It's finally starting to feel like Fall....

Helloooooo everyone!

It is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL fall day here in Ohio.

Just beautiful. It's starting to feel like fall already :)

Fall is one of the many reasons i love the midwest. It's my absolute favorite time of year.

My happiness meter shoots up exponentially.

...my favorite holiday is also just around the corner!!

what holiday might that be?

HALLOWEEN OF COURSE!!!

I can't wait to spend the rest of my day outside :)

Last night I was cleaning up my room and I made a tower out of my culinary education...

literally.

This stack of books (13 to be exact) grosses well over a couple thousand dollars.

I couldn't believe how many books I've collected over the past 2 years (2 1/2 feet of books to be exact...and these are JUST the culinary ones!!)

I've learned so much! These are the books that taught me what I know (from top to bottom):

Supervision in the Hospitality Industry

Principles of food, beverage, and labor cost controls

The bar & beverage book

Purchasing for food service operations

American regional cuisine (one of my favorite books)

Introduction to hospitality

Nutrition

ServSafe (I am now certified thanks to the class)

Design and equipment for restaurants and foodservice (my least favorite book)

On Cooking

Garde Manger

Professional Cooking

Professional baking (loveit)

::PHEW:: So much knowledge in my head....I wonder what I'm going to do with it when I graduate....

It's no secret that breakfast is my favorite meal...

which would explain why that's really the only meal I share with you guys on here.

But all of my other meals are kind of boring - lately all I've been eating is left over chili that we made this past weekend. DELICIOUS, but boring to update about every day. Breakfast is my most versatile and delicious meal of the week. Let's take a look at the past few days, shal we?

(1) Peanut butter and honey toast with a fried egg on top - accompanied by 1/2 of a delicious smoothie consisting of.....just about everything lol

With every breakfast I drink coffee (with cream and splenda) a small glass of skim milk and a small glas of orange juice. I'm sure most people just drink the milk in their cereal and nothing else, but I forget to drink anything during my 8 hour shifts at work so breakfast is a good time to get some of that in my system.

(2) Grilled peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich

(3) Breakfast at 'The Golden Nugget' - my favorite breakfast spot in all of Dayton

Vegetable omelet served with salsa...

and 3 whole wheat pancakes with honey & a little bit of syrup. OMG YUMM.

(4) Healthy french toast (with 1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice to give it a little extra something) a veggie sausage pattie, pineapple chunks, and my usual spread of drinks.

The french toast was so delicious - especially after i topped it with a little bit of honey and a teaspoon of 100% maple syrup. Yummmmm.

Speaking of french toast....

Can you guess what I'm going to be for Halloween?

::Hint Hint::

I must start assembling my genius of an outfit ASAP!!

I know exactly how I want it to look. I'm so excited!

Lets take a look at some of my Halloween outfits throughout my life time:

I've been: a mouse

I've been: a cowgirl

(looks like my sister wore her outfit two years in a row lol)

I've been: a mime (which didn't go over too well....I never stopped talking when I was little, not even to breathe. Some things never change)

I've been: a hippie

I've been: a ballerina

I've been: a hippie

(8 years later lol)

I've been: Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

Well...naughty Dorothy lol.

Everyone has to be naughty at least ONCE in their life during Halloween.

What can i say - I was feeling a little racy that year ;)

I've been: Grapes.

This was my all time favorite Halloween costume everrrrr!

It was so simple to make: blow up balloons (green or purple), tie the balloons to a string, wrap the string around your body, tie the string, cut out leaf shapes from construction paper, slap em on, wear a little bit of brown, and there you have it! You're a bunch of grapes!!

Due to the fact that this outfit was a big hit - I decided that every year I would try to be a clever food item of some sort. So I really have to do it big this year!!! Stay tuned to find out how it goes...

Time for a new segment I like to call: Is it weird?

Is it weird that I make up hypothetical situations when I'm bored, and figure out a plan of how I would handle it if it were to actually occur? (for example: how would I handle a zombie invasion whilest working a cake decorating shift at Kroger? --Answer - hide behind the ovens in the bakery until the coast is clear.)

Is it weird that dark chocolate is my favorite type of chocolate, even though it makes me sneeze?

Is it weird that I take 15 minute naps in my car during my breaks at work, instead of socializing with coworkers?

Is it weird that I spend 1/2 of my day preparing meals, 1/4 of my day eating meals, and the other 1/4 is spent doing everything else?

Is it weird that the list I've compiled of things I need when I move out of my house in January consists of only kitchen items - and absolutely nothing else. (Here is my list so far)

Kitchen Aid Mixer..

