I LOVE SCHOOL!

I do love school and I finally don't feel like I want to die from exhaustion at noon.  I guess my body is starting to adjust to my new schedule.  Before I talk about an awesome day of baking, I want to show you all my fantabulous tool kit.  We received our tools in a not user friendly tri-zip pouch thing.  At Chef's suggestion I went to The Home Depot to do some SHOPPING!  I loooove a good excuse to go shopping and I love The Home Depot!  I found heavy duty rings for my measuring spoons and cups, fun violet electric tape and a nifty Husky tool holder.  I also got a new grill, but that's just for me at home.  Sadly, the grill that my sister got for me many moons ago has finally bit the dust...literally.  Anyway, I already lit up the new grill last night and I really like it.  It's red.  Very fun.  But I digress....  My new and improved tool kit looks like this:

Super Fabulous Tool Kit

You will notice that I have made my violet electrical tape and baroque black and white duck tape mark on everything.  In the kitchen, everything we use and wear looks alike, so we have to mark all of our items in some way.  I like my way, I think it looks like me.  I spent a good amount of time taping everything and putting a little -k- on things that can't be taped.  It was fun.  I re-watched Eat, Pray Love while working and really wanted to eat a giant plate of spaghetti when I was done.  Maybe tomorrow.  Manfriend said "Wow, that's a lot of stuff.  Do you really need all that stuff??"  Indeed, I do.  Even more came in the kit, but that will just stay at home.  My knives are super sharp and everything is shiny and new.  Like new pencils and notebooks and paper for school.  I love that stuff.  I haven't felt this excited about starting something new in a long time.  I bought the baroque duck tape at Target and got a new 3 ring binder for my notes (it's pink too (-:).  I love Target, but that's another topic.  I also decided to invest in a pair of good kitchen shoes.  The pair that came with my uniform had no arch support, were lace up and just all around uncomfortable.  At the end of baking on Friday my feet were in full protest.  My new shoes (and super squishy socks) made all the difference today!  I won't lie and say my feet don't hurt, but it would have been a lot worse.

With Biscotti

Syd w/ Brysselex &
Strassburger

So, I got to school pretty early this morning and was able to start scaling out ingredients for 2 of the 3 doughs we made today.  That gave my partner, my young friend Syd, and I a bit of head start that was nice.  She made Strassburger cookies with raspberry jam and I made Biscotti with lemon zest and almonds.  I will probably say this a million times, but it is so weird to cream the butter and the sugar and add the eggs by hand.  It just doesn't look right.  Thankfully, it turns out just fine.  The biscotti was crazy easy and we got to slice it in the slicer, so no struggling with a knife to cut through crunchy dough and whole almonds.  After that we had to put our Brysselex doughs together to make the checkerboard cookies.  Luckily, Syd was on the task of making the checkerboards - she has a bit more patience for these things that I do and they turned out great.  We made marbled cookies out of the scraps.  While she was making the checkerboards, I scaled ingredients and made pate sucree for the fresh fruit tarts we are making tomorrow.  YUM.  I can't wait to eat that one.  It will be my first official tart for the Queen of Tarts!  Very fun.  After cleaning the kitchen and putting everything away, Chef graded our cookies and we did great!  She said they were perfect.  Then we got to eat them!  Warm biscotti is delicious.

There was some drama in the class today.  A before mentioned classmate suffered a cut bad enough that she had to go to the hospital and get 2 stitches.  It was suffered at the knife of another student, but the knife wielder was not at fault.  She survived and made it back to class before it was over.  The end.

Another photo of my awesome tool kit, before I bought the S rings.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and am so glad that it is President's Day.  No USPS means no packages go out today.  I get a tiny break!  Yay me.  That should ensure that I will survive and live to bake another day.  Until then, ciao!

-The Queen of Tarts-