Sometimes I really hate chefs...

... which is a bit of a problem considering I would like to be one some day. I am in the process of writing about my adventures in Ireland but until them, let me make a diversion.

This morning I took the practical exam for my Intro to Professional Cooking class and I was running a bit late because sleepy stupor I thought it would be fine it I hit the snooze button four times, making it so that I slept twenty minutes longer than I had originally intended. So I was running late and got there with about thirty seconds to spare and threw my coat and hat on and ran into the classroom where the only available cooking space was with the Canadian of Hispanic descent whom I may or may not have mentioned before in my first post about Italy. Anyway, I've cooked with her before and found her to be a bit difficult to work with. She's a bit bossy (understatement) and thinks that she's the only competent one in the class. So I set my stuff down, washed my hands, saw that the super secret assignment that was supposed to be a surprise was actually Spaghetti alla Carbanara just like everyone in the class had predicted it would be. The hint he gave us last class was that it would be something with egg yolks. Duh. There wasn't really much else it could be.

So she was getting pots and pans and messing with the stove so I started slicing pancetta. The knife I was using was a really dull classroom one though so it was REALLY difficult to cut the pancetta which is difficult to cut in the first place because it's about 50% fat and has been aged. So I finally got the first piece cut from the rest which she took and started to cube. The second piece was particularly difficult but when I finally got it separated from the rest of the pancetta I put the block of it back on the front table so that other people could use it. I was about to start cubing it when she grabbed it from me. Like, literally, my knife was about to make contact with the meat when it all of a sudden wasn't there anymore. I kind of looked down and blinked stupidly like, "did that just happen?". Then I turned and looked at her for an explanation to which she replied with raised eyebrows, "we need to be kind of quick. Find something else to do." and pushed the notebook toward me. We have two and a half freaking hours to get this really simple recipe correct. Whatever. So I read the directions and it said that you had to separate eggs but I guess my head wasn't all there because I was really taken aback and kind of pissed about the whole pancetta thing so I just completely cracked the egg, egg whites and all in the metal bowl. Unfortunately she was fairly close by and watching me when I did this and she was like "NO, NO, NO! Egg yolks! We're only using egg yolks!" and I apologised and became more freaked out that she was making such a big deal about it.

So I correctly separated the eggs and started whisking them with a fork because I couldn't find the whisk. Well apparently that pissed her off too and she said, "no, honey.", found a whisk, put her hand on her hip and gave me a pitying look like I was some kind of 4 year old who had never set foot in a kitchen before and was just wearing the uniform purely by accident. I had had enough by this point so I told her that it really didn't make a difference especially with this recipe but she put the whisk in the bowl anyhow and just proceeded to shake her head at my idiocy. So I whisked angrily and took my frustration out on those poor, innocent egg yolks.

Then the directions said to add the parmesan cheese and salt and pepper so I did that and proceeded to whisk it together. She then came over to see how I was doing slash reprimand me some more. "What did you do wrong? It's not liquidy enough."

"I did what the directions said to do."

"It doesn't look like there's." she said, taking the bowl from me and putting under Nina's nose.

Nina was working with John behind us. She's really nice and one of the only things that got me through that practical was being able to talk to them, Kate, and James who were working at the station next to ours. Nina just messaged me actually and sympathised with my experiences today. She's awesome. : )

"It's because you whisked it. Just use a fork so that it doesn't combine together so much." Thank you, Nina.

Then my partner pushed the bowl into my hands and said, "just start over." as if it had been my idea to use a whisk and ruin the egg sauce. Good one. So I could hardly believe that she did that and took the bowl and threw the stupid crap out. Nina gave me an apologetic look on my way to the trash can but it didn't really help because I still felt like an idiot.

I washed the bowl, got some more eggs, measured out some more parmesan and went back to our station. She told me to wait until the water was boiling for the pasta until I started on the eggs so I just read the directions to see if there was anything to do in the meantime.

It was then that we figured out that our stove wasn't working. Neither of them. She kept twisting knobs and moving the pots around and flipping switches and then proceeding to get mad at me when she discovered that one of the stove tops was off after she had just turned it off. I kid you not, she said, "what are you doing? This one isn't even on!". We ended up using the stove at the front of the room for boiling water and Nina and John's station behind us for pancetta cooking. Finally it was done and the pasta was ready to be added. I made the egg sauce, only this time I used a fork.

At this point I was feeling more than a little discouraged so I just proceeded to do dishes and clean the station. I decided that I would just drain the pasta and that she could do everything else which consisted of adding the pancetta and oil to the egg mixture, stirring so that the egg didn't cook, and then adding the pasta since I really didn't have confidence in myself to not turn it into an omelet and fail the whole exam. So she did and we were done and it turned out fine. It lacked salt which was probs my fault but I didn't even care because I was done and didn't have to work with her anymore.

