Employment, or something like it
Much has happened in the last few days. I met with the "food professional" on Thursday. I'm not sure why I need to put her title in quotes; I guess I still just find it hard to believe that one can make a living doing something that demands such a cool title. It's like I've been working my entire life in anticipation of one day becoming a "food professional".
Anyway, I went over to her house in the afternoon and loafed around on a kitchen stool while she proceeded to bake an apple strudel coffee cake, a yellow cake filled with glazed pears and pastry cream and drizzled with chocolate glaze, and a batch of extremely potent espresso and chocolate ganache sandwich cookies, all for profit. She was in the middle of testing 15 dessert recipes that had been submitted by a pastry chef for commercial use by a dairy board. This type of assignment lets her work from home, baking things at her leisure in her own kitchen and editing the recipes for clarity in preparation for an eventual photo shoot with a food stylist. I can't really imagine a better deal. She generously allowed me to wolf down a sample of each dessert and affirmed my amateurish comments such as, "Is that pastry cream supposed to blob over the side like that?" (answer: we're still not sure, but she thinks the cake may have been inspired by the food stylings of Donna Hay and therefore is supposed to have a gloppy look about it).
I also got to see her amazing cookbook collection, which includes Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, a work that I quoted extensively in my Master's thesis but never actually saw on paper. Funny, that. The food professional has turned out to be a wonderful mentor with a great sense of humor; she's a fellow angry liberal and is as disgusted with Dominick's as I am. We vented about our friends' attitudes towards cooking and discussed variations of kitty litter cake. She is rad.
I also heard back from the head guy (I can't remember his title, exactly) at Ramekins, which is the culinary school in Sonoma where I had a kind-of interview last week. It appears that they will have enough for me to do over the next few months to carve out a part-or-semi-full-time job. That's exciting! So I hop in the car next Wednesday with Randy for the first installment of my Big Food and Wine Adventure. I have three wishes for the next three months: first, I hope to learn a lot; secondly, I hope to eat piles and piles of divine food. Lastly, I hope to remain at my present weight, or at least at a weight that will still allow me to zip all my jeans up, because I went on a jean-buying rampage last spring when I found a style that actually fits my not-insignificant butt and stumpy legs (thank you, J.Crew Petites) and I would prefer to not have to make any further fashion investments of this nature for a long time to come. If anybody has a Bowflex that they want to donate, please make yourself known. I'm going to need something to drape all my jeans on.
Anyway, I went over to her house in the afternoon and loafed around on a kitchen stool while she proceeded to bake an apple strudel coffee cake, a yellow cake filled with glazed pears and pastry cream and drizzled with chocolate glaze, and a batch of extremely potent espresso and chocolate ganache sandwich cookies, all for profit. She was in the middle of testing 15 dessert recipes that had been submitted by a pastry chef for commercial use by a dairy board. This type of assignment lets her work from home, baking things at her leisure in her own kitchen and editing the recipes for clarity in preparation for an eventual photo shoot with a food stylist. I can't really imagine a better deal. She generously allowed me to wolf down a sample of each dessert and affirmed my amateurish comments such as, "Is that pastry cream supposed to blob over the side like that?" (answer: we're still not sure, but she thinks the cake may have been inspired by the food stylings of Donna Hay and therefore is supposed to have a gloppy look about it).
I also got to see her amazing cookbook collection, which includes Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, a work that I quoted extensively in my Master's thesis but never actually saw on paper. Funny, that. The food professional has turned out to be a wonderful mentor with a great sense of humor; she's a fellow angry liberal and is as disgusted with Dominick's as I am. We vented about our friends' attitudes towards cooking and discussed variations of kitty litter cake. She is rad.
I also heard back from the head guy (I can't remember his title, exactly) at Ramekins, which is the culinary school in Sonoma where I had a kind-of interview last week. It appears that they will have enough for me to do over the next few months to carve out a part-or-semi-full-time job. That's exciting! So I hop in the car next Wednesday with Randy for the first installment of my Big Food and Wine Adventure. I have three wishes for the next three months: first, I hope to learn a lot; secondly, I hope to eat piles and piles of divine food. Lastly, I hope to remain at my present weight, or at least at a weight that will still allow me to zip all my jeans up, because I went on a jean-buying rampage last spring when I found a style that actually fits my not-insignificant butt and stumpy legs (thank you, J.Crew Petites) and I would prefer to not have to make any further fashion investments of this nature for a long time to come. If anybody has a Bowflex that they want to donate, please make yourself known. I'm going to need something to drape all my jeans on.
posted by cindym at 8:42 PM
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