Day 77 - January 25, 2010

Day 77:

Today ... I didn't go to school.

Saturday I sprained my left ankle and broke my right foot. Lovely. I ended up staying home with swollen feet and did my job seeking skills workbook at home instead.

How did I break my foot??


Here is the story:

Ethan's birthday was on Sunday the 24th and he turned 2! Because he's such a wild little man who loves to run, run, run and play all day long we thought that he would LOVE to go play and run around at the fun park. We were all sorts of excited to take him and just have a fun day with him. It was fun, but it had some not so fun parts as well . . .

Well we got to the fun park and he was a little nervous at first, but after Mart dragged him up to the top and went down the slide with him he thought it was a blast! He would run all over the place and then to the arcade games and push the buttons and then back to the soft play area.

Mart was the one chasing Ethan around the soft play and was starting to get worn out so I told him I'd go play with Ethan for a while. I was all excited to go run around and play with him so I grabbed his hand and we headed in. Well the soft play area is kind of dark and it's super full of squishy padding to help protect the little kiddos. We got in and around the first corner and Ethan bolted for the opening to a slide. There were a zillion kids running around and I didn't want him to get pegged so I lunged to grab him. As I did so, I fell off a step and onto the 6"-10" thick foam padding. Because it was padded and not hard ground I wasn't able catch myself and my feet just crumpled below me. I heard 4-5 pops in both feet and went dizzy and sort of blacked out for about 5 seconds.

When I came to, I first looked to see where Ethan was and he was just standing there watching me. After a minute or two I realized that I was able to stand and took Ethan's hand and started walking up the ramp in front of me. As I rounded the corner I called for Mart to come and help me. He came up to get me and saw the tears running down my cheeks and knew something was wrong. We got back down and to a bench and within minutes my feet were crazy swollen, but I was still able to walk.

I still had to go to walmart to pick up a few things for Ethan's birthday so I had to rely heavily on the cart to keep walking. I refused to use the wheelchairs, they would make me feel like an idiot. After walmart, we headed to find something to eat. My baby boy was so hungry and was getting antsy. We decided to go try the new fox's pizza place. They were so good to us. Ethan has been super picky and only eats select things ... like soup. They don't sell soup but had a sample batch in the back that they were testing out so they could start selling it. They pulled it out and warmed it up so he could eat it. After we were finished there, he was running all over the room and was being really pretty good. Mart told him to go wait by the door so he did. After a second, he figured out how to open the door and ran outside. Just as he was about to hit the parking area he stopped and turned around to see if we were chasing him. He thought it was a fun game. Just as he turned around to look at us a car drove by. If he hadn't stopped to turn around he would have been hit by that car. There was no way they would have seen him coming either, two cars were blocking him from their vision. Just after the car passed, he turned and bolted toward the lee's parking lot. That kid is fast too! He's probably one of the fastest little kids I've ever seen.

I started screaming "OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH!" and everyone turned to look at me and Mart took off after him. In that second my adrenaline kicked in and I totally forgot my foot was in crazy pain and I started running after him too. I'm so thankful that he paused for that one brief second to turn around to look for us, I can't even imagine my 2 year old getting hit by a car like that. Martin and I about had a heart attack and are hearts were racing the entire way home.

It was definitely an eventful birthday celebration, and one I will probably never forget.

After getting home and checking out my feet, I was able to assess the damage. I'm pretty sure the left ankle is just sprained. It's huge and purple, but not so bad. I'm also pretty sure my left foot probably has 1 if not more than 1 fracture in my toe bones on the top of my foot. My toes are turning dark purple and both of my ankles are purple and bruised. Most people if they hurt their ankle only hurt one so they have one to fall back on. Sadly that was not my case.

Anyway, they are still huge and sore but I'm doing alright. Here are some pictures:

Day 76 - January 22, 2010

Day 76:

Today I talked about my next couple weeks with Rex and we decided that I'm going to be doing salads, dressings and the salad bar. I started out by making some blue cheese dressing for the salad bar that day and it was delicious! Last time I had blue cheese dressing it was surprisingly bland considering it was blue cheese so I was a little nervous. I ended up using gorgonzola instead of traditional blue cheese (so much better!) and added salt and pepper. I loved it! I will definitely be making it from now on.

