Yesterday’s class in Soup and Sauce was dessert sauces. Each of us made creme anglaise which is the base for vanilla bean ice cream (my first time to make a really good ice cream), strawberry coulis which is simply a pureed fruit, ganache (pronounce as ganash), a chocoalte sauce, sabayon which almost made me drunk and caramel sauce. I never make any dessert sauce before, I guess I always depend on hershey’s syrup which I realized is too rich and disgusting compared to these sauces you made from scratch.

Dessert sauces is about contrast. If you have a very sweet desserts like cake or any pastries containing chocolate or elaborate creams, it is best served with acidic sauce like unsweetened fruit coulis. The dessert sauces we made are just a base and we can make variations out of it. Example is creme anglaise. You can add spirits (whiskey, brandies, liqueurs), fruits, chocolate, coffee and so on whatever you like. But personally, I like it the way it is. I just love the vanilla flavor which is the main flavor of creme anglaise. I was surprised of making ganache. It is very simple and one of the best chocolate sauce I’ve ever tasted. If you want to make chocolate sauce from scratch, try ganache instead of using hershey syrup. Just simmer cream and milk, add chocolate and add the butter in the end. That’s it. Of course you have to cool it down before you add it to your cake or whatever.

The pictures above are the sauces I made. My caramel tasted bitter at the end maybe because I didn’t pay attention when I was making it (I was busy whisking my creme anglaise). I still find it weird when you add liqueur in your dessert sauce just like the sabayon. Sabayon itself is the only sauce that originally have wine in it. I personally don’t like it that much. The rest are really good. Then again, I was feeling light headed after class. I ate too much ice cream.

I learned a lot in school, yes, compared to what I know and thought I know 6 months ago. I learned to properly hold a knife, learned what are the mother sauces, learned to baked classic genoise and many other cooking terms that I still have a hard time pronouncing. But to put everything I read in the book, chapter by chapter, that I have some issues on. Who doesn’t? It seems very tough when you have so many things to read and then for some reason it doesn’t stick to your brain. It only stick through hands-on, at least for me.

I know that I have been very lazy to try the recipes we cooked at school. I kind of tried to make espagnole, the base for my brown gravy, but it turned out really bad. I think I put a lot of flour in it. If I remembered correctly, the only thing I seriously try to make this semester was chocolate chip cookie. And that wasn’t great. A 10 year old can make better than that.

Soup and Sauce is a very interesting class, Baking basics is my favorite although I hate kneading and whisking, Purchasing class is a must in every aspiring chef. I may put a lot of time in Purchasing because of its math content but that doesn’t mean I favor to learn one than the other. But these classes aren’t easy as I thought. It takes a lot of courage, discipline and patience to survive on these class. I really need to practice. Practice is learning.

This is my first time to visit Lincoln, Nebraska. If it wasn’t for Purchasing class -Sysco tour, I may forgot that this place existed. Lincoln is the capital city of Nebraska but the city is smaller than Omaha. It is the home of university’s football team, Nebraska Cornhuskers, which I couldn’t care less.

My husband took a vacation so that he can drive me to Lincoln. I don’t trust myself driving that far and I’m scared that I will get lost in the middle of nowhere. After the 3 hour tour, my husband bought pizza at Valentino’s. I didn’t eat because I already eat my lunch in Sysco. We both decided to stay for awhile and stroll around the city. I’m glad we did because there are a lot of beautiful tourist attractions in Lincoln. My favorite spot there is the University of Lincoln Nebraska. It is very big and wide. The school buildings are old and have very beautiful architecture. I didn’t have the chance to take picture of the school because we were driving but we stopped for a minute and took picture of a ring formed sculpture of some sort. Our second stop is in Pioneer’s park nature center. I would say this park is the most beautiful public park I’ve been to so far. Most of the pictures above are from there. It is only 6 miles away from the city and the trip is worth it. The place is very huge and there are so many things to do and go. We stopped in the Nature Center where they have this children’s museum and old little prairie houses. And for the first time, I saw a real buffalo. God, they are so gigantic and hairy (and did I say yummy?lol)

It was a long and short day in Lincoln. Long because of the tour and short because I want to visit more places other than parks. I also want to eat at one of the local restaurants and maybe stay there for a day or two.

It’s already spring but it still feels like winter. You really can’t trust Nebraska weather. Sometimes we hit 70 degrees and then tomorrow we have snow. Really unpredictable. The thing that sucks is that I don’t wear my coat anymore. So everytime I go home from work, I’m all freeze out.

Just this late afternoon I decided to plant my vegetable seeds in the small cardboard pots. It was nice to stay outside with its 60 degree weather. I don’t want to waste this beautiful day. The reason why I put my seeds in the small pots is that I haven’t build my raised bed garden yet. Well, I’m just waiting for my husband to build it. We’re going to use used woods we found in our shed. Speaking of our shed, last Sunday, when we were cleaning it, we found a dead cat under the table. I found it first. I thought I saw a stuffed toy covered with dust, but when I looked closely, it was a dead cat! I freaked out so hard I ran and didn’t come back. I hate and I’m scared of cats. It also looks so creepy. My husband said that he saw whiskers and the cat doesn’t have a stomach. Maybe it’s been there for who knows how many years. I think that the cat was locked and starved to death. I really don’t want to know, I just want that corpse out of our shed. Anyhow, I’m going to drop most of the stuff we found in our shed into recycle area (definitely not the dead cat).

I hope that this weather will be better soon. And I hope that there is no snow coming. I want to see the spring sprung, literally.

My job and my studies has been quite challenging lately. I need a break and that break lead me to make mango smoothie for myself. There is something in smoothies that makes me relax. Although its cold outside, it didn’t stop me from making and drinking it. But this is perfect when its very hot and humid out. I remember eating this when I was in the Philippines. We call smoothie “shake”, like mango shake or banana shake. I’m not sure why we call it shake, but who cares. It’s delicious and so refreshing!

I’m not sure with the term drinking because I don’t really drink it. I used spoon instead of a straw. I know its weird but I like it that way.

2 mango