Other than that, I’ve been knitting a bit. I started and finished Brooklyn Tweed’s Inversion Cardigan but I can’t get a decent picture of it. I knit it out of some of my handspun Shetland and it is warm and soft and cozy, perfect for the weather we’re having this week. I also knit a hat because I was bored and don’t have enough yarn to knit anything else.

Right now I’m knitting a Pagona out of some old handspun, it’s in the blob stage. I’m close to being out of yarn so I suppose it’s time to start the border and then I’ll be done.

And then there’s the food. In my savory class I’ve made fish (that picture is bad) and pork steak that I didn’t blog.

But in baking we made cakes:

This is a chocolate cake with vanilla American buttercream frosting, it was good but I didn’t like the frosting much, it was too sweet. I also made a carrot cake but it’s sitting, unfrosted, in my freezer because I forgot about it until just now. Whoops!

And we made cookies:

These are brownies, pecan sandies, snickerdoodles, and coconut macaroons. They were good.

We made ice cream, too, but I didn’t get any pictures of it. I made a rich chocolate custard base and added strawberries and chocolate chips, it was good. I’m going to miss being in the kitchens at school this summer but I’m looking for a job, I just hope I can find something, there isn’t much out there where I live. I am planning on going through my baking textbook and making up some of the recipes we didn’t do in class, I have to practice and keep my skills up over the summer, don’t I?

That’s it for me. I have to do some dishes and study for my Purchasing final tomorrow and my baking final Monday. I hate finals.

Monday in my baking class we made cake. We had to choose between a carrot cake and a chocolate angel food cake and then our choice of either chocolate or yellow cake. I made both the carrot and chocolate cakes and then had extra time so I whipped up this angel food cake. This is seriously the best angel food cake I’ve ever had. It’s light and fluffy soft. Next week we’re making frosting and cover basic decorating techniques so we’ll frost and decorate our other cakes then.

Today in my savory class, we grilled steaks. I topped mine with some sautéed mushrooms and peppers and we made Duchess potatoes, and then I added some pan fried butternut squash with brown sugar and cinnamon. Next week we have a mystery basket challenge and I’m a little nervous about it, but I’m sure I’ll do fine.

Saturday I went to see my favorite live band, Reverend Horton Heat. This is, seriously, about the twentieth time I’ve seen them and they are always great. The crowd was out of control, it was amazing. I went alone, which I was nervous about doing since I hate doing stuff by myself, but I had a blast and there were a lot of people there than I know, so it all worked out. I really had more fun than I’ve had in years and by the end of the show I was tired, covered in sweat(and not just my own, I swear I was groped more Saturday night than at any other show that I’ve been to, it was ridiculous) and beer(also not my own), and I made out with some guy I don’t know. All in all, a pretty good night. Ha. Then last night I won tickets to a Koffin Kats show in May and I can’t wait, it’s going to be so much fun.

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.

So does this look familiar? Yes, it’s the Morrison Cardigan from the Fall 2011 Knitscene again. I just wasn’t happy with the way it fit before so I decided to re-knit it in the next size bigger. I started it last weekend and I’ve knit both sleeves, the back, the right front, and a few inches of the left front. It’s zooming along and I should have it finished in a couple days. I think I’ll like it a lot more in the bigger size. It wasn’t really too small but it was too short and a little tight in the upper arms. This should be much better.

That’s all I have time for today. I have a lot of food to talk about and some more knitting later this week. Right now I have some homework and a project from KnitPicks that I need to work on.

I started this shawl back in October and finished knitting it a couple weeks ago and blocked it on Wednesday, when it was a beautiful 65° outside. To refresh your memory, this is Granny Cheney’s Shetland Shawl from the book Wrapped in Lace by Margaret Stove. I knit it out of KnitPicks Bare merino lace weight and used two full skeins and size US2/2.75mm needles. I had planned on going up a needle size, I thought it would look better with a looser gauge, but I’m glad I didn’t. The shawl is delicate enough as it is and I would have run out of yarn a lot sooner. I’m pretty happy with how it looks.

You can kind of see here and in the photo below where I ran out of yarn and had to grab some Jaggerspun Zephyr in white to finish up. It’s just in the areas between the center and the big border, where the double rows of holes are. It’s not a glaring difference, you can see it in person but it really doesn’t look too bad. I just hated to order and extra ball of yarn for that little bit of knitting.

This was a lot of knitting. A lot, a lot. First, you cast on about 20 stitches and knit this super long edging, it was about ten feet, I think. Then you pick up some stitches, knit one side of the border, knit the center, then you pick up the rest of the stitches around the edging and knit the other borders (or you can do each border one at a time and sew them together, you’d pick up less stitches at once but have more seaming) and then graft the tops of the borders around the edge of the center and sew up the seam from the beginning and end of the border and the beginning and end of the edging. If it sounds fussy, it was. It wasn’t nearly as confusing as it seems.

