Journal of the Damned

Day 3 of my quarantine -

The torture the short one is subjecting me to has me close to breaking. She is a demanding tyrant, waking me every hour during the night with complaints, hacking coughs and sounds that make me fear for my hygiene. I am tired and unable to do anything but acquiesce to her demands that I play dress up and feed her pasta even for breakfast.

I fear that she has threatened my fellow observers of her life with illness, since they have mysteriously vanished. My phone calls to them go directly to voicemail or are met with excuses like dental work as a reason they are unable to come to my rescue.

With the physical torture, she is also adding psychological torture. I ventured to the store today because we were completely out of some key supplies necessary for life as we know it, and she announced in her OUTSIDE voice that she was going to throw up. Which she wasn't, but it caused several other mothers to glare at me and steer their precious children away from me.

I fear without adult interaction and removal from this house, bad things might happen. For example, I am finding that I like the Disney Channel. Clearly, death is next.

Blog Me, Blog You, Blog Her

Hello, my name is Alicia and I am a food blog junkie.

So when my school was looking for a group of students to help cater a party for the BlogHer Food conference, of course I was in. They were looking for people from 10 am - 6 pm and 6 to 11 pm or for people to volunteer for the full day, which is a little too long for me to be away from Audrey, but I decided to work the later shift. Just in time to help plate and be there during the event.

I arrived and was immediately pulled into a team of 4 that were going to be shipped upstairs to the "bacon experience" room. Chef Weller who is our culinary department head gave us our marching orders, "make bacon popcorn and a pasta carbonara with rice noodles." Somewhere between the orders and the room on the fourth floor we lost one of our team members.

So we arrived in the room, and found no bacon. One of the two guys I was working with said that "they" were going to send it up with the Bacon Ice Cream and Chocolate dipped bacon later. So we set to work scrambling 50 eggs, mincing parsley and cooking rice noodles. I took the eggs and parsley while the boys worked on the rice noodles (since they had worked other catering gigs and had more industry experience).....taking 10 bags of noodles and dumping them into a humongous pot. Neither of them had cooked rice noodles before and managed to turn them into a very large gelatinous ball of overcooked starch. Several boxes of bacon and new rice noodles later, we were on target.

When the party started, I was happy to get stuck serving the Bacon Ice Cream. I got to (sort of) talk to the bloggers. ("Hi would you like to try some Bacon Ice Cream?") And work on spying the name of their blog that was listed on their name badge. I spotted a couple I had read before but none of my favorite bloggers. I had more pictures taken of my hand holding out a spoon full of ice cream than I cared to count. (I totally should have had a manicure and moisturized!) Only one blogger threw me for a loop when she asked me if I was going to change the culinary world when I graduated. To which I replied "Not likely." Which led to a brief discussion about why I was there if I didn't see a future in culinary arts. So, I just went ahead and blurted out that my husband died and I was working on fulfilling a dream. After which she recommended I start a blog about it. After all, I have a story to tell. Heh.

When the chef demo started (never heard of the chef, but that doesn't mean anything because I am actually not really tuned into famous chefs) I was shipped back down stairs to help clean the kitchen. Where it became clear that I would much rather be AT the party than catering the party. (Reason #987 why I don't really want to work in a restaurant.)

The party finally wrapped up about 10:15 and we dragged the dining room of the school's restaurant back into order, took the rented tables out to the loading dock and cleaned the kitchen spotless. At 11 the chef's gave a moderately moving speech about what great work we had done. Maybe it would have been more moving if we hadn't all wanted to just leave already..... And everyone still there at the bitter end got left over promo bags from the party with some pretty cool swag. (I particularly loved the huge coffee mug, espresso mug set and $25 gift cert from chefs.com).

All in all it was an interesting evening.....even if I will be paying for the change in my sleeping habit for well over a week.

Kitchen Tales

This week started another round of kitchen classes for me. Foundations III. This class consists of one day prepping for the kitchen followed by a kitchen day in which we have about 2 hours to produce two full plates.

It has been a revelation to me. But not necessarily in the cooking. I don't think that the chef instructor likes me much. I have never had a teacher/boss who didn't like me. Hell, teachers down-right LOVE me for crying out loud. (Well, except for my second grade teacher Mrs. Bachelor for whom I think it was less that she hated me and more that she hated her job and all children in general. In fact, I often imagined that she and Mrs. Trunchbull from Matilda would get along fabulously. Or maybe Ronald Dahl was one of her former students and based the character on her.) I am a great student. I like to learn, I pay attention and I am enthusiastic in class. I am a freaking teacher's wet dream.

Admittedly my week has not started off well. The second day of class I had to skip school due to Audrey's vomitting issue, and the next day I was late. (BTW, thank you to the 2 Jackasses who killed their cars on the Bay Bridge causing my delay and making me contemplate what it would be like to wet my pants as an adult!) But I have tried to redeem myself, cleaning tirelessly and adding copious amounts of salt to my food. To no avail. I continue to get B's on the plates I turn in.

I realize that basically I am being a whiny brat about not being liked by the teacher, but the teacher pet in me is dying to be recognized. And I hate it when the teacher leaves you hanging in the wind with your hand in the air to call on some idiot who isn't paying attention and is only half awake anyway.