Burning down the house

Let us take a brief moment to examine the drama that is housework for single mothers. (Maybe for all mothers, but since I have only ever been a single mother, that is all I can speak to.)

I used to have a clean house. I have pictures that prove it. When it was just Carl and I, I would spend one day a quarter cleaning out and organizing. Pick the room for that round and pull everything out donate, recycle and toss. Even when Carl was gone, I did it. I know that some people thought it was weird and/or heartless to rid myself of his things so quickly but I am less than sentimental about things that aren't functional or heartwarming. Then I had A. And my house has gotten progressively less clean over the last three years.

When A was little, I could occasionally hire a babysitter and get some minor cleaning done, but major decluttering takes hours and there is only so long a babysitter can keep a 18 month old at the park. When you add the need to periodically buy new stuff for a kid, and then inability to effectively clean, you have a recipe for disaster.

I spend many a day wondering if there is a way I can burn my house down and start fresh without either going bankrupt or going to jail for insurance fraud. Let's take today as an example. My house looks like hell. I go to get something out of a closet and the door won't even open because there is SO much stuff crammed into it. So I decide to clean it out. The first ten minutes are spent repeated moving A out of my way and answering "what is that?" 47 thousand times. But then, blessedly, she retreats to the living room to play. I thank God and smile that I am so glad that she is finally getting to an age when she can self entertain. Finish cleaning the floor and go into the living room to be greeted by a naked 3 year old covered in Vaseline. Crap.

Now I remember why my house never gets clean. Where are my matches?

When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Pizza.

I love pizza. I make pizza a lot. We have homemade pizza about once a week. Usually on Thursdays.

So when a pizza competition for some scholarship money was announced I was excited. There was just one glitch. It was a mystery basket challenge and we wouldn't find out our ingredients until it was time to cook. The concept kind of freaked me out. But I signed up and waited to hear if I had been selected to participate. (There was a random drawing to determine who would participate because of limited space.)

When I heard I was selected I was doubly freaked. What if I opened the basket and it was something strange, like duck confit or a live lobster? What if my mind went completely blank and I couldn't think of anything to make? I started checking out pizza recipes for strange ingredients. I enlisted my friend Maria to come for moral support. I got a babysitter and packed my tool kit and headed back into the city for the nighttime competition.

Entering the school at night was a totally different experience. The hallways seem dim and a bit grungier than they do in the morning. The students, a little more boisterous. I made my way to the sign in for the competition and received a time slot for firing the pizza. Maria, who had come only to provide support was roped into participating because some of the selected students canceled at the last minute.

When the room was open, there was a table piled with ingredients. For some reason it took me a little while to register that this was what we were going to cook with. I must watch too many reality TV shows because I was sure that everyone was going to get at least one common ingredient and that table was the remainder of the "pantry" that we would supplement our box from. When I finally grasped the reality of the situation, my mind did go blank.

I was so focused on not pinning myself into one idea because I didn't know what was going to be around to use, that having a lot of choices swamped me. But, while my mind was spinning, the rest of the contestants swarmed the table. When they pulled away, the pickings were slim and my mind was still a jumbled mass of half-baked ideas. I finally spotted some potatoes and decided to go with a potato pizza inspired by a recipe I had seen in my research.

My pizza ended up being a ricotta base mixed with some vinegar to try to give it a little more sour cream taste. (Afterward, I realized that there was actually a refrigerator that had dairy products in it that I didn't notice. I may have been able to have sour cream instead of trying to fake it.) I boiled and sliced the potatoes and then tossed them in melted butter, garlic and thyme. When the pizza come out of the oven I topped it with fresh chives. It was not bad.

At some point between walking into the classroom and starting to cook, I had forgotten that we needed to make 2 pizzas. So when it came to actually put the things on the dough, I had to leave the dough a bit thick, spread the toppings a little thin and leave about 2 inches around the edges as crust. Also, when the potatoes took a little longer to boil, so I didn't get them into the butter/herb mixture while it was hot enough to give it a little crisp. There was no time to reheat it, so into the oven it went that way.

As I was pulling the pizza out of the oven, I knew it was slightly under baked. But I was freaked out it was going to burn and pulled it out anyway. (This remains a great flaw in my cooking. I am always a little timid about cranking the heat and then end up not cooking something quite enough. Things don't usually end up raw, but they never take on that great caramelized feature.) I debated back and forth whether or not to add cheese, and made the wrong decision and left it off.

