Back to School

I'm back on Eastern Standard time, and back to work at Sur La Table. I'm currently living in the land of brown moving boxes, but my school kit is unpacked, my uniform is washed and ready to go. Since I've returned to Boston, I've done very little cooking. I have an adequate kitchen in my new apartment, but readjusting and unpacking has taken precedent for the past week and a half. If you can imagine, I'm very eager to get back into the kitchen and get busy. School starts tonight!

Less is more: As I am settling into my new apartment, I'm trying to reduce the amount of junk I own. I'm also trying to reduce the junk I put into my body. A recent trip to the grocery store took me half and hour just to buy 3 items. Sounds crazy, but I'm reading the labels and trying to buy more natural products. I had a craving for some ice cream and had seen an ad for Haagen daz's new 5 ice cream. Finally some food manufacturers are getting the idea that you don't need to pump your products full of artificial and chemical ingredients to produce something good. I bought a pint of the Vanilla 5. The ingredient label was awesome: Milk, cream, sugar, eggs, Vanilla. Really, what else do you need to make ice cream? The taste? -Smooth, creamy and great Vanilla flavor, but without all the extras. I can't wait to try some of their other flavors. They have Ginger!

Tonight's class is chocolate. We'll be making chocolate truffles. I'm looking forward to learning how to temper chocolate. I understand the idea of it from my previous work at a Chocolate shop, but haven't been very successful in the past trying to temper it at home. The importance of tempering is so the chocolate dries/hardens and looks shiny and retains it's snap. Poorly tempered chocolate will look dusty because the cocoa butter has seperated from the chocolate, ie it's not pretty. I'm ready to learn some more.