It’s been awhile! I had hoped, maybe overly optimistically, that I would continue to post EVERY week after school ended. I should have made that happen but in the excitement of traveling to see family and the holidays I got out of the habit. I have been keeping a mental tally of a handful of highlights from the last month and a half to share with you though :). Enjoy!
Try the Grey Stuff, It’s delicious!
Don’t believe me ask the dishes. So the very first meal I made at home post-graduation from culinary school? This lovely eyesore:
It doesn’t look super awesome but in my defense we literally had about 5 things in our fridge before our travels that we wanted to use up. We weren’t about to buy anything extra before being gone for almost 3 weeks. And the result you see above. The school sent us home with any leftovers from the final event and featured in this dish was Lindsey’s Millet-based “soft cheese.” The perfect base for an alfredo sauce. . . with basil that needed used up. . . and the fact it turned grey is still a bit of a mystery. It seriously looked like wet cement. On the plus side, if Little Plate ever wants a dinosaur party I have go-to sauce recipe that would be lovely as bog mud. And it was tasty even with the addition of tempeh. Mr. Plate ate it up.
The Holidays
We were able to travel home to Idaho/Utah and visit family for a few weeks. Little Plate was a fantastic travel buddy and did really great as we traveled by bus, train, plane, and automobile. Too bad we didn’t get to add a boat to the list :). I was proud that she traveled so happily for hours and hours even without a nap. We didn’t have to “entertain” her once with a screen or electronic device and on all the flights she became best friend to all those sitting behind us. She thought it was pretty awesome to get a drink and tiny package of biscuits on the plane.
Our time at home went by quickly and I cooked much more than I originally planned to. There were lots of fun festive holiday recipes I wanted to make for everyone to experience. Most were received well but some had mixed reviews. . the beet soup was a bit too foreign for some of the crowd. I don’t know how you couldn’t like it but then I have to remember that all of these months eating so many great plant-based dishes has change my palate and perspective.
Little Plate was happy to play with her Grandmas, Papas, Cousins, and Aunts and Uncles as well as our Utah Framily.
Home Again Home Again
By the end of our trip even Little Plate was asking about our car and little house in Texas. We were all ready to go home and sleep in our own bed. When we finally made it home we were so exhausted and excited to go to sleep in aforementioned bed that we hardly noticed someone had broke in to our apartment while we were away. Someone jumped in a window, left a lot of finger smudges, knocked some batteries out of a charger that was nearby and left through the front door which was still unlocked. The window screen was found down the the hill and looked like it had been there in the muck and mud with a lot of debris blown over it for quite some time so we figure our front door was unlocked the majority of the time we were away.
Other than the clumsiness of knocking the batteries everywhere we cannot find anything that is missing. Nothing! In fact, we found $23 that neither one of us remembers putting in our desk drawer. We could have left it there and forgot or maybe someone let themselves and subletted our apartment for a night or two? We don’t know. Of course, we don’t have much that would be worth taking. . . no big screen tvs or fancy electronic devices. We do have a lot of books. All accounted for. Christmas miracle for sure! For a minute we thought my secret granola recipe was missing. . . and yes it is worth taking but we found that so a granola recipe heist does not seem to be the motive. It’s not really a secret recipe. It is amazing though.
200 Cupcakes
Just when I was about to feel really spoiled with a week just being home with Little Plate and lovely lazy toddler/mommy mornings once again I was invited to get some of my Natural Epicurean assisting hours done at the school. I went in 3 days that week and knocked out a bunch of the hours I had left. We prepared a lot of very delicious food for a Yoga Yoga staff meeting. We made some awesome salads and mozzarella skewers with roasted zucchini but the real show-stopper was the amazing mountain of desserts we made. We made 200 cookies and 200 cupcakes. I was pleased to help with the cupcakes from start to finish. They turned out quite pretty and very tasty too! Chef Lorena made the toppings for me to decorate with and they were delicious. It was awesome being back in the kitchen with Amanda and Lindsey and we had a great time catching up a little bit.
Birthday Cake
Mr Plate turned one year older this month. I really wanted to make him an amazing post-culinary school cake. He requested a moist chocolate cake with cream cheese vanilla frosting. And he didn’t want a health-supportive cake, but rather the real deal (Not that you can’t make delicious healthier options). Sorry y’all. It was his once-a-year wish to go all out and I think it’s okay to do so for such a celebration and it was made from the finest from-scratch ingredients ;). Well, his request was pretty specific but I still did quite a bit of recipe hunting and found what I felt would be the perfect cake recipe. I wanted so badly to make a spectacular layered cake for him but things didn’t pan out quite how I hoped. I found a whipped cream/cream cheese frosting recipe that I tried to adapt to being made in the Vitamix but it got over mixed and went kinda runny. Not gonna work for my vision of making this-and yes this is from one of the VERY MANY food blogs with BEAUTIFUL pictures:
Instead we ended up with this very homemade looking cake:
Just call me the Julia Childs of food bloggers. Ha. Ironic for the person that had so much fun making pretty creations in culinary school to end up with something that can be on the Nailed It website or Fail Blog. Oh man, you can’t win them all. However, I will say this was the tastiest moistest most delicious homemade chocolate cake we’ve ever had and it freezes well too! Mr. Plate didn’t care that it looked a little Wabi Sabi.
New Job
A series of unfortunate events led to one fortunate opportunity for me. I won’t go into the back story but I am now working at the Natural Epicurean as the procurement manager for the rest of the time we are in Austin and until the Fall 2016 professional chef students finish. I am grateful for the opportunity to be at the school a little bit longer and to rub shoulders with the remaining staff and the great students that are there for the next two months. I’m also grateful for my previous experience in purchasing and for my love of grocery shopping 🙂 and as always for Mr. Plate and Little Plate’s patience during this culinary school chapter of my life.
I hope you are all having a WONDERFUL new year!
Until Next Time!
There will be a next time and I have fun news about what we will be doing this summer.
Loves,
Ashley