Delicious Blue Cheese Dressing:

1 cup blue cheese (I used gorgonzola, so much better!)
1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1 1/2 cups sour cream
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp Dry mustard
2 Tbsp onion, minced
2 Tbsp chives, minced (or scallions)
Salt and white pepper

In a bowl combine the mayo, sour cream and lemon juice. Add the dry mustard, onion and chives. Stir in the cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.


After I finished my dressing I helped Adrienne weigh out and shape rolls and then scoop chocolate chip cookies. After that I set up lunch for 10 in the class room. We needed their dessert so I attempted to plate some coconut cream pies, but they hadn't set up quite yet and that turned into a royal disaster when I scooped an entire slice out plated it and then looked back in the pie plate and saw the entire crust sitting there . . . Yeah I passed that job off to Adrienne at that point. After that I helped serve lunch and everybody loved it. We served philly cheese steak prime rib sandwiches (always a hit), with homemade potato wedges and slaw.

After lunch I cleaned up and stopped to talk to Jon for a bit about next weeks schedule. I was on for the salad bar, dressings and he assigned me to be in charge of a lunch for 150 people on Thursday. We would be serving chicken cordon bleu, rice pilaf, a veggie, rolls and a salad of sorts. I would be organizing it.

That was about it for my day

Day 75 - January 21, 2010

Day 75:

Today was the day to cook and serve my ham for lunch! We pulled it out of the walk in and put the glaze all over it and let it in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour and a half. Every 20 minutes or so I would pull it out and add more glaze to it building up the flavor on the outside. When there was only about 45 minutes left until we were serving I added the fruit skewers and glazed it all one last time.



About 20 minutes before lunch was going to start we pulled it out and let it rest under the heat lamps we had set up earlier that day.


The second part of my assignment to cook the ham was to slice and serve to on the spot at my carving station. Rex was out there helping me too.




Everybody loved it! It was the first ham I've ever cooked and it was a hit. I stayed out there through almost the entire lunch while people came back for seconds. I didn't try any of it, but I had people tell me that it was probably the best ham they've ever had.

Twice-Smoked Orgasmic Ham (Yes..that's really the name)

1 (12-15 pound) smoked bone-in ham
Whole cloves
Pineapple slices
Maraschino cherries
1 cup frozen tangerine juice concentrate
1 cup Polaner apricot perserves
1/2 cup French Pommery mustard
1/2 cup Grey poupon dijon mustard
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp coarse ground black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne

Smoke the ham at 225 degrees for 3 hours. (We cold smoked ours with apple chips for about 4 hours). Remove the ham and place on a sheet pan. Secure the pineapple slices and the cherries to the ham with toothpicks.

To make the glaze, combine the tangerine juice concentrate, preserves, mustards, brown sugar, ground cloves and peppers in a bowl and mix well. Generously slather the ham with glaze and bake in a 350 degree oven for 1 1/2 hours. Brush the ham with the glaze every 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest for 30 minutes before carving. "This ham is soo good it will have you Oooing and Ahhing!"

**Side note: Amy's husband showed up right after lunch and had some leftovers..he liked it by the way ... and Amy decided to try a little bit of it. She looked at me and told me it was soo good and basically told me that it lived up to it's "orgasmic" name! Ha ha ha. I know she won't like me writing that in here, but I just had to. :)

Day 74 - January 20, 2010

Day 74:

Today wasn't a very eventful day. It was crazy busy in the kitchen so I stayed in the computer lab and worked toward getting caught up on my evaluations. Once people cleared out a little bit I headed into the lab to cut up some pineapple for my ham.

That was seriously about it. Pretty low key day

Day 73 - January 19, 2010

Day 73:

Today I got to school and was told that I was making a ham for a lunch on Thursday. I pulled the ham out and weighed it to make sure we were going to have enough for the party. After we figured all that out we put it in the smoker. We were going to do some cold smoking with apple wood chips. Once that was going, there's not much else to do to it, so I just left it alone.

