A Fresh Start Filled with Baking, Sprinkled with Words

Happy new year everyone! Hope you’re recovered from any partying that might have went on last night. As for me, I had probably the most low-key new year’s eve I’ve ever had. Spent at home with my parents, I sipped on glass after glass of Merlot and watched the surprisingly hilarious and inappropriate Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper. They are such a good match together as hosts. Somehow I still wound up sleeping until mid-afternoon today, as if I had actually gotten black-out drunk (my usual way to ring in the new year). In turn I had a low-key first day of the year, preparing for school tomorrow and our first day in the kitchen. We were in the classroom all of last week, making the whole class anxious as ever as we got closer to the new year. Our first unit is cookies, and I couldn’t be more excited to get in there and start!

My beautiful baking tools. It feels like Dexter‘s kill-pack if anyone watches that show (and if you don’t, get on it).

 

Also read the first chapter from my textbook. I’m a big nerd when it comes to school and I love to read so it isn’t hard to be that way. I want to be as prepared as I can for tomorrow, to really begin my journey through culinary school.

I’m looking forward to new beginnings in 2013. Last year really was spent learning about myself and what I want out of life. This year will be about growth and coming closer to achieving those goals. It’s been a trying last few months, what with losing some important people in my life and beginning new endeavors like school, but I’m taking it in stride and am using this time with myself to continue to find me and build a better future.

 

For those of you that love food and want to get into the business of it as I do, or if you just like a good read, I suggest getting this gem. It was my present to myself for Christmas, and it’s filled with diverse stories and writing styles, I really like it. Food for me, whether sweet or savory, is something I adore: the taste, smell, view, experience – I love making it and reading about it. In that same vein, I also love writing. Therefore, the more I read work by seasoned food writers, the better I will get at honing my craft. If you really want to get into something, you have to get passionate about it and become actively involved in all aspects of it. Fall in love with it, know as much as you can about it. This is how I want to get with food, and particularly baking. It’s an art that I think takes a skewed scientific yet creative mindset. Both the left and right side of my brain are personally independently influential and in constant battle with each other. I’m logical but a daydreamer. I’m a planner yet sporadic. I value order as much as I value free-reigning chaos. There’s this duality in my mind and personality that will hopefully aid me in becoming a future pastry chef or own my own bakery shop. And to write about it! Write to reach others, to communicate my adventures to those that are curious. My thoughts have always been better expressed on paper than in person, at least I think so. So here’s to a new year filled with new experiences and taking steps to a sweeter end .

I leave you with an excerpt from Best Food Writing 2012:
 
“Since I am both a chef and a writer, I am sometimes compelled to contemplate what cooking and writing have in common. What draws me to both pursuits is the simple joy I find in making something, and I have often said that baking a cake or writing a story satisfies that same impulse. I believe that this creative impulse is a basic human need. We all like to make things. And since I am not particularly good with power tools, I don’t make houses.”
 

- “Still Life with Mayonnaise,” by Greg Atkinson

 
Love & Sweets,
Mel

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