First Week Down

I survived the first week of classes. Was a very long five days. It's going to take a few weeks to get used to the whole school schedule thing again. My courses for the semester are:

• Intro to Organic & Biological Chemistry - nice professor, I'm frightened of the labs, but should be an alright class.
• Engineering Graphics - extremely tedious slow work, I am 1 of 2 girls in the class.
• Food Microbiology - really funny professor, interesting material, lots of lab work
• Professional Selling - the professor is really into "roll playing"...I loathe roll playing. And business classes have never been my specialty.

BioChem and Food Micro both have two labs a week. That threw me off. I already completely forgot to go to one of the BioChem labs. That was not a fun way to start the week. Luckily I am able to make it up tomorrow.

Here are some examples of my engineering homework. This is what we did the first day:

In other epic news, the HyVee in Manhattan opened right before school started. It's the greatest thing to ever happen to Manhattan. I love it dearly. It's so clean and bright and new and huge and lovely. I really enjoy grocery shopping. They have wonderful produce, fish and large variety of yogurt. I can't ask for anything more. However, Aldi still holds a special spot in my heart.

I went for a quick run this evening at Anneberg Park. It's such beautiful weather for running. Tomorrow is another full slate of classes. Oh and tomorrow is the first night of Bake Club! Should be fun :)

On-the-Fence Brownies

Brownies are a blessing to this earth. These chocolate dream cubes often carry gooey caramel, creamy peanut butter, chunky walnuts, thick frosting, crisp mint filling, fluffy marshmallows, rich ganache, and hoards of other creative confections. But sometimes, I just need to go back to the basics. These brownies are simple and delicious and they offer a perfect compromise between fudgy and cakey. They are dense and fudgy yet thick sturdy. This recipe originally came from the King Arthur Flour website. Heating the sugar in the batter preparation will dissolve more of the sugars and yield a delightful shiney top crust on the brownies.

• 1 c. (226 g) unsalted Butter
• 2 1/4 c. (450 g) Granulated Sugar
• 1 1/4 c. (125 g) Cocoa Powder
• 1 tsp (5 g) Salt
• 1 tsp (5 g) Baking Powder
• 1 TBS (15 g) Vanilla
• 4 large Eggs
• 1 1/2 c. (190 g) All-Purpose Flour
• 1 c. (170 g) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• 1 c. (226 g) Walnuts or Pecans (optional)

1. In a medium saucepan, or microwavable bowl, melt butter then add sugar and stir to combine. Return the mixture to heat breifly, just until it's hot (about 110-120 degrees), but not bubbling.


2. Stir in cocoa, salt, baking powder and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs until smooth. Add flour, chips and nuts.


3. Pour into a lightly greased 9 x 13" pan and bake at 350 F for 27-30 minutes.

This recipe can also be easily halved and baked in an 8 x 8" pan.

Kitchen Sink Cookies

I love baking when I'm home because there are more people to bake for and my mom always has a fully stocked kitchen. And I love Kitchen Sink cookies because I'm an indecisive person and these cookies allow me to put virtually everything into one without having to decide- Hurray!

• 1/2 c. unsalted Butter
• 1/2 c. + 2 TBS Granulated Sugar
• 1/4 c. Brown Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1 TBS Milk
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 1/2 c. Oats
• 3/4 + 3 TBS Flour
• 1/2 c. Choc. chips
• 1/2 c. PB chips
• 1/2 c. Rice Krispis
• 1/2 c. Shredded Coconut

1. Cream butter and sugars.
2. Add egg, vanilla and milk until well combined
3. Combine flour, baking soda and salt. Stir into creamed mixture.
4. Add oats, chips, Rice Krispis and coconut and stir until well combined
5. Drop by spoonfuls onto slightly greased cookie sheet
6. Bake at 375 F for 10-12 minutes

Girl Vs. Boy

At lunch yesterday, after another discussion about the differences between my daily diet and the rest of my family's, I suggested doing a post showing what Russ (my 18 year old little brother) eats versus what I eat on a daily basis. Surprisingly, Russ willingly agreed. So today Russ & I took pictures of everything we ate.

Breakfast!

Russ:

• 1 flour tortilla
• 2 strips bacon
• 3 slices roast beef
• 2 eggs
• handful of cheddar cheese
• glass of O.J.
• Cherry Juicy Juice
  

Kelsey:

• 40 g Kashi GoLean cereal
• 3 strawberries
• 8 g Almond Butter
• 4 oz Skim Milk
• giant coffee
• H20

Lunch & Mid Afternoon Snacks

Russ:

• Hamburger Helper
• Snickers & cheese stick
• 2 cookies
• Gatorade + water + Juicy Juice

Kelsey:

• Carrot + Almond Butter Wrap
• Apple
• Boiled Egg
• Odwalla Bar
• water in there somewhere

Dinner

Russ:

• 3 Chicken hunks (he put one back- epic fail Russ) w/ BBQ sauce
• Broccoli
• Potatoes w/ Ketchup
• fruit cup (in reality he probably only ate 3/4 of it)

• cookie
• enormous bowl of Cookies & Cream ice cream

Kelsey:

• Tuna fillet
• Broccoli
• Potatoes
• Fruit cup

  
  

• more fruit left in the bowl

I asked Russ if he had anything to say about what he ate. He said, "I'm the man." I'll say that he eats a lot more meat, drinks a wider variety of beverages, and- aganist all odds- consumes more sweets than I do. Oh to be an 18-year-old-football-crazed-lawn-mowing boy...