When I finished with the ham, Adrienne and I made parfait's with our leftover strawberry mousse from Marcie's wedding cake. We both decided that we couldn't just do mousse and whipped cream, that it needed something else so we decided to make some granola and put that with it. We found a recipe on Cooks Illustrated that looked good and got to work making it.

Classic Granola

1 cup walnuts, chopped
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup blanched almonds, slivered (or halved)
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup raisins

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Mix first 6 ingredients together in a large bowl.

Heat syrup and honey together with oil in a small saucepan, whisking occasionally until warm. Pour mixture over dry ingredients. Stir with spatula until mixture is thoroughly coated. Put mixture onto a cookie sheet and spread into an even layer.

Bake, stirring and re-spreading mixture into an even layer every 5 minutes until granola is light brown, about 15 minutes. Immediately turn granola onto another cookie sheet to stop the cooking process. Stir in raisins, then spread granola evenly in pan. Set on a wire rack and cool to room temperature. Loosen granola with a spatula. Store in an airtight container.

Once the granola was finished and we tasted it, we both liked it a lot but agreed that for this dessert it needed to be a little sweeter. We decided to toss it in some brown sugar. That made it so delicious and it was my favorite part of the parfait for sure!

After we finished with the parfaits we decided we should go get information on our job seeking skills class that we needed to take. We went down the hall and talked to Sean about it and on our way back to the kitchens the fire alarms went off. We kept heading toward the kitchens and headed out in the back with the rest of our class. I was super grateful that it was not a -20 degree day and frigidly freezing, but the sun was out and it was not snowing! It turned out that a water pipe had broken, and some how the pressure of that set off the fire alarm...?? Something like that.

Anyway, after that I went over to the business department and talked to the lady about my computer literacy class that I also needed to take. I was able to test out of two sections, and it only took me 30 minutes - 1 hour. Nice! I was going to attempt to test out of the Word and Excel sections too, but after looking through the book I saw a few things I didn't know (I don't use Microsoft Office 2007...I use 2003) so I decided that I would just take those sections and have a refresher course. It wouldn't take me too long to get through it.

After I finished that, we pulled my ham out of the smoker and put it in the walk in to chill.

Anyway, that was about it for my day. Pretty eventful. :)

January 15, 2010

The day of Marcie's wedding:

This morning I woke up and started getting everything together that I would need to take to Salt Lake with me to set up this cake. In the middle of all that, I got a message from Rex telling me to call him. I called and was told that somehow the cake board ended up with cola droplets on it and there were now spots on the fondant covering it. How that happened, we have no idea! When we put it in the walk in, it was perfectly clean and white. During the day today the guy came to fix the walk-in (good timing, right?) and so they went to move our cakes to the back and that's when they noticed it. Rex wiped the soda off. Luckily it was the board and we were covering it with flowers and cake anyway. After that, we loaded everything into the back of my car and we headed out.

Thankfully we arrived safely and everything was good with the cake. The only thing that happened on the way there was the cake had sunk probably about 1/4" so the dowels stuck up just a little bit in the middle tier. No big deal. We were going to be putting ribbon on it anyway.

We got to the reception location and got to work. We were only able to get in 2 hours before it started and by the time we got everything together we only had about an hour and a half total to get it set up and decorated with flowers.

Adrienne and I are a good team and we work together well and quickly. Kendall (Adrienne's boyfriend) came with her and helped us as well, and that was really nice! It made it a bit easier.

Here is our cake all stacked up waiting for ribbon.


Figuring out how we wanted the ribbon. Each layer was going to be different.


Kendall holding our ribbon straight in the front while we adjusted the back.


Just finishing up the ribbon:


We were pretty proud of our cake and how well it turned out, especially after all the problems we had with it. It's even more awesome that the entire thing is cake and there are not any fake layers! Go Adrienne! (With a little help from me...)


Our cake all ready to go, waiting for the flowers


The back of the cake. I used corsage pins to hold the ribbon in. I like the look of the pearls on the back.


