will work for dessert

OMG. I’ve just fallen in love with probably one of the best desserts ever created. Not because I made it with love.  I love S’mores. And if you remember the picture I have in my first blog (the same one I use for my Twitter pic), you’ve seen S’mores with bananas. Good right? Delicious. Well then you turn it out. You bake S’mores into the banana. Even more Deliciousness. What’s even better, is topping it with toasted coconut. Then to top it off, I ate it with a scoop of Coconut Ice Cream. I’m in heaven. I’m horrible at uploading/posting pictures, but I promise to get a few of this delicious creation on here soon.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted. I’m working on getting to posts to you soon.

Yeah, my little resolution of posting more often didn’t go as well as planned. February was a crazy month after I got back from Vegas (more on that in a later post). I had to get things in order to turn in my application for school by the end of the month. So if you’ve kept up with my random twitter updates, I got an internship at a bakery here in the Bay Area. I needed it for work experience in order to apply to culinary school. So I’m working 7 days a week from here until I start school, which I’m hoping is in August. CRAZY!

When I last left you, I had just completed my FAFSA. I actually did my taxes super early this year. Then I headed off to Vegas for probably my last Vegas trip (I’ll have a nice little write up for some of the food I ate there). Once I got back, I had to kick my butt into gear to get my application done, which included writing a short essay which I haven’t done in years. And part of my application is having food experience which my life was spent in retail, so I had to go out and “pound the pavement” as my grandmother would call it. I had decided that I wanted to try to get my experience in a bakery, but when I looked online I found no openings for people with no experience. So I printed out my resume and went to a bunch of bakeries, and just asked if they had any openings even for a non-paid internship. No body is hiring because they have no openings or business is slow. Luckily one of the bakeries I had stopped into, because I was envious of their cute name, was offering a non-paid internship. I went in and got it after doing a working interview.

I’ve only been there for a few shifts, but I’m learning a bunch of tips and tricks. The guy that I’m working with says I’m doing a good job, so I’m stoked. I’ve been trying to get baking in here and there at home and I baked my dad some cupcakes this past Sunday. Yellow Cake is his favorite; and I found a good chocolate frosting to go with it. I ended up taking some home to my friends and housemates last night. I gave one to my housemate’s brother who had stopped by. He then went to his cousin’s house to visit and let her try half while he was there. When he came back to the house, he said that his cousin had asked if I could bake her a cake for her son’s birthday which is coming up. My first customer outside of my parents! I have to bake my Mom a Carrot Cake for her birthday at her request. I’m going to post up a few reviews on the recent recipes I made and you can try the recipes for yourself.

So I’ll be a busy little bee for the next few months, but I’ll try to keep up with posting. There’s a lot of stuff going on and with no downtime until school, I’ll probably be going crazy soon.

I wanted to share some recent findings, which will hopefully put your Valentine’s Day in a better light. Last week at my workout class, a nice person gave one of the instructors a box of dark chocolate candies. The instructor was nice and offered the chocolates to everyone, but I turned down the offer with a, “No thanks, on my diet for Vegas”. She replied with, “But they’re dark chocolate so they’re good for you”.

While yes dark chocolate is better for you than milk chocolate, it’s still hard for me to turn down chocolate in any case since I have such a sweet tooth. While, I didn’t receive any chocolate myself for Valentine’s Day, I’m sure a lot of you have. But never fear; feel free to eat that chocolate! (Hopefully it’s dark chocolate, and be mindful of moderation :p) A recent study has proven that chocolate helps reduce stress! That is good news; hopefully my future bakery will cater to stressful-chocolate-loving people. Hah! I had this article saved from last year that I wanted to post previously, but never got around to it. But now seemed like a good time to post about chocolate. Here are the articles from the American Study and from the Swiss Study.

Bonbon Appetite! (Hehe, couldn’t resist)

Congrats to the Saints for your win! I Hope you all had your fill of yummy food for watching yesterday’s super bowl. The hangover I’m referring to is my tummy hanging over the front of my jeans from eating too much! We had a potluck at my friends’ house and all the food was good, there were so many desserts to choose from. The funny part was that three out of four desserts were made of chocolate and peanut butter. I brought over Peanut Butter and Pretzel Truffles. It was my first time making them, and truffles in general. They were pretty easy to make, so I’m linking to the recipe here. Only a few things I would like to point out: The recipe says it makes 20 pieces, however I doubled the recipe and made what I thought were normal sized truffles and was only able to make 20 pieces. Also when I was coating the peanut butter/ pretzel mixture, I would let some of the chocolate drip off. But this would leave the truffles with only a thin layer of chocolate. I made 1″ truffles, so I felt it needed more chocolate to balance the peanut butter. I ended up melting more chocolate and re-dipping the balls, but I would recommend not letting chocolate run off in the first place. I also had to give more time to freeze and refrigerate, but I did double the recipe. The only other thing to mention is rolling peanut butter is messy!

