Daring bakers

Today I joined the daring bakers blogroll!!!  I am so excited to have different baking challenges and be a part of this amazing group of talented bakers :-)  I will def.  be making something soon and posting all about it.

travel

Aside from my passion for food, I love to travel.  It's been a short while (last October) since I have traveled and I am really feeling the itch to go somewhere.  It is becoming unbearable to be in one place for so long.  I want to pack up and go somewhere new, taste new flavors, see new sights, and meet new people.  For now I am making the best of where I am.

Every day I have off from my job at a retail bake shop, my father and I make a batch of cookies.  He used to be a baker for five years (before I was born), and so we take his recipes and cut them to smaller batches. A new cookie for every day I don't work.

I love baking and making these cookies with him is a nice bonding experience.  I should mention my dad is a 70-year-old Italian complete with accent and grammatical errors.  Yesterday we made S-Cookies and today we made bowtie cookies. There are kinks we need to work out, but all-in-all they came out well.

cute little bowtie cookie

random thoughts at the ass crack of dawn

I can't sleep because every time I close my eyes my mind won't shut up.  I keep debating what I want my next step to be.  Should I go to pastry school, culinary school, or should I use that money to open my own business?  My passion is baking, but to become a "professional" is expensive and after you complete the program you will land a job making roughly $10/hr.  It's what I love though.   My heart is leaning towards that path, but my head thinks that it isn't practical or the smartest move.  I think being smart and practical is overrated.

Being practical is what led me to believe I should be a dentist like my mother.  I spent my college career miserable slaving over organic chemistry, bio, chem, and physics only to realize a year after graduation that I didn't want to follow that path.  All I my friends that I tell "hey I'm considering going to pastry school" are 100% behind it.  They all can't believe it's taken me this long to realize that's what I should have done.  So why am I still on the fence?  Society tells us to do what's safe and take the quickest route to earning a large income.  I am trying my best to reprogram myself into doing what will make me happy now rather than working at a job that I may not enjoy just to make money.

Not to sound totally morbid, but what's the point?  I am not hugely materialistic (I go more for travel and experiences than tangible possessions) and as my father says "le tombe non hanno tasche".  This means "tombs don't have pockets".  Like I said, I'm not trying to sound morbid, but I think a lot can be learned from the European lifestyle of enjoying the present.  Take vacations, slow down, sip some tea while eating a freshly made baguette, and enjoy life's little pleasures.  I think I have made my decision to go to pastry school, but I just need to take the giant leap of faith.  Here goes.

Second attempt

This will be my second attempt at starting a blog. I am currently trying to decide what direction I want to go in career-wise, and maybe writing this blog will help me gain some clarity. At the very least it will be a good place to a) talk about things that occur at my current job in retail b) post things I find interesting and c) share the yummy food I cook/bake. Maybe people will actually read it. For now I realize that I am just throwing my ideas out into cyberspace. More to come soon, but for now I am going to sleep!