Helping Debbie put all the flowers on


Our cake 100% finished. It turned out awesome and I'm completely proud of it. Marcie liked it and told me it was better than what she thought she even wanted! (Debbie and I planned out the whole thing)

Day 72 - January 14, 2010

Day 72:

Today was wedding cake assembly day.

Adrienne started off the day by making the strawberry mousse for the filling. We wanted to wait until the day of so it would still be as fresh as possible for tomorrow. After that was finished and chilling, we started to assemble the cakes.

We were concerned with the fact that the filling on this cake is mousse and the middle and top tier combined would weight quite a bit and cause the mousse to squish out the sides of the bottom tier. After talking it over with Kacean, she told us we needed to pipe a ring of a good thick Italian butter cream around the outside and then fill the inside with the mousse. That would be enough to hold it in. **Note from after the wedding: The butter cream trick worked and the mousse stayed in the cake after it was all assembled!!**


Here is Adrienne filling the bottom tier with mousse and Megan is watching in the background. (She's making her own wedding cake this summer and was trying to learn as many tricks as possible before then):


After the tier was assembled I started frosting them with the butter cream while Adrienne started filling the second tier.





Because the second tier was so large, we would need some hefty dowels in the center to hold it up. Rex helped us out with that part. :) I have to say, it was super weird bringing a hand saw to school that day in my backpack. . .


After they were all assembled and covered in butter cream we were ready to start covering them in fondant.


The bottom tier was 14" in diameter and we needed a space large enough to roll out the fondant. This is the only counter space we had and it's pretty tall, so Adrienne had to stand on a crate to get it rolled out.

We were able to cover the top tier okay with no problems and the board the cake was going to sit on. After that point, we started to have some issues. The fondant we were working with had been made about a month ago and frozen. To help it become more elastic-ee (is that a word??) we put it back into the mixer and added extra glycerin. In that process, I guess we over mixed it and that caused more problems. The fondant was super crumbly and wouldn't hold together like it was supposed to. We kept tearing it when we tried to pick it up. We tried to cover the middle tier and it was so large and so tall, and the fondant was rolled out so big that when we tried to cover it, it just ripped and fell right off the cake. To solve this problem, we ended up just making a fresh batch and putting it on the cake fresh instead of chilling it overnight and letting it set up. We covered the cake and let it chill for a few minutes after it was already covered. That was so much easier than our other options. The fondant rolled out a lot thinner (which was super helpful for this large cake) and was a lot more elastic-ee. :)

Then came our next challenge. We had to cover the 14" tier. Rex convinced us to try with our old fondant so we didn't have as much waste and it would save some time. It was so awful, Adrienne and I both thought that there was no way it would turn out. The fondant cracked right in half and so we had a huge seam in the middle of the cake. We also had huge chunks missing and cracks all over the entire thing. It seemed completely hopeless. Rex could see the stress, anxiety and doubt in our faces and told us to just wait a minute. He doctored up one side of the fondant for a few minutes and turned it around to show us and in some spots, you almost couldn't tell what we went through. We ended up covering everything with shortening and powdered sugar/cornstarch mix and some how, miraculously we ended up saving that tier without making a fresh batch of fondant. In the end when you looked at the cake, no one would have even the slightest clue what we went through on that tier. You almost couldn't tell it was there...

Here is the bottom tier when we started out before we fixed it. This is what Adrienne and I saw and thought that there was absolutely zero hope saving:



Here is the bottom tier, about halfway through being doctored by Dr. Rex.


Here are all three of our tiers ready to be set up tomorrow. We were super happy with how they turned out, especially after we had so many issues with the fondant.



At the end of our super long day (Adrienne was there for 11 hours, I was there for 9 1/2) we started to clean up and had to come up with a place to store the cake overnight where people would leave it alone. One of our walk-ins was broken and no in use, so we put it in the walk-in and locked it up so no one could go in there.

That was it for our day, we headed home to get some sleep so we could come back and load it all up and take it to Salt Lake.

Day 71 - January 13, 2010

Day 71:

Today Adrienne finished baking the last layer of the cake and started making butter cream. It was quite the process and several test batches later, she had it figured out and it was beautiful! Her last couple batches were white and fluffy, as opposed to her first batches before she figured it out which looked like whipped margarine. She did an awesome job!

