Busy Now...

My pastry classes finally have started! Yay! I have a lot to write since I've been incommunicado all week. I do have some excuses...First, our power was out for 2 days, I have had company here a lot of the week and, most significantly, I'm now in class every day and have homework to do at night. Whew! I think this is what I've been waiting for! Last Sunday, Todd and I had brunch at a place called the Clinton Street Baking Company. All I can say is "WOW!" I'm sure it will be one of our new favorite places. We also had a little excursion to Costco! We can see it directly across the river from us in Queens, but we've not been there because we couldn't figure out the best way to get there! It's not more than a mile away, so we knew we could just walk, but weren't sure how we'd get the tons of things we knew we'd buy at Costco BACK TO THE HOUSE! For the solution, see my post entitled "Grocery Cart." Yes, we bundled up and wheeled the grocery cart a mile into Queens to go to Costco. What a successful trip it was, as we bought a bunch of meats for the freezer, a big thing of Diet Cokes, yogurts and nice produce. We also stocked up on a few things in preparation for Trudi's visit over the weekend - TP and wine! Ha ha! It took us about 20 minutes to wheel everything home when we were done, so we will definitely do that again. Todd had an early flight back to Durham on Monday. He spend most of the week in the home office and got to spend some quality time with the dogs, as well as his mom and some other friends. I spent Monday running a few errands, enjoying my last free day, but of course, made sure I was home early enough to snuggle into the couch to watch Prison Break and 24. Monday night is my only TV night, and I have gotten pretty serious about it!! I was expected to report for my first pastry class on Tuesday morning at 7:15, so I made sure to go to bed early. I caught a 7:00 express bus outside of the apartment at 7:00 sharp, made it on the 7:06 train and was standing in line for my ID, my tool box, my locker and my remaining uniform items (cap and nametag) right at 7:15. We had a 2 hour orientation, followed by 2 hours in the pastry kitchen, introducing ourselves, meeting our instructor for Module 1 (Chef Kathryn), and then talking about some basic baking weights/measures/conversions. This is one of the areas where my previous education will be tremendously helpful! I can convert weights and measures without even thinking about it!! There are 16 people in my class, and all but 3 of them are women. We didn't spend as much time with intros, so I'll be making an effort to try to get to know them all in the next few weeks. When I got home on Tuesday night, the power was out in my apartment, so I spent about an hour reading and doing my homework by mini-maglite in bed and fell asleep in anticipation of another early morning. Wednesday morning in pastry class, we did some baking exercises - first we were given a list of baking ingredients to weigh using our new digital baking scales. The exercise was meant to teach us how to use the scale and how to start recognizing "how much" each ingredient weighs. We also did a tasting exercise - don't get too excited - to begin learning the differences in different types of milk, creams, butters and cheeses. We had to "taste" 8 different types of butter, for example. I can honestly say that I definitely understand why some cost more, but am happy that I won't have to do that particular exercise again. Chunk of butter on a cracker isn't really a great snack in my book!