She left and I finished cleaning off the counter tops and Kate came over to me and asked me how it went. I said it turned out fine but that my partner was a little bossy. She replied with a knowing look on her face and said, "yeah, she can be really difficult to work with. We've all done our time and know how it is." That helped a lot because I knew that it wasn't just me and that I wasn't a total idiot. It also made me mad though that she did that to Kate. Kate is so nice! And so patient and a wonderful cook! She definitely doesn't deserve crap like that. Nina, Sam, and James all agreed about how difficult she is so I was basically fine and was having fun in the class again.

Then Kate invited me to go to coffee so we went to a cafe and I got this Nutella cappuccino thing and it was good. They are really cool people and I'll be sad that I won't get to continue working with them. I wish I could continue my education there and have another year and half in Florence. That would be so awesome.

I am really not looking forward to going home. I thought it was just that I was sad to leave Europe but I really don't want to go home. I mean I miss my friends and my family and all but really I just don't want to be home. I want to keep traveling and keep exploring. I took a walk the other day on the other side of the Arno for about 5 hours. I found neighborhoods and churches and gelaterias and awesome houses. It was so cool. I listened to my ipod but the main songs were Alloway Grove by Paolo Nutini and Hey, Soul Sister by Train. I love those songs. I found another way to Piazzale Michelangelo from this awesome neighborhood on a hill and watched the sunset from there. So pretty. The Duomo looks so out of place from the rest of the city. It's kind of funny. I'll post a picture of that sometime.

OK, this post is ending now. I've ranted enough. Thank you for reading... or not.

Gelato count: 22

Nannertot escapades: 14

Song currently stuck in my head: You Know Me by Robbie Williams. We heard it on our first night in Rome and it's kind of become our song for the trip because we looked up the video which is hilarious and we keep hearing it on the radio. Love it.

B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L

So it has recently come to my attention how stupid it is for me to not be writing in this thing everyday. Honestly, why did I start a blog? Why did I start a blog with this title/username if I wasn't going to actually write about the wanderings of an anglophile. I want to change this. Which is why I am hereby starting B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L. or Blog every day in April + The First Week of May To Make Up For Lateness. It would just be regular BEDA if I hadn't forgotten about this project thing. Honestly April really took me by surprise this year. I was so surprised in fact that I went to Grom (best Gelato place EVER!!) and asked for the flavour of the month which was a delicious green tea with bits of white chocolate in it and was surprised/horrified to realise that it was the first of April and that the flavour of the month had changed to some kind of fragola (strawberry) milkshake! Not a very funny April Fools joke at all. Also I spent the first weekend of April in Paris with Danielle for Easter and was away from a computer. Enough with the excuses...

So I last left you off about a month ago before leaving for London. Wow. That is just unacceptable. Well, I already have a blog post about London in the works and it should come up after this one. In the interest of keeping this blog in sequential order I will not talk about Spring Break or Paris in this particular post. Instead I will talk about... get ready... Florence (!) since that is where I am living and I have yet to really do that. Pretty ridiculous. I am really sorry about what I put you, my lovely readers, through sometimes. You have probably been contemplating un-following me for the past month and a half because the only reason you started following me in the first place was to hear me talk about cool places. And I haven't even done that!! I'm so sorry!! I love you all and I will try and make it up to you!

OK, here I go...

So far I've told you about my classes, my crazy roommates and friends, nannertots... and... sadly that's it. It is tourist season in Florence right now. I guess that means that everyone is on spring break at home and abroad so they are all coming here. It is also really beautiful outside. It is sunny and getting warmer while still maintaining a colder temperature in the shadow of the Duomo. I am sitting inside at the kitchen table of our apartment. If I look to my left I can see the buildings and apartments surrounding me. Down below is some sort of courtyard. I can see the roofs of the buildings. They are the red ceramic tile sort. The tiles sort of layed haphazardly on top and next to each other. Weeds are starting to sprout between some of them. The building across has chips in the cream painted concrete and you can see the red brick show through. The green shutters swing open and shut with the wind. The Terrace across the courtyard is full of flowers which are just now starting to bloom a brilliant fuchsia and canary yellow. The top of the Mercato Centrale is visible and at around 19:00 I can hear the venders outside the market pack up there leather jackets and scarves and other souvenirs and pull their carts down the streets toward home for the day. For now it's quite silent. A sparrow is sitting on my window sill and twittering but other than that I can hear an occasional distant Italian voice apart from the sound of my own typing. Oranges are going out of season. Now it's strawberries and pears. Tonight for dinner I will have a fruit salad consisting of apples, oranges, strawberries, and bananas drizzled with a small bit of sugar to make the fruit sweat and the juices mix together. Fruit salads are lovely. They never really get old for me. I can always enjoy them.