After that we stacked our cake up to see what the layers would look like next to each other.

I really like how fat the middle tier is compared to the other two. It's definitely my favorite part of this cake!

That was it for today. Tomorrow we have a lot on our plate...tomorrow is assembly part of this project.

Day 70 - January 12, 2010

Day 70:

Today we spent the whole day baking cakes. We only had a couple pans so we could only bake a layer or two at a time. We wanted the batter to be fresh for each batch so we would scale it and mix it right before it needed to go in the oven. By the end of the day we had all but 1 layer ready to go. Tomorrow we are just going to finish baking the one layer and move on.

Day 69 - January 11, 2010

Day 69:

Today I got to school and warmed up my brown sauce. It needed to be warm when we put it over the steaks. After that I coated the steaks in a seasoned flour and browned them off on the flat top. Once they were brown we put them in a hotel pan and covered them in warm brown sauce, sauteed mushrooms and caramelized onions and left them to bake for an hour or so. While they cooked I learned how to properly clean the flat top. I also checked on Greg's baked potatoes that were for lunch to see how close they were getting.

When they were finished, I took them out to the line and ended up staying there and helped serve. Kristi got sick and couldn't come in so Katie was on register and I served.

That was about it for my day. The steaks must have been good because by the end of lunch, I had sold all of them! Not bad for a Vegetarian!

Day 68 - January 8, 2010

Day 68:

Monday I am in charge of Swiss steaks. They are somewhat similar to a chicken fried steak, but has some differences. Swiss steaks are a cubed steak like a chicken fried steak, but they are only coated in flour when they are browned not egg and flour. Once they are browned they are covered in a bit of gravy, caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms and put to bake for 30 minutes to an hour.

I started the day off by making a brown sauce. I needed a mirepoix cut into a small dice and a sachet. I started by browning my veggies, and by browning them I mean browning them! I think that's the longest I've ever cooked veggies on the stove. I took me a good 30 minutes if not longer. Once they were brown, I had to add my flour to make a roux and then brown my roux. That took a long time as well. The brown veggies and brown roux is what gives the brown sauce it's flavor, just like gumbo. When you make gumbo, your roux should be so dark, it's close to black. That's the authetic flavor of it. Anyway once that part was finished I added it to my beef stock and was able to go work on something else. The sauce was left to simmer for a couple hours to let it reduce and thicken.

After that I got some help and we started trimming the fat off eye of rounds. What an annoying process! I needed to do it as carefully as possible because I was doing a yield test at the same time. I needed to end up with less than 23% waste once all the fat and silver skin was cut off. The silver skin was covering the entire slab of meat and was way hard to get off without taking off a bunch of meat as well.

After spending a ton of time working on it, Blake (a high school kid) came in and I asked him if he wanted to help us trim the 3rd slab of meat. He said okay and 20 minutes later handed it to me perfectly clean! Apparently he worked in a butcher shop and I had chosen the right person to help me. He sped up the process considerably! He was in the process of making french onion soup and flavoring his stock so I offered a switch. I would flavor his stock if he finished trimming mine! He agreed and we switched jobs. He went way faster and I got his stock flavored. When we were finished trimming we sliced them into 1" steaks and then ran them through the cuber machine. It mechanically tenderizes the meat and gives it that distinct cubed steak look.
After we had them all finished I added up my loss numbers and I passed my yield test with ... 21.6% waste!! I was so excited that I didn't have to do it with that type of meat again!

After that I put the meat into the walk in and was ready for lunch on Monday.

Day 67 - January 7, 2010

Day 67:

Today when I got to school Rex had just barely put my meatloaf and potatoes in the ovens to start baking. They would need a while to get cooked all the way through.

While they were cooking I started prepping some broccoli to go with it.

My cousin Marcie is getting married on the 15th and Adrienne and I are making her wedding cake. So while the meatloaf and potatoes cooked, we started planning the cake.

