I swear to you I don't wear patchouli
On Saturday, I volunteered to do the desserts for a secret cafe benefiting Transforming Us, a local soon-to-be-nonprofit that raises money for trans surgeries. It was sort of the circle that Sailor knows, all the twentysomething Gossip-listening crusty kids, and some of them are Patchouli People, including the guy whose house I was baking at. I personally do not make the life choice to wear patchouli, and try to refrain from meanly smack-talking those who do. I will say that my biggest complaint about patchouli is that it has a boundaries problem, and will infest your clothing and skin like a virus, replicate itself, and then look for more hosts. Like burrs snagging on an oblivious bear's coat while he does what bears do, patchouli hooked into my cuddly WCI hoody that I was wearing as well as my messenger bag. I threw the hoody along with every other scrap of clothing I was wearing into the hamper as soon as I got home, but my messenger bag stank up my apartment and I could smell it while I slept. It still reeked when I went to school, fumigating my locker with hippie smells and following me wherever I went. I was mortified. I kept wanting to turn to people on the streetcar, students with lockers next to mine, and passersby on the street and say, "I just want you to know that I don't wear patchouli, it's just my bag." I dumped out my bag and stuffed it with all the infected clothing in the wash with lots of detergent and hot water. Please, God, make it be dead.
I'm at the coffee shop and actually did work for once. I'm finishing up my last nutrition project: three menus, one non-vegetarian, one ovo-lacto vegetarian, and one vegan. They all had to have an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert, and come in at 600-1000 calories for each whole menu. You also had to make certain that all of the ingredients and sub-recipes for the vegan and vegetarian meals didn't have animal products lurking in them somewhere. Fortunately, the instructor let us crib all the recipes from the textbook, and it was just a matter of making coherent menus. I always tackle taste profile and concept before anything else, and I set themes for each and tweaked them until I felt that the dollar value was good and there was a good mix of textures, tastes and temperatures. Not too hard to do over two weeks, but I'm certain it's a huge pain when you're modifying something on the fly for a customer. The fun part was making up the fake restaurant menu from a template on Word and writing the plate descriptions. I made up a hypothetical Pearl District (bobo yuppie neighborhood) restaurant, one of those here-today gone-tomorrow concept places with blond wood, blue-lit glass and stainless steel fixtures and crap lighting. Just for shits I rounded out each menu with a drinks selection, coming up with the horrific "cucumber-sake wheatgrass shooter" for the vegan Asian fusion menu. I took it off at first, but realized that the SUV-with-a-Tibetan-flag-sticker crowd would eat that shit up like peanut brittle dipped in cocaine so I left it on. Maybe I'll get a good imaginary writeup in the imaginary weekly neighborhood flyer.
(In other news, after my last unit at school with Chef Hippie, who worked for a local big schmeal candymaker for five years, I now have the secret recipe for the best nut brittle in the world. I'm saving it until the world is ready. Which will possibly be sometime next week.)
I also managed to bang out the analysis page that I forgot to turn in with my first project. The instructor pointed out today that I hadn't given one, and my instincts from high school immediately kicked into gear: "I didn't? I thought I did! I know I did! It wasn't attached? No? ... well, it's on my computer at home ... I guess I just spaced it ... can I get it to you tomorrow? Thanks." Almost twenty years later, my first impulse is to lie like a big fancy Persian rug just to get out of dutch with the teacher.
I have a journal entry I'm working on about my favorite books, but I'll torture people with that later. Also, pantytwist did the whole ten questions meme thing to me on the condition I post it here. That, also, will come later. I'm going to go finish drawing my plate templates.
UPDATE: My fucking sweatshirt still smells faintly of patchouli after a good hard tumble in the wash. Goddammit. This is what comes of doing nice things for people.
I'm at the coffee shop and actually did work for once. I'm finishing up my last nutrition project: three menus, one non-vegetarian, one ovo-lacto vegetarian, and one vegan. They all had to have an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert, and come in at 600-1000 calories for each whole menu. You also had to make certain that all of the ingredients and sub-recipes for the vegan and vegetarian meals didn't have animal products lurking in them somewhere. Fortunately, the instructor let us crib all the recipes from the textbook, and it was just a matter of making coherent menus. I always tackle taste profile and concept before anything else, and I set themes for each and tweaked them until I felt that the dollar value was good and there was a good mix of textures, tastes and temperatures. Not too hard to do over two weeks, but I'm certain it's a huge pain when you're modifying something on the fly for a customer. The fun part was making up the fake restaurant menu from a template on Word and writing the plate descriptions. I made up a hypothetical Pearl District (bobo yuppie neighborhood) restaurant, one of those here-today gone-tomorrow concept places with blond wood, blue-lit glass and stainless steel fixtures and crap lighting. Just for shits I rounded out each menu with a drinks selection, coming up with the horrific "cucumber-sake wheatgrass shooter" for the vegan Asian fusion menu. I took it off at first, but realized that the SUV-with-a-Tibetan-flag-sticker crowd would eat that shit up like peanut brittle dipped in cocaine so I left it on. Maybe I'll get a good imaginary writeup in the imaginary weekly neighborhood flyer.
(In other news, after my last unit at school with Chef Hippie, who worked for a local big schmeal candymaker for five years, I now have the secret recipe for the best nut brittle in the world. I'm saving it until the world is ready. Which will possibly be sometime next week.)
I also managed to bang out the analysis page that I forgot to turn in with my first project. The instructor pointed out today that I hadn't given one, and my instincts from high school immediately kicked into gear: "I didn't? I thought I did! I know I did! It wasn't attached? No? ... well, it's on my computer at home ... I guess I just spaced it ... can I get it to you tomorrow? Thanks." Almost twenty years later, my first impulse is to lie like a big fancy Persian rug just to get out of dutch with the teacher.
I have a journal entry I'm working on about my favorite books, but I'll torture people with that later. Also, pantytwist did the whole ten questions meme thing to me on the condition I post it here. That, also, will come later. I'm going to go finish drawing my plate templates.
UPDATE: My fucking sweatshirt still smells faintly of patchouli after a good hard tumble in the wash. Goddammit. This is what comes of doing nice things for people.