Texas & The First Supper

I finished with the bakery last week and made the trip back up north to Iowa. Back to a more temperate climate, smaller town and greener grass. I am happy to be at home with my family and will really enjoy spending the next week with them. Although I feel my true home is in Iowa, there are definately some things I'll miss about Texas.

• Obscenely large trucks
• Two-step dancing
• Blue Baker & co-workers
• My roommate's TiVo
• Fresh seafood in grocery stores
• the possiblity of eating at Sushi restaurants
• Hilarious yet intriguing and intellectual conversations with my roommate

However, there are things I will not miss about TX:

• Killing enormous cockroaches
• Road medians
• 110 degree weather everyday
• Stop light cameras
• Sweating the moment I step outside
• geckos
• crazy drivers

Home for the summer

View from my home in IOWA!

Whenever my older brother or I come home from college, my Mom likes to prepare a nice dinner for our first meal. It's a tradition I highly enjoy. However, I get a lot of grief from my family about the food I eat. With two brothers and a Kansas-farm-raised father, I often get questioned for why I frequently choose black beans over beef, carrots over BBQ potato chips, and tuna over pork chops. In general, I don't eat exactly how a girl raised in rural Iowa would eat. But mostly, I think my food selection is always a popular conversation because it's just an easy way to tease me.

So, for one of my first meals back home my Mom made roast beef, corn on the cob and potatoes. And fresh fruit. Very American. Very delicious.

Later I made some cookies for dessert:

Kitchen Sink Cookies- Oatmeal, PB chips, chocolate chips & Rice Krispis

My Mom and I are driving west to Omaha tomorrow to spend the day in the city. We're going to a "paint your own pottery" shop in the afternoon to spend a couple hours creating our own pottery masterpieces. Should be a fun afternoon.

Blurry

These past couple days seemed to have run together. I can't believe tomorrow is Wednesday. Only two more days left in the bakery! It's a bittersweet feeling. On one hand, I'm really excited to go home and spend time with my family and I think I've learned everything I wanted to learn from the bakery this summer, but on the other hand I will be sad to go and leave behind new friends I've made.

This morning at the bakery I got to work with the other intern Abby. It's the first time I was able to work with her all summer, and we had a lot of fun. As the only two girls in the bakery, I really enjoy talking and working with her becuase we're finally able to have conversations about things other than ninjas, cars, and lifting weights. It's fantastic.

Italian Batard

Parmeson Cheese bowls used for salads

For dinner I just wanted something easy. An almond butter + carrot wrap with a salad with stawberry & yogurt dressing.

I'm headed to work in a half an hour and baking pastries this morning. Bread baking is still my favorite baking shift though. Good Morning!

17 Cups of Coffee and 24 Hours Later...

...I finished my Labor Relations homework. It's submitted. Finished. I wash my hands of it. Never speak to me about unions, arbitrators, contract clauses or worker strikes again. I finished my test just in time to come home, change into my work clothes, eat a bowl of cereal and head off to the bakery. I was awake for 24 hours today. Fortunately work went really smoothly this morning and I was able to finish right on time. The bakery has started work to replace the wood-fired brick oven with a newer gas system. I was super sad to hear they were swapping out wood for gas, but can understand how it makes more sense financially. Since the brick oven is under construction all the bread had to be baked in the convectional MIWE.

Everything around the oven is all tarped up. We've been cooling the oven down by loading ice-filled pans for the past couple days. Because the walls hold heat for days and the oven is never cooled past 380 F it takes a long time the radiant heat built up over the years to dissipate.

Cappuccino Chip Bread & Cinnamon Rolls

Lots of food from the marathon homework session yesterday!

Kashi GoLean

1/2 Banana

Blueberries

PB/ Almond Butter

Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze

Lunch was:

Egg & cheese wrap

Broccoli & squash

Then I changed location and went to Blue Baker and slaved away for five hours. I snacked on an apple & Chocolate Chip Clif ZBar. And buckets of coffee.

I came home and made a quick dinner.

Seared Tuna

Boiled carrots

Balsamic Vinegar Salad

Later I ate a PB Clif bar and an iced coffee.

Right before I went to work I had some more cereal! Gotta keep the addiction alive.

Kashi GoLean

1/2 Banana

4 oz Skim Milk

Plans for this evening include a possible grocery run, a quick run, and just relaxing some before work at 1 AM again. I also want to go back to the bakery in the evening sometime this week to pictures of the lamination process. I'm pretty tired from my epic 24 hour day yesterday, so I think I'm mostly just going to lay low. Have a good evening!