I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.
I literally have no thoughts about the Emmys to share besides the fact that Jon Hamm needs to do more comedy. The man is good at being a goof and he knows how to look good doing it. Like Betty White said, back that mother up!
Anyway... shall we move on to the usual showcase of baked goods?
Pain au lait. Look at how beautiful the crumb (the interior) on that loaf is. I have to say, I think this is one of my favorite food photographs I've taken thus far. Yep, this one's definitely going in my portfolio.
Dinner rolls, or excuse me, "ballons." Using fancy French words lets you charge a premium price for simple breads.
The only thing more fun than making and eat challah bread is saying its name. Chef Holly, who helps us with production for breads that go down to the school restaurant, is a native New Yorker and told us that to say "challah," you have to sound like you're hocking a loogie. Cue me saying challah whenever I got the chance.
A fun exchange between Chefs Holly and Mike:
Chef Holly: You can say challah like "holla." CHALLAH!
Chef Mike: Chef Holly, that's challah cool!
I suspect that there hasn't been a pun that Chef Mike's come across that he hasn't liked.
Rye bread. This was the first thing we've made that I've actively disliked and it's all due to the caraway seeds, which are pungent and taste bad. Rachael and I have been known to call them "the evil seeds."
Butter braid. I actually made two of these but Chef Mike took one (the one with more sugar on top, I might add) to give to the restaurant. I supposed I should be flattered that he thought it was good enough to use in the restaurant, but I still wanted that butter braid, dammit.
On Saturday morning there was a meeting for the Iron Whisks club. Chef Tim is the advisor for the club and he sent out an e-mail prior saying that they were going to make French macarons, so naturally I made it a point to attend. The macarons themselves were surprisingly not that hard to make. It's mostly just whisking egg whites and sugar to make a meringue and then folding/mixing in powdered sugar and a nut meal. My biggest problem was piping out the batter because I couldn't quite keep it consistent. But at least I fared better than some of the culinary students whose cookies came out more like lumpy blobs as opposed to little circles. Chef Tim said that with the little foot, macarons should look like the Scrubbing Bubbles cartoons in the commercials, which is such Chef Tim-like thing for him to say.
Almond macarons with almond butter and chocolate ganache fillings. The ganache was soooooo good. I had some left over after prepping my macarons, and so I made sure to bring it home where I used it to top off some frozen bananas. It may not have been a Bluth banana, but it was pretty fucking amazing. It's hard to go wrong with chocolate and cream.
I guess I'm officially a food blogger now that I've made and got pictures of macarons up, right?
Later that afternoon I decided to attend a book discussion for The Hunger Games at the Borders store a few blocks from my usual BART station. I was already in the city and the poster said that there would be prizes given out, so I figured, why not? Well, it turned out to be a rather pathetic affair. When the discussion started, there were only three other people there, though this number later doubled soon after, which still isn't that great of a turnout. That means greater odds of winning prizes, right? True, but when the prize (that's right, prize; the poster lied) is a nameplate sticker with Suzanne Collins' autograph that you can paste in your book to make it look as though she signed the book herself, it's like, who even cares if you win or not? There were some trivia questions for us to answer and whoever got the most right won an extra raffle ticket for the "coveted" sticker. I ended up snagging that extra ticket because I had just reread the first book and so all of the details were fresh in my mind, but I still didn't win the sticker. Boohoo, I was so heartbroken. Can't you tell?
Then there was the discussion itself. The employee who led it hadn't actually read any of the books herself and was just reading off of a list of stock questions that I'm guessing someone from corporate had sent to each store. I didn't really blame her since she probably got saddled with the task at the last minute... but that's just sad. Then, all of the participants in the discussion gave short, clipped answers, and while I did my best to try to give more elaborate answers to encourage a more engaging discussion, they simply weren't biting. Sigh. I know that I was the oldest person there and that everyone else was probably still in high school (... I look really young for my age, okay?) but intelligent conversation isn't too much to ask for, is it? Maybe it is when the nearby Abercrombie and Fitch store is beckoning you. So, with that, we answered a few more trivia question before we decided to call it a day, and we all walked away with some mockingjay temporary tattoos and a half hour less time on our hands.