Every day on my way to class I pass this clothes shoppe on the corner of my street. In the window are two manikins. One is without hair and is always, and has been since I've been here, dressed in some sort of Oriental purple dress. The other's outfit changes quite frequently. Always the same pair of plaid black and gray straight legged, high-water trousers and black wig. Sometimes she is sporting a black plaid coat with some read in it and other times its this very conspicuous red plaid coat of exactly the same style. It's basically the same coat but with different colour focus. The one is mainly black and the other is mainly red. As I said, I walk past this every day and every day the coat is different. Now I'm not silly enough to imagine that it is the manikin that can't make up her mind. Instead I like to believe that there's some sort of power struggle between two different shop assistants. Both of them fancying themselves world class status when it comes to clothing shop displays. I imagine them silently feuding by changing the coats. It's been the red one for a while however. Either the black coat enthusiast has been recognised for her full potential and offered to join a special school or even league for fancy clothing shop window displays or her red coat loving fiend of a colleague has hidden her beloved black coat in the depths of the shop basement so that the red coat will never again be usurped from it's rightful place in the display. I return to the drama of the clothing shoppe display window tomorrow to find out what has happened during the night or early morning of the shop's opening. Until then I can only wonder. I can also finish the blog post about London. Yes! I think I will do that!

Until next time, Arrivederci!!

Gelato count: 13

Nannertot escapades: 8

PS. Sorry this was so weird. I have a cold and am kind of drowsy so my musings are a bit weirder than usual. You can tell me how crazy I am. I won't be offended. : )

A Month Late Update

Went to Mama's Cafe today and got a bagel! What do I rate it? ... about a 8 1/2 to 9. It was quite good. Still not up to Kim's standards because it wasn't New York style (if you are from the South like me or perslaps live in another country where they might have it then a good freezer section bagel would be Sarah Lee). Chewey on the inside and fairly doughy on the outside. I forget if Kim said New York style had a crispy shell or not. Whatevs. Mama's bagel was pretty good and kind of reminded me of bagels from home. And it was a hell of a quest to try and find it too! It's very out of the way for me unfortunately. It's over the Arno via the Ponte alla Carraia which is 2 bridges down from the Ponte Vecchio and quite a few streets down from that. Luckily it's a pretty straight shot from where I live so I don't really need a map. When I started that way I was at the Duomo though and trying to find this one really good panini place. It's quite literally a hole in the wall but the paninos are amazing! I gave up because I couldn't find it and decided to venture over the river for the bagels that I've heard so much about. On my way back home I saw this awesome grocery store that sold a bunch of imported stuff. I found Duncan Hines cake mix and bought the Butter Recipe Fudge because it was on sale for € 3.10 (still a lot of money but it was usually € 5.50! My roommates were pretty excited. At least Anna Lee and Kim were when I showed them. Katie isn't back yet but she is probably going to flip out when she sees. She should probably tell me what her favourite flavour of cake is the next time she sees me so that I can make it for her some time!

So, we last left off after having met Brittany and leaving the horrible experience that was the "cocktail party". I don't really remember day to day after that so we're just going to talk about classes now. My schedule is as follows:

Monday: Intro to Professional Cooking and Italian Language: Beginning

Tuesday: Florence Food and Culture Experience

Wednesday: Contemporary Italian Cooking (dropped) and Italian Language again

Thursday: Wines of the World (added) and Italian Vegetarian Cooking

Intro to Professional Cooking

Got to the school about 20 minutes early and was very glad I did. I was kind of intimidated and there were a lot of other students around. There was a long line at the front desk so I figured I should stand in it like everyone else. The receptionist was pretty but also kind of severe. She spoke fluent Italian to her co-workers and did it beautifully with an enviable accent. She looked bored and a bit annoyed that we weren't just taking care of our own problems and at the fact that we couldn't pay our fees without her. I kind of think she hates me because I had a bit of a problem. I was supposed to be an Apicius student because I'm taking all cooking classes but it said on her information that I was an FUA (Florence University of the Arts. Sister school to Apicius) student. I was a bit confused, asked if I could pay my fees later because I was stupid and didn't bring my credit card and all I had was €90 on me. She said yes and I went over to my class. I saw that everyone was wearing chefs coats so I asked the professor and he told me to just get an apron for today. I went back to the grumpy receptionist and told her what he told me and she said, "The school doesn't loan out aprons- you know what... here" and she handed me two aprons. I guess she didn't want to deal with me anymore. So I was the only dork with an apron on in class. Everyone else looked amazing and professional with their white chef's coats and hats and knife sets. John was in the class and I talked to him in the beginning and told him that I was worried that I was going to get my but kicked but he assured me that I would be fine because it was an intro course. So I stood there in my green sweater and apron with my arms crossed because it was freezing in the classroom. There was a sliding door open or something.