Someone else in the room made a pizza that was essentially the same pizza, only MUCH better executed. The crust was crisp, the cheese was melty, and the potatoes were sauteed instead of boiled and had better flavor (if a little salty to my taste). That pizza took 2nd place. First place went to a pizza with sausage and duck that I didn't get to taste. The 3rd place was a wonderful green curry chicken pizza that I would love to recreate if I didn't routinely cook for people who can't eat curry due to heartburn issues. Maria made a really interesting pizza with beets, caramelized onions and brie that was almost universally labeled as having potential but was missing something to make it really shine.

All in all, it was a good time and I would do it again. I definitely found it fun to meet students from other classes and see how the competitions go. I found that when it comes to pizza, too thick and undercooked dough was the most prevalent problem and really killed the pizza. The pizzas that won all had a great thin crust cooked to the perfect crispness. And not to toot my own horn (and my friend's) Maria and I had pizzas that IMHO fell into the top third of the competition. While they each had their flaws, they were round, creative and didn't degrade into a watery mass on top of a soggy undercooked bread.

Wine Whine

Wine class has begun. I was SO excited for this class because I freaking LOVE wine. I enjoy a good glass of wine several nights a week usually. I am always on the look out for good wine at a good price. Heck, I have even taken an wine appreciation class or two in the past and had a BLAST doing it.

This class......not so much.

First, the class is taught by a guy who looks like Doc Brown from Back to the Future. It is hard to take someone seriously when you are waiting for them to break out with a conversation about flux capacitors.

Secondly, the guy spends forever and a day telling us all what we don't know. Except, I know a lot of the stuff he is talking about. So it really kind of grates and makes me feel like he is an arrogant jerk.

Thirdly, TOTAL name dropper and wine snob. He has detailed the winery owners that he knows and likes to discuss how 99% of the "important" wine in the world comes from just France and Napa. The school requires we discuss all the wine regions and do tastings from them, but they are really second class wines, donchaknow.

Yesterday was better than the first couple of days, and I hold out hope that once we move on to actually tasting wine and discussing the various wine regions the class will get more interesting. In the meantime, it feels like I have been in this class for an eternity, but it is only the first week. So, I will be in the corner playing Suduko, someone tap me if the chef says anything interesting.

That's Bon-Bon Cougar to you

A cooking station shared by 4 students

A final dish Veal marsala, hash browns and green beans.

The assistant Chef Sean (It's ok to admire the hotness, most of the straight ladies and the bent boys do)

Chef Dan being goofy

It has come to my attention that I haven't really written about school recently. So here we go with a probably VERY long entry.

After finishing the first round of classes we were off to Food Science and Hospitality Math. Frankly they didn't really lend themselves to much writing. Food Science was neat (and as a bonus, I have a 2 year old who can use syneresis in a sentence) but taught by Chef Steve who seems perpetually grumpy. Hospitality Math was a chore to sit through and taught by a Chef who actually uttered the phrase, "There are no right and wrong answers in this class." Too painful to voluntarily relive it by blogging about it.

Then we were on to Foundations II, taught by Chef Dan and his assistant Chef Sean. WAY too busy to type then. Six weeks to start at Stocks and Sauces, make our way through soups, grains, starches, vegetables, eggs, salads and wind up learning how to cook 4-5 proteins.

Along the way I have managed to get to know some of my classmates better. Maria, the lawyer from Venezuela is indeed very interesting. She has some family roots in the Louisiana area and has been in and out of the south a lot. Richard is a fellow refugee of the financial world, but he is decidedly anti-corporations these days. He is possibly the most unconventional of the group (as far as I can tell so far), since he spends some of his nights and weekends with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence doing some charity work and some partying. We have some overindulged 20 year old kids who are disrespectful to the chefs and slack off at the class clean up chores. One of them is often referred to as "Rick the Dick" by the older students. Mostly people want to smack them. Another 20 year old, Jordan, is definitely the class clown. Always quick with a joke and friendly to everyone he cracks me up because he is always running around singing songs that he only knows 2-10 words of. The same 5 words over and over again. Luckily for him this is a bit endearing instead of annoying like it should be. I have started to think of him kind of like a little brother or a former babysitting charge. That is that I like to help him when I can, which has a couple of the idiot boys thinking that I am interested in him. (Can you imagine me as a cougar....HA!)

The class has been filled with some good and bad moments for me. The day we did our soup test I burned my chowder, over boiled my consomme and cut myself pretty well. When the chef came over to offer a word of encouragement, he said "It's not like it is the worst day in your life." I teared up, he looked paniced and was searching for an escape, everyone at the table started to ask if they could help....all in all I wanted to hide under the table for being so thin skinned. But the hard days have been offset by some serious wins. I got a perfect score on Egg Day which is reportedly one of the hardest tests and my belief that I am generally a pretty darn good cook as been proven out.....even if I need to add more salt to everything according to the chef.