I went to go check the potatoes and meatloaf and ended up asking John and Rex what temperature I should take the meatloaf out of the oven at and they were both in one of their moods and I ended up getting a math lesson instead of an answer. It started driving me crazy! By the time they were finished, I had about had enough for the day. When they gang up they pick on me all day long! All in all, when the math lesson was over I figured out that I needed to pull the meatloaf out of the oven at 155 or 158 so it could rest and hit 165-170.

When it was finally finished I pulled them out and let them rest in the warmer in the back and checked my potatoes (which would be done at 180 degrees).

I sliced my meatloaf and steamed my broccoli and put them all out on the line for lunch.

Besides being super frustrated because of John and Rex ganging up on my for a math lesson, it was an alright day. A bit frazzling, but alright.

Day 66 - January 6, 2010

Day 66:

Today was my prep day for meatloaf and scalloped potatoes for lunch tomorrow. Adrienne helped me all day today and it was nice working with her. I needed to get a bechamel going so I started with that. After that was on the stove, we washed and started slicing my potatoes. I also sliced up some onions and set those aside until my bechamel was finished.

I made my meatloaf and ended up with 4 good sized loaves. It looked pretty good, considering I don't eat meat.

After that was finished we started layering up the scalloped potatoes and halfway through I ran out of bechamel! The recipe didn't have me make enough so I had to start again. Because of this, my project ended up taking way longer than it should have. I guess it had it's benefits, I was busy all day long. I hate not having anything to do while I'm at school.

After my second batch of bechamel was finished, we finished up the potoates and cooked them about halfway so they would cook faster the next day.

It was a good day and nice because I was busy all day.

Day 65 - January 5, 2010

Day 65:

Today I was in charge of chicken alfredo for a lunch we were catering. I started the morning off by putting a gallon of heavy cream into a non-stick skillet with a 1/2 pound of butter and let it start reducing. While the cream was reducing I started working on my whipped cheesecakes. They were going pretty good and I was staying busy running between the alfredo sauce and the cheesecake. As it got nearer to lunch time (which was moved up a half hour from what I was originally told) I needed to spend more time on my alfredo and had to keep putting off my cheesecake. I needed to get my noodles cooking because I had a ton of them and they would take a while.

I got to the last step on my cheesecake and started to put it into the pans and spread it out when I ran out of time and couldn't focus on it anymore. Megan helped me out and finished my cheesecake while I finished my alfredo.

My sauce wasn't quite thick enough, we ran out of time and had to thicken it up faster than we would have liked. We ended up adding a little bit of a cream base and tossed parmesan cheese in with arrowroot powder. Arrowroot powder is a thickening agent like cornstarch, but unlike cornstarch it is clear and not white when it dissolves. After that was all in the sauce, we seasoned it up with salt and pepper and added a touch of white wine and it was delicious!

We got two more new people today, Rosemary and Cami. They were in charge of cooking my chicken because I was still focusing on other things. I trimmed the pieces up and Rosemary started cooking. We also started steaming some mixed veggies to go with the pasta.

After it was all ready, John and I started plating it up. We had a big bed of noodles with alfredo sauce and a couple chicken tenders sliced up with a side of veggies. It all looked really good! I was very happy with how it turned out.

Day 64 - January 4, 2010

Day 64:

Today was our first day back from Christmas break. I cut broccoli into florets and steamed it for lunch. I also reheated a rice blend for the lunch as well. After I finished with that, I put some chicken breasts and tenders into an Italian brine for my chicken alfredo tomorrow. I made a normal brine (1/2 cup salt to 1 gallon water) and then added some sage, thyme, basil and oregano. After I finished putting the chicken in the brine, I got started making a graham cracker crust for some whipped cheesecake I am making tomorrow.

Today we also got two new guys, Greg and Matt.

Day 63 - December 22, 2009

Day 63:

This was our last day before Christmas break and there wasn't really a lot to do. All there was for me to do today was peel 15 potatoes for mashed potatoes and then put them in water.

Around 11-noon I talked to Kace and Ethan was throwing up so I went home early to help and take care of him.

Day 62 - December 21, 2009

Day 62:

Today I decided to stay home and work on Christmas projects. I was exhausted and had way too much to do and almost no time to get it done.