Mini cupcake pans..

Regular/filled cup cake pans..

Tea holders..

Blender..

Griddle..

Glass bowls..

1 egg pan..

8” pan..

10" pan..

Pillsbury dough boys, chef girl, magnets, other culinary figurines..

Spaghetti Measurer..

Measuring cups..

Cook Books..

Knives.. Cutting boards

(See? I have yet to add clothes, toiletries, etc. to my list....they aren't that important anyway)

Is it weird that I already have an extensive list of family traditions for my nonexistent/hypothetical/future family? Including: Pancake Saturday, French toast Sunday, cake for breakfast on birthdays, etc.

Is it weird that I've been playing the "is it weird" game in my head ALL DAY LONG?!?!?!

The answer: Why yes Jenna. Yes it is.

I bought 4 new flavors of Clif bars- 3 of which I have yet to try.....

What flavors did I purchase?

Spiced pumpkin pie. Peanut toffee buzz. Chocolate almond fudge. And white chocolate macadamia nut.

Which of the four flavors did I try?

Spiced Pumpkin Pie (which is a seasonal flavor - notice the nifty packaging?)

What did I think?

To be quite honest....I wasn't impressed.

I love almost everything that is pumpkin flavored.

But what I dislike the most, is something that claims to be pumpkin flavored, but really isn't.

I don't like food that teases me!!!! Here I was, super excited for a pumpkin delight - and it just wasn't.

The spiced pumpkin pie tastes good, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't what I would consider delicious..

I usually find Clif bars irresistable, but this one just wasn't as much as I hyped it up to be in my mind.

(Curse my trickster mind and it's constant ways of hyping me up!!)

Perhaps the other three flavors will knock my socks off....

The rest of my day will consist of:

Picking up my best friend (she is in town for the weekend!)

Hit up a few Halloween stores.

Purchasing the pieces to my Halloween outfit.

Assembling my Halloween costume.

Carving the behemoth of a pumpkin my mother bought.

Eating dinner at my favorite restaurant (Taqueria Mixteca) like I do every Friday.

I hope each and every one of you have an AMAZING Friday!!!

Let us begin....

[[Today’s music]]

(1)KiD CuDi feat. KANYE WEST – ERASE ME

I love this song. The music video is pretty rad as well.

But I’m pretty biased – becase I love Kid cudi….he’s so darn handsome J

Kanye’s not too bad either ;)

(2) NEON TREES – IN THE NEXT ROOM

I’m not gonna lie….this song is pretty hot.

What? Just listen to it. It’s true.

(3) TEGAN AND SARA – I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW

[[Today’s restaurant]]

BOUCHON BAKERY – (Many Locations)

The boulangeries, the bakeries, of Paris are filled with the most extraordinary creations- the macaron, the croissant, the tart and any number of exquisite chocolate confections. These staples of Parisian daily life so inspired us that, after opening a Bouchon Bakery next to our Bouchon bistro in Yountville, we wanted to open one near our two other restaurants in Las Vegas and New York City to bake the bread for them and to add an additional layer of cafe life to the areas that surround them.

http://www.bouchonbakery.com/aboutTheBakery.php

[[Today's blog findings]]

While going through my daily "blog check" (which is where I peruse through the many blogs I follow) today I came across a lot of pictures that I find interesting, funny, cool, beautiful, and/or wonderful in one way or another:

[[Today's kitchen gadget]]

POTATO MASHER

[[Today’s news]]

(1) FORTY – FOURTH FRENCH CHEESE OFFICIALLY RECOGNISED

“A cheese has become the 44th French cheese to be officially recognised by the European Commission. Fourme de Montbrison is made in the Forez mountains in central France in a 67-kilometer-square area.

It is cylindrical, and covered in a thin orange skin. The Fourme de Montbrison, which is made in thirty three villages, has benefitted from a French AOC, or appellation d’origine controlee, guarantee of authenticity since 1972.

http://www.english.rfi.fr/node/52541

(2) HAPPY MEAL DOESN’T DECOMPOSE AFTER 6 MONTHS

"The Daily Mail reports that a McDonald's Happy Meal bought about six months ago looks the same as a new Happy Meal. Sally Davies, a Manhattan artist, has photographed the Happy Meal each day since its purchase, reports the Daily Mail. There is no sign of mold.

The Happy Meal in question has the standard components, a hamburger and a small order of French fries. "I bought the meal on April 10 of this year and brought it home with the express intention of leaving it out to see how it fared," Davies told the Daily Mail.

