We live in a beautiful world.

Hello again world wide web! Once again, I've been on a hiatus, but I'm BACK and better than ever. I've heard a few requests to start this baby back up again, and I'm finally back in culinary labs, so the posts will be a lot more interesting! Before I explain what I'm up to presently, let's delve a little bit into the past few weeks, shall we?

First of all, my family came to visit a few weeks ago, minus dear Maggie of course. It was so amazing to see them, even though I bet they wish it was a little bit warmer. They unfortunately came down while Miami was going through a bit of a cold spell (If you can call 55 degrees "cold," fellow New Englanders!). I showed them around Miami, my tiny little school, introduced them to my favorite chefs, and enjoyed their company (and the dinners out, I get so tired of the cafeteria food!). They spent half the week in Miami, and the rest of the week we went to my grandparents' house in Naples to visit. That was equally awesome. I got to spend some quality time with both my grandparents, my fantastic great aunt Peggy, and the "fraunt" that's so dear to my heart, Bonnie, who have both been mentioned in my blog posts before and who are faithful followers! I beat my Grandma, Mom, and brother in Scrabble, ate some delicious home cooked food, dined at the swanky cluuuuub, and was able to go to my favorite fruit and vegetable store, where we picked up some amazing guacamole. It was almost like a week long vacation, even though from Monday to Wednesday I went to class. I absolutely loved seeing them all.

After my family left, I had about a week left of classes, then spring break started! I was asked by my family if I wanted to come home for spring break this year, yet I declined. Think about it: why would I leave MIAMI, the spring break capital of the United States, for cold rainy Boston?! So yes, I stayed. Except my spring break wasn't exactly what the average person expects a Miami spring break to be. Yes, it was incredibly enjoyable, but dancing on the beach and clubbing till 4AM isn't really my style, plus I was going broke, so I knew I had to work. (Did I mention I switched jobs from PINK to Abercrombie and Fitch? PINK never scheduled me, and all my friends work at A&F, so I'm a lot happier there.) I was able to healthily mix work and fun. Most of my friends left for spring break, but I still had a few good friends to relax and be poor with me. We had some adventures, yes, but mostly, it was all about a mixture of kicking back and relaxing, and working my butt off.

So now onto the present! Last week I finally started my third trimester. I finished academics with flying colors! Not to brag, but I officially have a 3.87 GPA! Yahoo! I do have to admit that my academic classes were ridiculously easy though, so I did not have to try all that much to receive the grades I did. Yet I'm still pretty proud of myself for not slacking off! Now I'm back where I belong, in my culinary labs, which will make for some interesting blog posts. This trimester I take basic baking and pastry (which I'm in now), new world cuisine, fundamentals of dining room service, traditional European cuisine, and stocks, soups, and sauces.

From taking five days of baking class, I've reinforced the knowledge I already had that I am NOT a baker, and I never want to BE a baker. Yes, I enjoy the class, the teacher is great, and I'm doing well in it. Yet, baking is WAY too scientific for me. I don't know if I've talked about this in earlier blog posts, but I've always told people that there are two categories of people, whether you enjoy cooking or not: pastry chefs (bakers) and culinary chefs. Pastry chefs are exact, scientific, calculative, precise. They are extremely detail oriented and mathematically inclined. Culinary chefs are more dramatic, brash, passionate (not to say bakers don't have any passion!), messy, impatient, and bigger risk takers. I hate being exact with measurements to the point that if I'm off by half an ounce, my recipe will fail. I hate waiting for something to proof or bake. I'm not that precise, I like to throw a dash of something here and a sprinkle of something there. I have the utmost respect for bakers and pastry chefs. I wish I could do what they can do and be passionate about it, but it's just not me. Plus, I'm getting a little tired of eating bread and pie all day in class. Yes, it's delicious, but where are the vegetables and meat?! The class is pretty fun though, check out a few pictures from it I posted below!

To finish, if you are a faithful reader, even if you're a stranger, please let me know. I really want to spread this blog far and wide, so forward it to as many people as you think may be interested in reading what I have to say. If you can do that for me, I can continue to provide you with posts about my crazy food-filled life here in Miami. Comment as much as you can, give me as much feedback as possible! I appreciate it more than I can say. Thanks to my sister Maggie too, for pushing me to keep working at this. I never realized how much I like writing and how I might be kind of good at it until I started this blog, and I hope to continue it in my future! Maybe I'll have a future in food writing, who knows?!

Bon appetit everyone! Like the new layout by the way? Here are the pictures!

Challah bread!

My unbaked challah.

My beautiful blueberry pie!

Unbaked pie, oh so proud.

Making baguettes!