Look what I noticed outside my kitchen window this morning:


A tiny little hummingbird sittin' in a tiny little hummingbird nest! Seriously, the whole thing, bird+nest, is about the size of my fist. But craziest of all was seeing a motionless hummingbird.

Ahhhn. Made my day.

I'd always taken public education for granted...until recently, when I realized I was being charged an extra $181 PER UNIT for my culinary classes at a local community college. Because they decided I wasn't a California resident.

Resident or non-resident is the difference between paying $1900 for 9 units and paying $250.

I reasonably thought I was denied residency because of the whole Japan thing, but upon further thought I realized there was no way the college would know about it. After speaking with the admissions office and all that, it turns out that they decided I was a non-resident because I RENEWED MY DRIVER'S LICENSE OVER THE SUMMER. WTF.

All I had to do to get my $1600 back was give them a copy of the old license, which (PACK-RAT TENDENCIES BE PRAISED!) I hadn't yet thrown away.

So yeah. Education is reasonable again, thank you o' beauteous state of California and your tax-paying residents. I can get my entire hospitality management degree (and maybe a few extra) for what I thought I would have to pay for one semester.

Morals of the story: don't bother with expensive culinary school, and don't ever throw away your driver's licenses.

homage to sweet pizzas

One of my favorite pizzas of all time is the pear and gorgonzola pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. I almost had to initiate a tiny Japan-side riot when I heard they removed it from their menu, but they reinstated it before I came back so now we're all good. I love pizza bianca (no tomato sauce), and slightly sweet pizzas are even better.

I've been making a lot of pizza from scratch these days, using Peter Reinhart's oft-cited recipe (just google it) from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. You make a massive quantity of dough and then store a couple in the fridge (to use over 2-3 days) and a few in the freezer (to use over the next month or two). It's fantastic - dough goes from fridge to table in 2 hours.

We had a near overripe bosc pear sitting around, so I decided to try making my own version of the CPK pizza. Didn't have gorgonzola, so I just used mozz and feta, plus some halfway-caramelized (lazy!) onions and chopped walnuts. Didn't have the ceasar salad to go on top either. (So it was a little different! Who cares - it was still good.)

Let's talk pizza economics. CPK charges around $11 for that pizza. They probably only use an EIGHTH (weird-looking word!) of a pear on their pizza, because I COVERED my pizza in pear slices and I only managed to use a third of the thing. Cost for homemade? Half cup flour, yeast, pear, quarter onion, handful of walnuts, quarter cup of cheese...maybe $2.

No tossing pictures because...doughy hands and camera don't mix.

Pre-bake:



Post-bake:



MMMM MONOCHROMATIC!

No, it really was tasty. The yellow-brown cheese-and-carbs-and-caramelization color spectrum is probably the most delicious anyway.

Many thanks to Carla for the extended loan of her pizza stone! :)

my classes rawk

Oh my god. I just had my first cooking class - basic food preparation skills. Or something. Anyway, what matters is that it's 1.5 hours of lecture, followed by 4 hours of lab/kitchen. Though we didn't actually get to cook anything today, we talked about the class content and the different skills we'd be learning. Squee!

Basically, for $600, I will learn about and then demonstrate my abilities in: knife skills, poultry, seafood, meats (we break down a whole spring lamb and a rack of pig!), sauces, soups, stocks, dairy, eggs, quickbreads, yeast breads, cakes, salads, sandwiches, and appetizers (which we get to invite friends and family to!). Each of us in the class is also in charge of managing one section, meaning we'll order all the food in advance for lab and then supervise and grade our classmates.

My midterm (and how cool is this) will be a written exam followed by a lab practical: the trussing, roasting, carving, and serving of a fucking chicken!

I get to do a final project on whatever the hell I want, having to do with food. (Any suggestions? I'm thinking of going hunting for wild mushrooms...or writing about a certain local distillery.)

My other classes are menu planning and intro to the hospitality industry. I might actually end up dropping menu planning, because I think it's aimed at students who are further into the program...and I'm going to be exhausted by the twice-a-week 5-hour food prep anyway (this doesn't bode well for my career as as chef). The hospitality industry class is taught by an adorably awkward Asian man, and it looks really interesting - it covers a lot of the non-culinary aspects of the service industry (hotels, casinos, cruise ships, event planning).

THIS IS GOING TO BE AWWWEESOME

Testing out mobile blogging. About

Testing out mobile blogging. About to start my first-ever 5-hour class. Scared!!