She told the Daily Mail that after the second day she had the Happy Meal in her home, "[M]y dogs stopped circling the shelf it was sitting on trying to see what was up there." Davies' experiment with the Happy Meal is the latest in a series of high-profile examinations of fast food. Morgan Spurlock, in the DVD extras section of his 2004 documentary "Super Size Me," performed a similar experiment with McDonald's food as Davies did.

In a January 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey, food writer Michael Pollan said one of his rules on food is, "Eat only foods that will eventually rot."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20019427-10391704.html

(3) NOT JUST YOUR IMAGINATION: KIDS REALLY ARE MORE ALLERGIC

“These days, any parent worth her salt knows to inquire about food allergies before a playdate begins. Allergies are everywhere, to all sorts of nuts, or eggs, or dairy. Rustling up a snack has never been more complicated, as Andrew Liu learned when he was responsible for providing it in his child's kindergarten class.

A pediatric allergist, Liu asked who was allergic and got a list of six names out of 28 students. “I thought, Could this really be?” says Liu, who practices at National Jewish Health in Denver. Over the course of the year, he became convinced. “These kids were having full-out allergic reactions. I came to believe anecdotally something had changed.”

That experience prompted Liu to try to quantify just who out there has food allergies. The National Institutes of Health funded him, and he recently published his results:

About 2.5% of Americans — nearly 8 million — suffer from food allergies, and children suffer the most. (Not only are they hit hardest physiologically, but more than 30% of kids with food allergies report they've been bullied.) In the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Liu reports that 4.2% of kids between the ages of 1 and 5 are allergic, a rate that dips slightly, to 3.7%, for children between the ages of 6 and 19. Black boys are 4.4 times as likely as other children to have food allergies. (The least allergic segment of the population? The over-60 crowd, at 1.3%.)”

Want to read more?

http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/12/not-just-your-imagination-kids-really-are-more-allergic/

(4) AT WHITE HOUSE’S BEHEST, CHEFS MOVE TO SCHOOLS

"The third-graders at Chicago's McAuliffe Elementary School were a tough crowd. They liked the story of "Little Pea," the twisted tale of a good little vegetable who tries valiantly to eat all his candy before having spinach for dessert. But when it came to actually tasting vegetables themselves, the students, each wearing a paper toque, were resistant. Chef Melissa Graham circulated, encouraging them to try just one bite - and not to spit it out. In the end, there were converts, even fans, of radishes and bell peppers. Cauliflower? Not so much.

It was the same story at 67 public schools across Chicago last week. Chefs arrived with a story, some snacks and a message about healthful eating. The day was the first coordinated push of Chefs Move to Schools, the White House initiative that aims to create a volunteer chef corps to educate kids about food and nutrition.

"You know more about food than almost anyone, other than the grandmas," Michelle Obama told a cheering crowd of more than 500 chefs who gathered on the White House lawn on a sweltering June afternoon to kick off the program. "And you've got the visibility and the enthusiasm to match that knowledge."

The chefs' zeal was palpable. But even at the launch, there was grumbling and plenty of post-event commentary in the blogosphere about whether chefs really could make a difference: They may know food, but do the adrenaline-fueled night owls have the teaching skills and personalities to work with kids? Would they have, or create, the time to make a long-term commitment? Most important, how would chefs figure out what would be most helpful to the schools? The Chefs Move program doesn't mandate a specific curriculum, letting individual schools and chefs determine their type and level of involvement.

Want to read more?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101202787.html

[[Today’s random]]

(1)PAULA DEEN WILL PROBABLY EAT YOUR HAND GIVEN THE CHANCE

This video is disturbing on so many different levels….

I swear Paula would eat someone’s hand if it hand enough butter/fat on it.

Oh Paula how I love you so…..but this is just wrong :/

I really hope Jamie Oliver doesn’t see this lol.

(I feel fat just watching this)

(2) COACHELLA FESTIVAL 2010

“New York director and visual effects artist Sam O’Hare has created this short film documenting the 2010 Coachella Festival. Using a similar approach as used in his award winning film The Sandpit, the festival and each of its inhabitants appear as if tiny, scurrying around the site. The clip presents a unique vision of the festival which is fast becoming recognised as one of summer’s best.

Enjoy!”

http://hypebeast.com/2010/10/coachella-festival-2010/

(3) HOW TO BLOW DRY CURLY HAIR

(4) CREATIVE HALLOWEEN MASKS

[[Today’s food clip]]

HALLOWEEN at Charm City Cakes

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday.

I feel sorry for all of the people out there who don’t get to experience Halloween every year. It’s awesome!

Duff makes it even better……

[[Today's curly head]]

TOM BERENGER