My friends said that they were good and delicious, so I would definitely recommend this recipe. If you do end up making the Peanut Butter-Pretzel Truffles, let me know how they turn out in the comments.

Looking for a new school to attend is kinda like going to the store. Now, unless you know what school you want to go to, you don’t just find the first school and apply there. When you go to the store for something you want to buy, you browse the shelves. I mean you don’t just buy a 720p 52″ LCD, because it’s the first one you see. Sure it’s cheap for a 52″, but man 720p on a 52″ and the contrast ratio is only 10,000: 1. I mean talk about shit. I mean if you want a large screen with shitty quality, then there you go. But if you want something halfway decent, you look into the details more and then look at other similar TVs and check out their prices.

I went to 5 schools to check them out. It’s a daunting task, and you start receiving tons of emails and phone calls. But I either visited the school with a tour from a counselor or went to an Open House. I took all the course paper work and compared the classes, looked at which ones seemed to overlap to see if I’d be learning the same thing at all the schools. While most touched on the same subjects, there were only two that delved into aspects about running your own business. For me, I eventually want to own my own bakery, so this was key to me.  These schools did not post their prices on their websites, as most schools don’t like people going into sticker shock. The one school that did post it online is a not- for- profit school.

Yes, it all is very frustrating when you just want straight answers. The people you meet with are trying to enroll you for school, it’s their job. So don’t be fooled, don’t all of a sudden become the deer in headlights that they love. Get the answers you want. They usually sit you down after walking around the school to “Wow” you, and ask if you have any questions for them. Go with a game plan. Write your questions down before you go. Don’t let the smoke and mirrors get to you, have a note pad with you when you go. Write down questions as you walk along, or write down things you think is pertinent to your search. If you’re deciding between more than one school, these will be things that help you weigh your pros and cons of the schools.

Go forth, my young padawan and may the force be with you.

Phew! This month is almost over, and let me tell you it’s been a rough January. Just trying to get back into the gym has been a feat in itself. I’m sure as you can read, or should I say from lack of reading- I know I need to post more often, things aren’t quite going as planned on all fronts as I kick this year into gear. Let me give you the run-down.

1)      Exercise or lack there of it- prior to this week, I was only working out once or twice a week. And that makes me sad. As you have read a little about me liking to incorporate exercise into my lifestyle, without it I get sad. Sad, because my body starts taking shape and not in the way I like- round. When I keep up with exercise, for whatever reason I’m able to maintain my portions, which I believe is instrumental in maintaining weight goals. One of the biggest factors in my exercise is to reduce stress from work. Think Legally Blond, Exercise gives you endorphins and endorphins make you happy.

2)      Getting into school- this is a big year for me. I’m planning on quitting my job and going back to school this year. I finally nailed down dates of when school starts about two weeks ago. So along with my New Years resolution of making a new/better budget for myself, I had to think if I quit my job on X month, how much money will I have before I start school. Which as you have read before, I’m going to be starting this whole endeavor with nothing in my pockets, just the eagerness to learn. This is really scary, but I’m going to bite the bullet. Besides budgeting, I have to apply for school. I deal with paperwork everyday at my job, but this is a huge undertaking.

3)      Ducks in a row- Now that it’s the end of the month, I’ve actually been pretty good and diligent about doing things to get all my resolutions in order and keep up with things. Things aren’t really falling behind or slipping through the cracks this year. This is pretty amazing, since I’ve taken on a side project as well. One thing I still have to do is apply for a part-time job in the food service industry. Scary!

With all that being said, I have most of my loose ends tied down and my schedule is back in order. So I promise more frequent posts and I’ll start digging into getting back into school so you can too!

Happy New Year All! As you can see, I finally got around to transferring my blog to my very own url. Yes, it still is very long unfortunately. I’m not completely finished with it, and I’m still trying to get all the kinks out- bear with me. I apologize I didn’t post much during the holidays; I’m guilty of running around like a mad woman. However, I did want to thank you for continuing to follow me and support me. It got me thinking, that I don’t really support people who don’t really follow in my lifestyle. I know that sounds mean, but I guess after a while of being taken advantage of I got tired of being so helpful to people who did nothing for me in return but cause me grief. But you support me, so I want to help you. Well this is a new year, and I’m forging ahead with my life and going to school! I promise to post more consistently from here on out to get you more information about going back to school.