Anyhow, we went around the room and introduced ourselves. In front of me was John from my school in Texas and it turns out he used to be a line cook! I never knew that! He's a big guy, about 6'2" or 3". John is quite nice and I'm glad we have a class together. Next to John was Sam. Sam is about my height with dark hair and square black glasses and he's from Belgium. Next to me is Kate who looked like she was about 24. She has a very soft, kind voice. Originally from the East coast I believe, but has been living in San Fransisco. Is a gardener and kind of reminds me of a hippy. Want to be her friend. Behind me was James from London who I was super excited about for obvious reasons and also a boy from Israel who's name escapes me. The guy from Israel is easily 6'5" and is kind of scary. He has kind of a pointed face and he was observing his knives at the beginning of class. When he introduced himself he said he worked in a restaurant as a cook but decided to get his culinary degree. I guessed that he was going to be really good.

In the middle of class Sam turned around, smiled and said he liked something and pointed to the neck area. I have no idea what he was referring to. Was he making fun of me for not looking like the rest of them and wearing an apron instead of a chefs coat? Was he making fun of the fact that I had a necklace on? I don't really know. He may not have even been making fun of me at all. I have no idea what he said. Whatever. I really started to wish that I had a chefs coat though. They seemed warmer than what I was wearing. And more secure. All buttoned up and such right up to the neck. So anyway, the professor told us to open the cupboard below us and take out everything we saw in there. At this point I started freaking out. "Eff! Are we going to Iron Chef this thing and have to make 16 amazing gourmet courses out of something crazy and weird like pork rinds??" It wasn't though. He was basically just having us see what was down there and where it was supposed to go. We put it all back and he showed us our ingredients and told us what we would be cooking that day. We talked about mussels and the correct way to clean them and then we cooked 3 different recipes with them. One was Impepata di cozze (mussels in a spicey broth. dry white wine, garlic cloves, parsley, and E-V-O-O! There's some pepper and salt to taste but that's pretty much it). It was pretty good. Then there was one that was stuffed with bread crumbs and then baked (Eh. Kind of dry like chewing carpet). Then there was my favourite with a saffron cream sauce. I love saffron (or zafferano). I think it might be my favourite spice. Hard to say though. I grouped with John and Sam and when I joined them at their table Sam said, "you better be good". I kind of smiled but I was like "Crap!" I kind of had a minisode during class because they all looked so much better than I did so I basically started the whole doubting whether I made the right choice and whether or not I'd be able to make it thing again. That isn't fun. Anyway, I did fine and the recipes all turned out quite good.

Next was Italian. Not too much happened except that I walked the wrong way around the Duomo which made me about 10 minutes late. I'm excited to learn Italian though.

Tuesday was Florence Food and Culture Experience which I had with Katie and we had a tasting of Pecorino cheeses (so good!) with pears, bread, and honey. I went home and had that for dinner that night. There was one girl in my class who wasn't there through a programme and had just taken a year off to take cooking classes. She's in Chocolate Artistry. I'm so jealous of her. I started wondering whether I should have done that because it seems like I'm wasting my time in classes that aren't for culinary arts majors. I guess I should explain that. Basically the only professional class I'm taking is my Intro to Professional Cooking. That was the only one I was allowed. I was very limited on my class choices because I'm not a culinary arts major because they don't have culinary arts as a major at my school. My plan is to get my degree in Restaurant Hotel and Institution Management and then go on to get my culinary arts degree but when I see people my age already in culinary school it makes me wonder if I'm just wasting my time. Why not just cut two years off my schooling and go to culinary school now. I don't want to own my own restaurant. I just want to cook. So I should be going to school for that, right? Unfortunately, it's all a bit more complicated than that.

Wednesday was Contemporary Italian Cooking and Italian again. Contemporary Italian cooking was a bust. The class was 2.5 hours and she had some people read the chapter aloud for the first 2. Then we made ground up chickpeas with shrimp, which is, rather lamely, exactly what it sounds like. We ground up chickpeas which took a ridiculous amount of time and then put some olive oil and a shrimp on top. I left without trying it as I think I had a pretty good guess as to what it tasted like. I dropped this class. Thank god.

Thursday was Wines of the World which was intimidating and everyone seems to know a lot about wine. I learned a lot though so hopefully I'll know a lot by the end of it. Italian Vegetarian Cooking was pretty cool. I like my classmates and I have the same teacher for this one as I do for Florence Food and Culture Experience.

Sorry if this was kind of boring again. I will leave a more entertaining post soon. I promise. I've actually typed it all out but am witholding posting it until this one has been up for about a day.

Gelato count: 9