This was actually one of the most well-written patterns I think I’ve ever followed. It’s about ten pages, mostly charts, the written directions were short and assumed you knew what you were doing most of the time, but everything was very clear and easy to understand. The only mistakes I ran across ended up being my own fault, from losing my place in one of the charts (which are huge) and trying to just skim the directions (stupid!).

So, what’s next? Well, I do have something on the needles, Freewheelin’ by Lee Meredith, and it is almost done, I think. I think the next lacy thing I want to make is the Crown Prince Square Shawl by Nancy Bush, I’d still like to have a black cardigan of some kind, and the sock bug is nibbling, so I may need to make a pair of socks. Now I just need some money.

First we made some Challah. I’ve actually never had Challah before but I’ve seen recipes for it online and I’ve wanted to try making it for a long time, so I was excited about this. We did three-strand braids for both loaves and I topped one with some black sesame seeds and left the other plain. This bread didn’t last long at my house. It was a rich, soft, chewy bread that was good hot with a little butter. It was a lot easier to make than I thought it would be so I’ll be making this again soon.

Then we took the poolish we had started the week before and made baguettes. These are a good dense bread with a nice crispy crust and they would make a really good sandwich. I liked these a lot but not as much as the Challah.

So, bread was fun and now I can’t wait to take my bread class next fall. Next week in baking we’re doing laminated dough and making pinwheels and turnovers and the week after that is pies. Yum.

I had my savory cooking class today and we broke down chicken, made stock, and then we took some of the chicken breast and sautéed it, made a supreme sauce and served it with our choice of starch and a vegetable. I made some boiled new potatoes with a little salt, pepper and fresh parsley and stir-fried some asparagus with lemon juice and a tiny bit of garlic. The potatoes and asparagus were good but I didn’t taste the chicken. The sauce was pretty good, though. It’s really hard being a vegetarian in that class. Not just because I don’t get to taste much of the food but I haven’t cooked meat in a long time and it’s just as gross as I remember. The class is fun, though. Next week in that class we’re doing sandwiches and bound salads (these are salads that have a thick dressing, like a potato or chicken salad or cole slaw). Maybe I can sneak a vegetarian meal in there.

Now, I’m also blocking my shawl today and I’ll try to post something about it Friday.

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!

Today was our first day in the kitchen in my baking class. I had so much fun, it was just what I expected. We made a chocolate cake that we’re going to use to make bread pudding next week and then we made strawberry rhubarb cobblers with pâte brisée crust. Everything was made from scratch and it took a long time. Plus there were tons of dishes to wash (yes, we wash our own dishes) and a huge mess to clean up when we were done. Honestly, the dishes weren’t that bad, but there were a lot of of them. I had a blast cooking, I always do. I’m really starting think I found something that fits. I’ve been trying to find something I really love to do for a long and I never dreamed it would be any kind of cooking but here I am.

I’m out of school tomorrow and then I have my cooking class Wednesday and we’re starting stocks, sauces, and knife skills. I think we’re going to make soup, too. I’m really looking forward to it.

This has been such a busy week. I’m only taking three classes but two of them are four hours long and the other is two hours and forty-five minutes and there is a ton of reading and homework to do. This was actually a really good week. I’m getting used to being back at school and all the nerves I had about my classes are (mostly) gone. I’m having a lot of fun so far and next week I get to start cooking. Yay!

This picture is really awful but here’s what I’m knitting. This is Granny Cheyne’s Shetland Shawl from Wrapped in Lace by Margaret Stove (mine’s on Ravelry here). Way back (ha!) in 1999 when I started knitting I would sit and drool over the few pictures of Shetland shawls that I would see online and I loved them. They always seemed like something to shoot for, to be able to knit with that super thin yarn on those long, little needles and have this gorgeous lace come out seemed almost unattainable. I’ve felt up to the task for a few years but never found a pattern that called out to me (except the Princess Shawl and I will knit it someday) until Wrapped in Lace came out. This pattern just looked perfect. It’s a big square traditional Shetland shawl with true knitted lace, with patterning on both sides of the fabric) knit in real lace yarn with tiny (US2) needles. It has a variety of patterns and it’s just difficult enough to be interesting but not so much that I’m ripping my hair out in frustration (I have had to rip back a few long rows and I completely frogged the border twice about halfway through it). This is the only thing on my needles right now and I’ve only had time to do a row or two before bed but it is enough. The shawl is slowly growing and I’m just a few rows from finishing the borders and then I have a lot of sewing to do.

More next week. Have a great weekend. I’m going to read about nutrition and menu planning.