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There is an amazing article out there on the web and I want to provide a link to it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014…

In a nutshell, rainforests are being cut down so food can be grown for cows for our meat demand. The amount of land that is used for growing grain to feed cows could feed the world’s human population and end hungur. It takes 2500 gallons of water to “produce” one pound of beef. It only takes 25 gallons of water to “grow” a one pound loaf of bread. Animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and 65% of our nitrous oxide. But don’t take my word for it, read Kathy’s article. She explains it much better than I can.

Today I attempted to make Poi, and then incorporate it into a Mocha vegan cake of my own devising. I had the french pastry chef at school chide me for being creative and making up my own recipe. According to him, I need to just follow recipes like a sheep because I do not know everything and shouldn’t stray from classical technique. Why the hell am I in culinary school if I just want to follow recipes all day? I could easily do that at home or work. I am not paying these teachers to make me a robot drone. Luckily not all the teachers are like that, and who knows, frenchie may just be joking and I can’t tell because I am 1. not french, 2. not a local seattlite (different humor here than east coast world) 3. not in the pastry program 4. not using butter or eggs.

Back to my experience: so I took a lovely root of poi, peeled it and steamed it for about a half hour. I used my chef instuctor’s mocajete and tried to pound and grind the taro into poi and it just spurted everywhere and was a bit grainy. My teacher told me in Hawaii they have a flat lava rock and pounding instrument….which is much different than his mocajete de Oaxaca. After a good forearm workout, I threw all the taro into the robocoupe and processed it with enough water to make “2 finger” poi, meaning it can be easily eaten with two fingers. It tasted good and not like the crap I had at a diner near Waimea Bay on the Big Island. That crap was so metallic I gagged. My poi tasted earthy and flowery. I didn’t sugar it since I was going to bake with it.

I altered a recipe I had for a vegan chocolate cake and substituted half of the canola oil for poi, but sadly it got overbaked because making cake was not my main job today. I had to cook for one of the Chef of the Day projects and that distracted me enough to bake the cake 5-10 minutes longer than needed. So, it tasted like cocoa powder, I couldn’t taste the coffee nor the poi. One of my classmates could really taste the poi. I thought it was dry and a little crumbly. It was a moist, dense chocolate cake….maybe I just want a brownie.
So my next try I’m going to melt a nice dark chocolate and swirl it into the batter, add more maple syrup and use some brewed coffee and not the bitter instant espresso.

Has anyone ventured into this cake creation world? I’d appreciate any and all advice, and I will update my trials.

I spent my internship for culinary school at Candle Cafe and Candle79, both vegan restaurants in NYC’s upper East Side (note: $$$). I like to think that I’m an organized person-I called ahead, set dates and times, mailed in my externship paperwork to the sous chef…..yet when I arrived, dressed in my dorky culinary hat, he had no recollection of me even coming in. So begins the hectic week that is restaurant kitchen life. There was no room for me in the high-end kitchen, so I had to walk a few blocks to the “cafe” (still $15 entrees…) and I worked among 8 men from mexico, all related to each other (for real). Most of them didn’t speak english so I definitely got to improve my Spanish skills. I made some dressings and components of meals, but definitely felt like an outcast. The rest of the week I was in the high-end restaurant, where everyone was much friendlier and not related (still 99% mexican, which is interesting to me-not in a bad way, I had a lot of fun working in the kitchen—but TV makes you believe it’s all white older guys behind the scenes. From the dishwasher up to the sous chef, todos son de mexico) There was one girl who worked there and another girl doing an internship from the Natty Gourmet School which only costs about 4x as much as my school does—I met someone who had graduated from there and was working part-time at Candle, but was quitting to work in an office to pay off her loans from the school….something’s wrong when the school you go to costs more per year than you could even hope to make in your field. Anyways, in the fancy restaurant, the kitchen was bustling and they gave me projects and things to make. I got to use the gigantic industrial equipment and taste test a LOT. (the food is freakin’ delicioso pero muy caro).
I have learned that I do not like the fast pace of the restaurant industry (already known).
I want to put love into the food and appreciate the steps along the way, not just push it out on time—this experience reinforced that. I didn’t lose my love of food or cooking, but I do know that I want to have a more direct connection to the consumer.
Perhaps scratch cooking classes? Harvesting and making preserves….cheeses…we’ll see.

I have returned from my journeys afar and have returned a married woman! There are too many stories to tell, as usual. I’ll separate my trip into weekly entries and try to keep it simple for the a.d.d. population. I arrived in NYC a few weeks ago to a lovely indian summer. I stayed at Marc’s fabulous digs in Astoria and we somehow made gourmet delicious dinners most of my time there. We took a foraging field trip with Steve Brill who is quite kooky but knows his wild edibles. Marc was very adventurous and pulled out a few young sassafrass saplings to make some homemade Root Beer (end result–delicous!) We collected a number of items: oxalis for salads, spiceberries supposedly for smoothies (which was not made) and a ton of mushrooms! We gathered giant puffballs (which became puffball parmesan), honey mushrooms which were sauteed with butter and garlic, and inky cap mushrooms with which I made a gravy of sorts out of and we poured that over Quorn nuggets and rice. Marc was very scared of the wild mushrooms and it made me doubt myself for a bit–but we both took the plunge and ate up and it was delicious. I need to join the Myco society and learn more about mushroom i.d. It’s very satisfying and joyous to find something growing in it’s natural habitat and then EAT IT. Plus, it’s free. And it’s fresh. And it’s local. ‘Nuff said.

My block is 20x20x5″, about 75 pounds. I get one day out of summer quarter to play with ice. (and it was the best day besides farm days–summer school has been very demanding. Planning the wedding will be cake..) My teacher, Keijiro Miyata, ranked 2nd in the WORLD for ice carving, is one of my instructors this summer. He is very humble and seems to have patience for our ice carvings. That amazes me because it must be such a waste of ice to him for us to carve butterflies and flowers and guitars. My carving was going to be a penguin, but two people this quarter already did penguins and I wanted something different. I carved two lovebirds sitting on a branch today and it was not as hard as I thought. The ice was softer than I imagined and I was able to get a rough sketch quite easily. The hardest part was making these birds three dimensional. Their heads were blocky but I only had so much time before the ice melted too much. I will do some finishing touches in the morning and get a picture to post. But for now, enjoy one of the sculptures my teacher has done.