i would never run a restaurant...

...but i sure like to eat at them :D

we went to the downtown grocery on monday night for their prix fix dinner to celebrate karen's bday and her last week at GM. man, this stuff will burn a hole in your wallet but leave your stomach so happy. it was $25 for a starter, entree and chef's dessert (i didn't get a solo shot of the dessert...) but i got the tomato soup (delish!) and salmon w/ fingerling potatoes and wild mushrooms. dessert was a trio of pineapple and basil sorbet, chocolate souffle w/ i think a caramel kind of sauce (or knowing vt, maybe maple), and a mini donut w/ a raspberry sauce. 

i also got a rum and ginger beer (they make their own) w/ mount gay rum (which was very tasty). eum eum. a wonderful night to celebrate one of the nicest ladies i've met here. the clientele at the restaurant is definitely averaging around 65+ but that might have to do w/ the price of the place, but for the prix fix days it's definitely worth a trip (plus the people there are soooo nice!)

but onto intern stuff- first real day in the kitchen (9-2 w/ an hour break for lunch). i got to use the flour mill and grind brown rice into brown rice flour (quick but also overloaded the poor machine and the poor thing went crazy). with the brown rice flour i made gluten free cheddar cheese sesame crackers (which also had tapioca flour and sorghum flour). it was all sorts of complicated ingredients and i really just wanted butter and flour and cheddar cheese. plus, i have no idea the point of having three different flours so i was feeling a bit lost on how to cook w/o really measuring (i love the ginormous mixing bowl machines). the last 10 minutes before lunch time were sort of frantic (thus the not wanting to ever run a restaurant) and i felt like i needed to be meryl streep playing julia child in that movie where she practices dicing onions to be really fast.

after that it was a bit smoother (sort of). i made the chocolate zucchini cake (which was actually squash b/c there was no zucchini) and keeping track of quantities and baking/cooking to those proportions for a certain number of people is very awkward (case in point, using MasterCook program it said to use 2 and 5/8 of an egg...). plus, i got the wrong number scooped out so i had to do lots of fiddling to spread the batter out (which made for small looking cakes) but they tasted pretty good. keeping track of what people do and do not eat and allergies is also a whole 'nother fun game so there are charts all over the kitchen w/ the menus and layouts of everyone's diet.

tmrw's hump day! it's supposed to be killer hot so the walk tmrw should be uber fun. ack, i can't believe i missed taking a pic of my first attempts at cooking in large batches!