First Day of School…..No, Work!

Whew! Tired girl alert!!!!

I can’t believe I’m so tired and I only worked for 4 hours today. I’m a wimp and I NEED to buck up because from the looks of today, it’s gonna be a looooong road ahead of me! Here’s a summary—

I (or actually, Betty) packed my lunch to take to work today. Adam, the exec. pastry chef I’m working under, is SO cool and lax and said whenever I want to take a break to eat or snack or whatever I should just go for it! He let me put my lunchbox in the cooler with all the fun desserts so that was a plus because I won’t have to stuff it with frozen packs everyday! In the lunchbox was leftover salad (without dressing) with goat cheese, pine nuts, dried cranberries and romaine. It was topped with a healthy piece of leftover mediterranean baked salmon from last night. YUM!!! I was SO excited to eat this around noon today!

I also packed a medley of snacks. Here you have almonds (which I ate around 11:00 this morning for a snack), grapes, goldfish crackers, and a piece of Betty’s homemade banana bread that she baked yesterday afternoon.

I ate the grapes and goldfish with my salad and, since I got off work at around 2:30, came home to have a snack. I had half of the banana bread slice with a yogurt I found in the fridge. No Chobani, but it worked!

The banana bread was TOO DIE FOR. I didn’t gain one pound in a year of pastry school but I might seriously pack on the pounds living in this house if I’m not careful! 😉

Here’s a recap of my work-day, production wise:

When I got in, Adam took me around to sign some paperwork and all that jazz. When I was done I immediately set to work! I started out preparing the dough for the Rye Soft Rolls I will be baking off tomorrow morning. I also made some Spicy Cracker Bread dough, Pate Sucree (sweet pie crust), regular pie crust for pumpkin pies and vanilla pastry cream.

For the next couple weeks, my schedule is going to run from probably 7 am- 3pm or so, 5 days a week. This week I have Wednesday and Sunday off! Here’s the exciting news though…………in November, I AM making a HUGE gingerbread house for the Festival of Trees here!!!!!! Adam told me all about it and then casually goes, “well this one will have to be all you because that week I have to go up to Vermont for my mom’s 50th birthday party.” Whaaaaat?! I have to create a massive gingerbread mansion all by myself???!!!!! Hopefully I will know more of what I’m doing by then!

We also get a ton of wedding cake requests and are doing one together on Saturday and another in two weeks. Needless to say, my days will be PACKED and I will be getting a lot of valuable experience! He told me taking pictures of anything and everything is more than totally cool so tomorrow I will go armed with my camera so I can share more with yall!

After I got off work, I drove around, familiarizing myself with my hometown since I haven’t lived here for about 5 years now. It’s always weird to go home, right?! I went to my gym, signed the contract and went to the “new” Publix to get some supplies. I didn’t get anything really interesting or special…..just some oats (obvi), apples, Kashi H2H cereal, WHIPPED cottage cheese, Fage, hummus, bread, whole wheat bagels and canned salmon. I think most nights I’ll be eating with Betty and Ted since she is an amazing cook and loves to prepare gourmet meals (and I can’t turn them down!).

Speaking of a gourmet cook, Betty made marinated pork chops with mushroom gravy tonight for dinner as well as green beans with bell peppers and garlic and gorgonzola polenta. The pork chops were marinated in a mixture of evoo, soy sauce, garlic and lime juice and the polenta recipe was from a past issue of Bon Appetit and involved heavy cream + cheese. A splurge (I only took a small amount on my plate) but TOTALLY worth it!

During “cocktail hour” (ehhh I could get used to this) I had half a glass of chardonnay and with dinner I had a small (half?) glass of a Bordeaux blend from Washington State. We also snacked on a few crackers with hummus and smoked salmon dip and I nibbled on baby carrots (not pictured).

Gah! It’s 8:40 and I am BEAT….alarm goes off at 6:00 tomorrow morning! I’m going to work until probably 3:00 then hopefully (if I can still walk), straight to the gym. A recap will be posted! I finally bought a new book today so I’m off to take a bubble bath and read myself to sleep.….hope you all had a great night and have a wonderful day tomorrow!