Eating

I am serious when I say that I think I have an eating problem.
I can't stop.
(Currently, I'm on my 3 dark chocolate kiss. Mmmm, its like velvet on my tongue.)

The eating comes in waves. Warm chocolate ganache waves, actually. And right now, I feel like I'm at the crest, about to tumble into the trough and thrown into a over fed stupor.
Oh, I guess I'll find my balance someday. Right now, I'm relishing in my body's ability to metabolize incredible amounts of fat and sugar.

Maybe when I'm ready to stop eating I'll hang this picture up by my dinner table...

(Hong Kong fish market)


In other news, I decided to go to LA to visit Jackie tomorrow. I can't wait to see the ocean and my beautiful friend.

Pretzel Love.

Some fun facts about pretzels...

1. Pretzels were originally made to resemble the arms of praying Christian monks. Apparently people used to pray with their arms crossed. Weird.

2. People in Philly eat 200 lbs of them a year. Ironic?

3. Lye is a pretty strong base (NaOH) that is used to turn the dough to the deliciously caramel color.

Hazardous and Christian.... How dangerously heavenly.

I made them and then ate them warm, which made my day a little less lonely. The emotional connection I had with these warm pieces of dough seemed to be far more developed that it should have been. Let me explain:
I love baking, I love being in the kitchen, and therefore I love my job. I bake all day, taste incredible food and make people happy. It's great. But it seems like at the very instant I leave Brandy's, I go from blissful happiness to grumpy grandma. I transform from a chatty smiling Kristine to one who is short tempered and petulant. I don't want to be around anybody and frankly, I doubt they want to be around me. All I feel like doing is going home to sit on my couch and drink tea...alone. I think it's just a way that I am dealing with all of this change. Change in life style, change in a home and change in my relationships. But these pretzels made me happy.

I made the them on my day off. It was 4pm and I hadn't seen anybody for almost 24 hours. And when my little creations came out of the oven, they were warm and soft and comfortable and I couldn't get annoyed with them because they were perfect and lifeless. Sometimes I need something perfect and lifeless (i.e. a book, music, food, ect.) and I semi fell in love with these.

Maybe you will too?

Obviously I do not have lye around my house, but I do have baking soda (also a base: NaHCO3) which worked like magic.

Easily lovable soft pretzels
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 pkg yeast
1 tbsp sugar

• Combine this in your standing mixer's bowl and allow to "bloom". The yeast will expand and will look like foam when its ready. In another bow mix:

4 1/2 cup flour (I used non bleached all purpose)
2 tbsp salt

• Add this to the bloomed yeast and mix with your dough hook. Make sure not to mix it for too long. Doing that will make tough pretzels and nobody likes tough pretzels. The dough should come together into a ball that gives a little when you push on it with your fingers.
• Oil a spot on your counter and let the dough rise there (with the mixer bowl on top of it) for about 1 hour. Note: Although you may want to knead the crap out of it, leave your anger out of this and find something else to pound your problems away on.
• Bring a big pot of water with about 1/2 cup of baking soda to a boil. Meanwhile divide the dough into 8 chunks and roll into a rope and shape it however you want. While rolling out all the 8 pieces, put the already shaped pieces on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and under a damp kitchen towel to keep them moist.
• Place 1 or 2 pretzels at a time into the boiling water for about 30 seconds, flip them over for a bit more then take them out. Brush them with an egg wash and sprinkle with kosher salt.
• Bake them at 450* for about 12 min (or until caramely brown) .
• Eat. And fall in love.
  

Kristine's Muffin Top

While this title may suggest that I have a bad case of back fat and a few pairs of extra tight jeans, I am seriously considering it as the new subtitle to this blog.

Because I am currently living my dream as a baker, I feel like I should honor this part of my life by blogging about it. And because being a baker means that I will probably eat many more pastries than I already do, a muffin top may very likely be inevitable.
Planned Spontaneity, the name, isn't going to change. Its a rather appropriate title for my life; you know, making last minute decisions and then changing my mind twice. That's what I do. That's probably what I will be doing for the rest of my life. I'm not ashamed of it and I'm not going to try to fix it, because life is so much for fun when there is enough room for spontaneity. The name will stay the same.

So yes, I will be blogging mostly about my adventures in the bakery: Learning about the hallucinogenic properties of rye starters and the hierarchy of restaurant staff, and fully appreciating comfortable shoes.
So far, my experience as an apprenticed baker is fantastic. The best part of it all is seeing somebody bit into one of my freshly baked goodies with a look of utter pleasure on their face. I love being in the kitchen where incredibly beautiful food is being prepared and where are people rushing all around me; chopping cabbage, cleaning chicken, whipping a chai white chocolate ganache. Yumm.

Well I'm off to to work where I will most likely make 5 dozen baguettes. Ohhh what a beautiful life I have right now.
Stay tuned to see how far my bachelor's in biology/chemistry will take me into the baking world.

The Sea Spirit

I smile o'er the wrinkled blue­
Lo! the sea is fair,
Smooth as the flow of a maiden's hair;
And the welkin's light shines through
Into mid-sea caverns of beryl hue,
And the little waves laugh and the mermaids sing,
And the sea is a beautiful, sinuous thing!

I scowl in sullen guise­
The sea grows dark and dun,
The swift clouds hide the sun
But not the bale-light in my eyes,
And the frightened wind as it flies
Ruffles the billows with stormy wing,
And the sea is a terrible, treacherous thing!

