One source of sadness that has resulted from leaving my corporate job for cooking school is that I really miss that surrogate family known to many as “work friends”. It’s a tradeoff that I’m a bit accustomed to, having been fortunate enough to have amazing colleagues to leave for new opportunities in abundance, but even so, I hadn’t been with my most recent company for all that long, and there were some awesome people there who made me feel like I belonged.
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Bread school is making me feel a little challenged in the social arena these days. Setting aside my newly acquired habit of hauling many loaves of artisan bread around town, still warm from the oven from which I shoveled them just moments before and handing them out to friends, neighbors, former colleagues, and even complete strangers, I’m finding that school has permeated other parts of how I relate to those around me in a big way.
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If you were in New York City for The Fourth and it’s surrounding weekend, I don’t need to tell you how awesome it was to have Mother Nature’s cooperation for the first time all summer. In a desperate attempt to catch a few rays, lest they disappear for yet another month, I spent every waking minute of daylight on the deck or the roof for three days straight.
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Yesterday I finished up my last day of work, but it doesn’t feel like that at all. I should be jumping for joy. I should be out on the town dancing until 4 AM with a glass of champagne in my hand. Instead, I’m in a Twilight zone, where unemployment hasn’t quite sunk in, and cooking school, well, it doesn’t seem real yet. I know I’m in for a reality check come Sunday night, when I’m setting my alarm for 6:00 AM. Since it’s the best possible reality check ever, I don’t really care.
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Have you ever been so inclined as to pour 1 part Jameson, 1 part Bailey’s Irish Cream into a shot glass, drop it into a freshly drawn pint of Guinness, and then chug the concoction as it fizzes over the side of the glass, swallowing like mad to choke it down the hatch before you notice that the whole thing has curdled?
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I IMed Brian at work today to nag him about going to the gym tonight. Why, you may be asking, would I go ahead and redeem one of the precious few nagging vouchers that are so sparingly distributed to recently-engaged women during these happy pre-wedding plan days? I nag, because I care. I nag because he had eaten at least two of these in the span of 24 hours.
For a little while now I’ve been hiding a big secret. It’s incredible, life changing news, and I’m completely surprised that I managed to keep on writing about avocado-mango salsa, strawberry cream tart, and the stand-alone amazingness of artichokes as if nothing else was happening all of this time.
Surely you didn’t think that I’d forget dessert for the meal we cooked for my parents last weekend. It was the least that I could do after dragging them around every street South of 14th for no reason in particular.
Between the chaos of work trips, half-packed suitcases and endless hours of convention center banter, there was cake. Delicious, unapologetically rich, lavishly frosted cake.
Um, two cakes, actually.
When the weather gets warmer, there’s nothing like a nice, light dessert to round out a grilled meal.
