Can't I just put butter on it? Butter makes everything better.

 Not gonna lie, I'm kind of tired of being in the kitchen. Thank God it's not the 50's. 

It's been a full day dry run of my midterm today. I know that it doesn't sound like a very successful dry run. 'Bri', you say, 'don't you only have four hours for your midterm? And today took you ten?' 

*In my head you sound like a Precious Moment when you talk.

But yes you would be absolutely right. I only have four hours to do everything that I took all day to do today. And there are even things that I will have to do on Wednesday that I didn't even DO today. Self-sabotage? Perhaps. My life resembled a bit of a science experiment today. I had my projections of what my midterm should look like, my HYPOTHESIS if you will -(guaranteed I just lost a couple of readers)- and compared it to what I felt I was capable of against what I was able to actually pull off. 

To my surprise -probably an hour added up throughout the day was made up of me congratulating myself on being realistic about my abilities and that I was 'going to be just fine at the midterm'- everything went fairly smoothly.  

Now being in pastry school has been an exercise in managed expectations. Anything you do at school -ANYTHING- that you choose to try and replicate at home, you will likely be disappointed. Professional kitchens are laid out with a certain modicum of premeditation. Ergonomics. "Flow". And you have a $1000 knife kit at your disposal. Your tuition has paid to enable anything you could want to put your hand to to be at your fingertips. Your apartment kitchen was made with the premeditation of "We were just going to put in a hot plate and a plug-in for a microwave but the building next door just put in new faucets and privacy film on the bathroom windows. So we have to at least make room for a full-size refrigerator." So any moments of Sound of Music-style spinning that was possible at school is only possible OUTSIDE your apartment. I don't remember my kitchen being inadequate before I went to pastry school. This is why you don't sleep around with other kitchens. Hindsight and all that.

So you get home. And you realize that you have a cloth piping bag that smells like morning breath (It DOESN'T dry well OKAY!?), you have a dough scraper that was obviously designed by someone who had never made bread before and purchased by someone (me) who hadn't a clue either, and your spatula has chunks missing along the side due to it being left on hot surfaces unattended. And then you feel sad. 

But then. You look back at your recipe. You remember the glory of school days recently passed. You conjure up your best show stopping dish. Commence dancing and inspired chanting at the glory of your semolina bread and how it's going to bring all the boys to the yard. 

Fast forward fifteen minutes: "Bah! This thing doesn't work AT ALL!"

Inspired chanting is replaced by swearing under one's breath. You make concessions for your recipe not shaping up like you had hoped. You pass the buck to the (now) broken spatula. You say that "It's just not for the home baker". And then you feel ashamed because you promised yourself that you would be better than that. Whatever you were making comes to a relative state of completion and you eat it with your eyes closed trying to resuscitate the previous beacon of talent and unchallenged winning. 

I have done this before if you couldn't tell. 

But today went well. I tried my best to preempt any tool-related shortages and use what I had at my disposal for it's intended purpose. I know you say, "Just take your knife kit home." But I would probably just say -and probably not very nicely- that it is simply not that simple. I don't know if you have ever been in the charge of a toddler or related small human before but there is this inevitable moment where you realized that they blew a shoe, or their pacifier or their blanket at all Hell breaks loose when they are without it. You search and retrace your steps. "You just had it. I don't understand." This life is my life. Everything I have is on an idiot -ahem, tether- when we go to the airport.  So two days before my midterm I am not going to lose my shoe THANK YOU VERY MUCH. 

I documented my truffle making process today because... I am a product of my generation and I have this insatiable desire to take pictures of my life on my phone using unnecessary photo sharing apps. Mae culpa, mea culpa. I worked with milk chocolate today whereas I've only worked with dark chocolate before. This made for a learning experience I probably could have saved for AFTER my midterm. Because dark chocolate has more cocoa solids in it, its sets up faster and requires less work to create the proper crystallization. The milk chocolate ganache is quite soft but it has bourbon in it so it can't be THAT bad right?

Including the Saran wrap and Archimedes the napkin holder seemed necessary. Or I just didn't realize I hadn't moved them until after. Our glass table isn't a marble and therefore will never be as great as marble but it definitely served its purpose well today. 

I also practiced my pate a choux paste today. I made eclairs, with drive me crazy but are on my exam, and then some profiteroles, which are much easier to work with and therefore more gratifying. I practiced some lemon curd today as well so instead of pastry cream I crammed the profiteroles full of lemon curd and left the finicky eclairs without any filling. That'll teach them right? Lie to me. 

 Tomorrow I have time to further finesse my agenda because I am the queen of over planning. A third of my class has already done their midterm. I want to ask them, ya know, pick their brain and TOTALLY obsess. But I know it is a short distance for me right now to go from there to rocking back and forth whispering, "I'll never teeeeeell." Best if I just keep to myself until Wednesday morning. 

Moozh did his this morning. The culinary students weren't told ahead of time what would be on their exam so Moozh went in blind. His chef told him that all of his stuff was cooked perfectly and that he did very well. And after six years of education and a master's program, Moozh still considered this midterm the most stressful exam he's ever written. I concur. Already. 

One more day to overprepare. 

Find a cookie. No, two. Find some ice cream. Make a sandwich. CUZ WHO DOESN'T LIKE AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH? Repeat.