And that was my week.
Anyway... shall we move on to the usual showcase of baked goods?
Pain au lait. Look at how beautiful the crumb (the interior) on that loaf is. I have to say, I think this is one of my favorite food photographs I've taken thus far. Yep, this one's definitely going in my portfolio.
Dinner rolls, or excuse me, "ballons." Using fancy French words lets you charge a premium price for simple breads.
The only thing more fun than making and eat challah bread is saying its name. Chef Holly, who helps us with production for breads that go down to the school restaurant, is a native New Yorker and told us that to say "challah," you have to sound like you're hocking a loogie. Cue me saying challah whenever I got the chance.
A fun exchange between Chefs Holly and Mike:
Chef Holly: You can say challah like "holla." CHALLAH!
Chef Mike: Chef Holly, that's challah cool!
I suspect that there hasn't been a pun that Chef Mike's come across that he hasn't liked.
Rye bread. This was the first thing we've made that I've actively disliked and it's all due to the caraway seeds, which are pungent and taste bad. Rachael and I have been known to call them "the evil seeds."
Butter braid. I actually made two of these but Chef Mike took one (the one with more sugar on top, I might add) to give to the restaurant. I supposed I should be flattered that he thought it was good enough to use in the restaurant, but I still wanted that butter braid, dammit.
On Saturday morning there was a meeting for the Iron Whisks club. Chef Tim is the advisor for the club and he sent out an e-mail prior saying that they were going to make French macarons, so naturally I made it a point to attend. The macarons themselves were surprisingly not that hard to make. It's mostly just whisking egg whites and sugar to make a meringue and then folding/mixing in powdered sugar and a nut meal. My biggest problem was piping out the batter because I couldn't quite keep it consistent. But at least I fared better than some of the culinary students whose cookies came out more like lumpy blobs as opposed to little circles. Chef Tim said that with the little foot, macarons should look like the Scrubbing Bubbles cartoons in the commercials, which is such Chef Tim-like thing for him to say.
Almond macarons with almond butter and chocolate ganache fillings. The ganache was soooooo good. I had some left over after prepping my macarons, and so I made sure to bring it home where I used it to top off some frozen bananas. It may not have been a Bluth banana, but it was pretty fucking amazing. It's hard to go wrong with chocolate and cream.
I guess I'm officially a food blogger now that I've made and got pictures of macarons up, right?
Later that afternoon I decided to attend a book discussion for The Hunger Games at the Borders store a few blocks from my usual BART station. I was already in the city and the poster said that there would be prizes given out, so I figured, why not? Well, it turned out to be a rather pathetic affair. When the discussion started, there were only three other people there, though this number later doubled soon after, which still isn't that great of a turnout. That means greater odds of winning prizes, right? True, but when the prize (that's right, prize; the poster lied) is a nameplate sticker with Suzanne Collins' autograph that you can paste in your book to make it look as though she signed the book herself, it's like, who even cares if you win or not? There were some trivia questions for us to answer and whoever got the most right won an extra raffle ticket for the "coveted" sticker. I ended up snagging that extra ticket because I had just reread the first book and so all of the details were fresh in my mind, but I still didn't win the sticker. Boohoo, I was so heartbroken. Can't you tell?
Then there was the discussion itself. The employee who led it hadn't actually read any of the books herself and was just reading off of a list of stock questions that I'm guessing someone from corporate had sent to each store. I didn't really blame her since she probably got saddled with the task at the last minute... but that's just sad. Then, all of the participants in the discussion gave short, clipped answers, and while I did my best to try to give more elaborate answers to encourage a more engaging discussion, they simply weren't biting. Sigh. I know that I was the oldest person there and that everyone else was probably still in high school (... I look really young for my age, okay?) but intelligent conversation isn't too much to ask for, is it? Maybe it is when the nearby Abercrombie and Fitch store is beckoning you. So, with that, we answered a few more trivia question before we decided to call it a day, and we all walked away with some mockingjay temporary tattoos and a half hour less time on our hands.
And that was my week.