breakfast lungs

there really is nothing better for breakfast then some egg and cheese between two slices of homemade bread. especially when that bread is filled with blue cheese and walnuts.

two tips i've learned about eggs and grilled cheese recently. i've found that scrambled eggs are best cooked nice and slow to get a wonderful fluffy texture. i barely see the flame on the burner while i push the eggs around in the pan to make sure they cook evenly and keep from burning.

my other bit of education came from chow, a great website that has all sort of practical cooking advice. one thing i viewed on the site was part of their video series your doing it all wrong. in these video clips basic cooking knowledge is corrected with simple steps on how to improve typical culinary endeavors. like this one about grilled cheese, where i learned that shredding the cheese and covering the pan during the first portion of cooking will melt all that dairy much more effectively.

more petit fours!

here are some close ups of my petit four glaces. although they may not look it, these little cakes were quite challenging. there was a lot of precision involved in coating and decorating them.

my pipping skills are something i really want to work more on, so it will be nice to begin learning about cakes and decorating next weekend.

a close up of the marzipan flower

petit four "little oven"

for the last two weekends in school we have been working on our petit fours. these are small cakes and cookies that can be eaten in a few bites. the word petit four translates to "small oven". back before oven thermometers were readily available oven temperatures were tested by placing these small items in first.

i really enjoyed working on these even with the whip cracks of one group member constantly snapping at my back. when we completed our petit fours they were displayed on a serving tray, which we decorated with some first attempts at marzipan flowers. my flower (upper left) is a little ragged, but not bad for an initial attempt. i'm excited to work on this more.

the future

originally i had intended for this blog to be nothing, but documentation of all my baking endeavours at home and in school. this format has become slightly boring for me, soi've decided to expand my posting to encompass all things food related.

so, with that said prepare yourself for future posts containing topics like unique foods, cooking tools, specialty grocers, eateries, kitchen failures/successes, book reviews and anything else that strikes my fancy.i'm hoping this will spark more consistent updates on my part and leave everyone more captivated. as if you weren't already.

and just so your not left without a visual stimulus here is a photo of ground zero, a picture of the kitchen i now inhabit. and just in case you were wondering that is not a dead animal wrapped in plastic on the stove, it was actually my second round of sourdough experimentation that i left to rise on the warm range top. covering with the trash bag helps prevent a crust from forming on the dough.

building a better loaf

i'm out to try and figure out a good home recipe for the sourdough starter i've been tending to. past attempts have resulted in too dense a bread, but this last effort was a little more successful. although i think i was a little timid with the salt. anyway, its only a photo, so forget what i said, it was actually salted perfectly.

one more trick i want to hone my skills at is scoring bread. its one of those things i noticed that over thinking can really slip you up.

there is one thing...

forgot that i had this picture. after a small stint of taking the bus due to chilly weather and my concern of further bodily harm (wrecked twice in one weekend in the beginning of dec.) i followed the bus route via bike. i was hoping it might be a quicker route. it wasn't, but i did get to shoot a photo of dreary downtown with a view of the "smile" sign i saw every rainy weekend morning while using the trimet. and look there in the distance, its the bus!

picture upon picture

more blabbering soon. enjoy.