soaked in chocolate custard sauce, topped with cinnamon and sugar and chocolate chips and then baked. Holy crap this stuff is amazing. It’s a little crisp on top and then moist and soft inside. I could eat a huge pan of it every day.

I am still loving school. Everyday after class I come home and I’m so happy and so full of adrenaline that I just can’t sit down, so I’ve been cooking at home, too. Small things usually, heating up something quick for lunch Monday and then a big pot of soup yesterday. I finally have the feeling that I’m where I belong and I never would have dreamed it would be in a kitchen.

I’ve been knitting at night, too, and I’ll try to have some kind of update Friday. Have a great rest of the week!