When moonlight glimmers dim
I pass in the path of the mist,
Like a pale spirit by spirits kissed.
At dawn I chant my own weird hymn,
And I dabble my hair in the sunset's rim,
And I call to the dwellers along the shore
With a voice of gramarye evermore.

And if one for love of me
Gives to my call an ear,
I will woo him and hold him dear,
And teach him the way of the sea,
And my glamor shall ever over him be;
Though he wander afar in the cities of men
He will come at last to my arms again.

-Lucy Maud Montgomery


This conjures up such intense emotion in my heart. I can't stop reading this beautiful piece of literature. I want to sing it loudly and write it on everything I see. I want to live in these bewitching and captivating words and feel this feeling it gives me forever. It tells me that change is common, normal and good. When my sunny soul is hidden in a fog of anger, my will shine through. Emotions ebb and flow just like the sea.

I especially love the last verse. It posses a question that is perpetually in my subconscious mind.
Do I have glamor to "ever over"?
I must.

Mochi

It may be judged by it's hot pink color. Or maybe by it's stark resemblance to "The Blob". Regardless, the incredible sweetness and gooey texture brings back memories of my fantasy like childhood, filled with hibiscus flowers, mango trees, ocean waves and sun filled play dates. Like the smoothness of a wave's crest, it fills my mouth with silky goodness in a way that only mochi can.

Who would have thought that rice flour and sugar could create such a incredible treat?

My dear Hawaii, you're in my soul forever.

grr

There are few people in my life that can crush my inner happiness in just a few words. No, I'm not going to point fingers, but... The one who affects me the most is the one whose house I'm staying at and food I am eating. The one who is paying for my car insurance and cell phone bill.
Oh, how effortlessly he can take the gentle Hawaiian breeze of my heart and manifest it into a raging storm. The initial joy my presence brought to him has all but deteriorated into annoyance and impatience. His face is apparent with doubtful questions as cantankerous as "Will she ever be able to be dependent" or "Is there even a sliver of hope that she will find a job" and even "When is she going to leave" These questions are currently residing on his every expression and yet, he felt the need to voice them while I was enjoying sand between my toes and the sun on my face.

Well done.

I'd like to leave now.

Delhi Belly

I'm blogging to you out of pain, frustration and anger. This may not be the most appropriate blog to write following the most epically beautiful 16 days of my life, but I need to vent and I need you to have pity on me right now.

It must have all started going wrong when we found out we needed visas for India. That was the 1st, and unfortunately only the beginning, of this long string of unfortunate events (that may or may not be due to sever lack of planning).

As you may remember, we had to buy a completely new ticket from Bangkok (bkk) to Kathmandu (ktm) (re-booking #2): After rescheduling our tickets out of Delhi for a few hours earlier (re-booking #1) only to be denied entrance on the plane. Hence rebooking #2.... Not that big of a deal. Got to ktm early, started are incredibly glorious trek early and had a few extra days in Nepal. Great. So great. Then the rumors of a Moaist strike started to circulate. Foreigners were advised to leave before the 20th of December in order to avoid all dangerous situations (whoa, I guess we really are in an unstable 3rd world country).
This is where this awfully uncomfortable situation started.

Yesterday afternoon, we got invited to have dinner at Andy's Nepali neighbor (from Flagstaff)'s family's house in Kathmandu. It was so special to have been able to experience a Nepali home, be welcomed into the family, be served Nepali tea (which I seriously couldn't get enough of) and or course (dum dum dum....) be fed Nepali food. Ugh. Still, even the though of that dinner makes me want to vom. The actual eating of the food was rather enjoyable. But I'll tell you what was NOT enjoyable... the next 24 hours (and counting) of severe abdominal pain along with other bodily functions I've been advised not to write about.
This is a major contributor to this incredibly uncomfortable situation.


After hearing about this Maoist situation, my incredibly generous parents book us 1st class tickets from ktm to bkk via Delhi on Indian Air (Indian Air?! This should have been a red flag from the beginning...). We got up this morning to get to the airport 2 and a half hours before our flight (just to be safe) and, SURPRISE! Flight is delayed... nearly 3 hours! and of course we miss the flight from Delhi to bkk. And of course, when we got off the plane here, NOBODY would take responsibility. The brought us to the transit area and had us sit and wait for hours and hours with nobody around to talk to and help us. Every time some one official would walk by, they would brush us aside and tell us it wasn't their problem and no they couldn't help us. It was chaos. People yelling, spit flying... If I weren't so upset I probably would have found it quit comical. But I was on the verge of tears. I felt like throwing up again. My clothes smelled like I'd been trekking in them for weeks (because I had) my bag was heavy, it was hot. I just wanted to be in Manila.
Nobody would help us. We couldn't leave the transit terminal because we didn't have visas. Like those poor souls in purgatory, were were clinging to every person who walked in through the doors from the outside. But nobody cared. Then I decided to play the money card and yelled, "Excuse me! Is this how Indian Air treats their first class passengers!? Outrageous!" Then they were on me like a bunch of seagull on a piece of bread. They took us to a very nice lounge, gave us a meal and took very good care of us from there. They put us on a Thai Airways flight to bkk which was a total upgrade from Indian air.
Its amazing how different we were treated after they found out we had spend money for a 1st class ticket. I guarantee that if I hadn't said anything about the 1st class we would still be in Delhi. Why is that?
Manila today and I can't wait to shower with out my crocs on!!!