drama llama

more drama in the kitchen- apparently i flopped on both baking things i did. so really, lets just leave me out of the drama and i'll just do some back stuff like bulletin boards and putting dishes out onto tables...it's amazing how different personalities clash and i'd rather not be the one in the middle. i'm getting where both the chefs and the dietitian are coming from, but it would be nice if they could communicate w/ each other and not have me as a middle funky ground.

today's vermonting walk/hike was hawk walk, which starts at hawk mountain resort. i took 2 of the more gung-ho ladies up salt ash road which had some snazzy houses on the mountain. i wish i nabbed a shot of lunch (mac and cheeseeeeee, man, i wish i could live off this stuff...which also was apparently too salty...). after four weeks here i think i finally got the wednesday self-serve lunch plate servings down. minus the part where i went back for 2nd helpings of the mac&cheese:D i may have finally found a mac&cheese that i like more than the kraft box version. i got to showcase my cardioboxing skills (my nutrition supervisor joined in on the class in her skirt no less!) and then the highlight of the day- spontaneous decision to go swim in a lake!

the fitness/intern coordinator lives in a house by lake echo (it's a private lake except for the state park section, which is still not re-opened since hurricane irene damage) and she offered to show us how to enter through her section so we asked the kitchen to hold our dinners and we just drove there after work still in our workout clothes (i had like full workout pants on). there's a little dock and a floating platform a bit further. the water was actually warm (it probably helped that it was in the mid-90s today) and you couldn't touch the ground, which was really nice b/c the storm apparently brought lots of ickies to the bottom. it was sad when i couldn't haul myself onto the platform...so some more upper body is necessary or else i will just have to keep pretending that i just like to float around in the water all day...lol. 

now i can say i swam in a lake! i think i'll use my vibrams as water shoes just so i can avoid the murky bottom by the dock and walk up onto the beach when i don't even have the energy to flop onto the deck like a beached whale. you'd think as a fitness instructor i would have some mad muscles, which i think oftentimes the women here judge me for when i'm not as strong or as quick as the other intern. sometimes i think they see me as more approachable b/c i look more like them, but sometimes i don't know if they take me seriously b/c i don't look like joy bauer or jillian michaels. but it's something to adjust to, and it's always a work in progress, but it was really fun jumping into the lake (much less daunting than the cliff diving).

happy first day of summer!

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!