Which brings us to some lessons learned so far in culinary school.....

1. You really don't want to know how much fat and salt is in that restaurant food you are eating. I routinely add 1/2 a cup or more of salt to my food and I am told it is "lacking some seasoning." And even the vegetables are cooked in bacon fat or butter.

2. Dishes come and dishes go, it is no use bitching and whining about it when it is your turn to do them.

3. Everyone overestimates how much they clean up after themselves. (Even me) Don't fool yourself, and try to realize that you really did contribute to it. SO get moving to help clean it up.

4. If you don't help clean, everyone who is helping will notice, and hate you. (They may even make jokes about you sitting around eating bon-bons.)

5. There is no use crying over spilled milk, or burnt soup. Take a deep breath, clear your board and start over again.

6. It's just food after all!

Try it, you might like it

It is amazing to me how as an adult we often see things colored in our past and allow that perspective to lull us into habits.

I remember as a kid hating to color. I never seemed to be able to find the right color. The crayons were always broken. And more importantly, my fine motor skills never allowed me to quite execute my vision. So I opted out. When I was asked to color, I would kind of scribble something up and call it a day. When I got to middle school, I choose to take an elective art class. My brothers could do better at what I was doing even without a class. After six months of attempting to draw a barn and never making any better than a C, my belief that I was smart rather than artistic or creative was cemented.

Fast forward 15-20 years and I really needed some artwork for Audrey's bedroom. Looking at the artwork in little kids books had me convinced that I could maybe make a passable attempt at making it myself. So I painted up the walls. And came out of the experience thinking that maybe I wasn't completely shorted in the artistic gene. Making cakes has also helped me find a more artistic side of myself. I still find myself struggling with thinking that I am not particularly creative, since I don't generally come up with designs or ideas myself, but instead search for inspiration or ideas in others. I also have found that since I don't think of what I do as artistic, when I am asked to put a price on what I do I am likely to seriously undersell myself.

The same thing has happened with me when it comes to running. I remember racing as a kid and always coming in last. I would NEVER win a foot race. So I didn't like to do them. Then when I hit puberty I REALLY hated to run. My chest was too big to be comfortable on the track. Add a dose of middle school self consciousness and I didn't want to get all red in the face and sweaty while I was running so much slower than my classmates. So I decided I don't run. Ever.

That edict changed when Carl died. I realize that I need to work on making my lifestyle as healthy as I can reasonable live with if I want to be around for Audrey in the long haul. She has already lost one parent, I don't want her to lose another sooner than is absolutely necessary. So I took up jogging. Strap the baby in the jogger and just go. At first it sucked. I won't lie, I hated it. But after a couple of weeks I started to realize that it didn't suck quite so much. In fact it was kind of cool to be able to breathe a little easier while running than I had the week before. Unfortunately, life happened and I had to stop my running program for a while. But this week I restarted it (indoors on the treadmill). And it sucks again. But not as bad as the first time I took it up, and I look forward to finding the day when it doesn't suck again. Maybe I will even do something monumentous for me and sign up for a race. I may come in last, or close to it, but I will be able to do it. And that's pretty cool.

Since I have tried these two things I have hated since childhood and found that they are actually not too bad, I have been looking around at other things I have written off as not for me and wondering what I should try next. And I wonder if anyone else has had the same kind of realization that something is pretty cool even though you remember it as a totally sucky thing. So tell me, what have you tried and found you liked?

I was talking about age with some of my classmates the other day and mentioned that going to culinary school makes me feel old. Ancient even. They all poo pooed the idea of me being old and went on their merry ways for the afternoon. But I still thought about it. Why do I feel SO old some days. Then the answer hit me.

I am the only parent in the class. I don't even think any of the other students are married.

So, I think I feel so old because even though I am not the oldest, the people who are near my age or older are still not responsible for/to another person. (And it doesn't help that most of the classmates are a full decade younger than me) If they want to go get a drink after class they don't have to worry about who is going to pick up the small child from daycare. If they want to take a job that pays $10 and hour for the experience and fun atmosphere and work until 2 am they can and only they will have to deal with the results of that decision. Now that I am a mother I have to take my kid's needs and desires into account. And I have to do it doubly so, because I know I am the only one who will.

Normally this doesn't even register. Especially when I am around other mothers. It is what a parent does. But when you are surrounded by twenty-somethings who don't have the same frame of reference, and do silly early twenties things, it makes you feel old.

But I wouldn't change it. Mostly.