Just Updates

A little warning before reading this post… Its going to jump around!! This is just to update everyone on whats going on with everything!! lol Just a few quick topics before I am off to work on everything lol. Enjoy this adventure in ADD lol

I have been working on making that pot and pan hanger for my kitchen and ,while its going to be awesome!!, it’s taking a lot longer to finish than I expected. Not to mention I bought the wrong screws and cut the wood so that its too long. At least that last one is an easy fix. Just another couple cuts. I also got the wire hangers cut and ready to attach to the top of it. Those are what I am going to hang the s hooks on and hang my pots from that. It’s amazing how beautiful the wood looks with the stain on it. I was actually a little worried how things would turn out considering I was using pallets, but I am pleased with the results so far. I still have some staining to do, and some cutting to do, but hopefully I should have it together in a couple of days. Wish me luck!

Also I have a “conditional acceptance” from the Art Institutes. Which is a little exciting. I’d rather it be a full acceptance but that’s just going to have to wait a few. I still have to take the Accuplacer Test. I have until the 6th to do that but I am scared. I’m not really sure what to study still and i probably should have been studying for this a long time ago. I’ve looked at the math portion and there is no way I can solve those problems!!

3. If r = 5 z then 15 z = 3 y, then r =

A. y

B. 2 y

C. 5 y

D. 10 y

E. 15 y

4. What is 35% of a number if 12 is 15% of a number?

A. 5

B. 12

C. 28

D. 33

E. 62

I mean LOOK at those!!!! That’s only two of the EXAMPLE problems!!! I’m going to need major help to learn this and I hope that the school will still accept me if I don’t pass. I know that I need basic math for cooking but seriously this stuff is a different language!!! I mean I THINK the answer to 4. is 28 but I could totally be wrong and the only way I got that is because I added 12+12 and of course got 24 and then added a couple more to get to the 35% requirement. I am so lost! Thank goodness the Art Institute offers tutoring! I am going to be taking them up on that ALL the time!! Hopefully they’ll be able to get me tutoring here in the Springs instead of in Denver because that’s a LOOONG drive and I really don’t want to be driving it really late at night.

The other night the Hubs and I decided we were going to make dinner together. We got chicken and fresh broccoli and some penne pasta and made a delicious chicken and broccoli alfredo. I think it was more a gravy than an alfredo sauce but it ROCKED!! And the time spent making dinner together was wonderful and full of giggles, smiles,  inside jokes, conversation and teasing with the daughter. It was one of those nights that you just know you’re going to look back on and remember with warmth and happiness in your heart. Thank you my love for that wonderful and fun-filled evening, and thank you to my wonderful and beautiful daughter who made the laughter that much sweeter!

Menus and other helpful ideas

With things getting hectic around the house, I have decided to start making actual menus for the house. Its not easy to do because I want to have one done for the whole month. I also have to make sure that the items on the menu have recipes with them so that if I am unable to be home to start dinner my husband can. Making sure that I have a place to keep the recipe next to the ingredients that I have set out is also a must. I found this picture on Pinterest the other day of a Cookie sheet that had been made into a board for magnets to hold recipes while you are cooking. I am definitly goign to do this! Not only will it be pretty but it will be very helpful in making my house more manageable when I can’t be here all the time.

A house menu needs to have a lot of variety, but each meal has to be seriously easy to make. The best set up is prepping everything and sticking it in the freezer. That way all you have to do is take it out and pop it in the oven or start heating up a pan. Really good ones for this are your casseroles. But you can’t always do this. If you want to make a pot roast it’s not an easy dish to prep. Freezing the fresh veggies is not really an option unless you have a way to flash freeze them. A good way to fix this is to prep everything the night before and stick it in the fridge. Not only will this make it easier the next day to get dinner on the table in a decent timeframe, but it will also let the flavors marry and your meal will be just a little bit tastier.

There are many places where you can find sample menus for your home. The internet is an awesome place for such information. Just make sure that the menu you make is easy to keep up with and that you can switch it up if you feel like. Maybe you decided to go out instead of eating in, make sure that your menu can pick up where you left off. If you’re like me and you only do your grocery shopping once a month make sure the that meals that use fresh veggies are in the first week of the month so that your veggies don’t spoil before you can use them. Or if you’re like me you can start a fresh veggie bank. Take a canister and keep it in a special place in your kitchen. Every time you get paid put anywhere from 5-15 dollars in the canister and use that money for trips to the store to get fresh veggies which are healthier and have more taste than frozen or canned vegetables. Even better you can have your own garden of organic  veggies!! Thats definitley something I am going to look into. A vegetable garden would be a great thing to have this summer and it would give me a wonderful excuse to spend time with my daughter outside!! Not to mention the sense of accomplishment when I can just go out to the backyard and pluck fresh carrots from the ground and grab a bushel of green beans from the vine. Maybe even grab a few potatoes in the fall. This all sounds amazing! I can’t wait to get started!! Let me know how you keep your garden or schedule your dinner menu in the comments below!!

P.S. This is where you can find that cookie sheet recipe card holder!! I’m starting mine today, I let you know how it turns out!! 😀

 

http://cinnaberry-suite.blogspot.com/2010/05/magnet-board-cuteness.html

Essays and other distractions…

I had to write an essay to the school explaining why they should accept me. it had to be about 150 words and explain why I chose culinary school and why I thought this particular school could help me achieve my goals. This is what I came up with…

“I chose Culinary School because I love food, it’s really that simple. The tastes, the smells, the textures, it’s all incredibly intoxicating. I have to say that my favorite part of cooking is watching others enjoy the food that I have made. I love to eat, but I love sharing my passion with others.

I chose The Art Institute because I have heard many good things about the programs. I like the fast pace, and the short course time. I’d like to get in to school, and get out quickly so that I can start working and gaining more experience as soon as possible. Eventually I want to open my own restaurant, serving all of my own recipes.

I feel that an education from the Art Institute will help me achieve my goals. The skills, techniques, and disciplines that I will learn will get e a long way toward my goals and the passion and perseverance that I have will get me even farther.”

I am not going to post this until after I have figured out how to actually e-mail this in the right form to the school. I don’t want them to think that I didn’t write this essay or that I got help, because if I get help that is grounds for rejection!! But I at least have this post ready and waiting for you to be able to join me in this step too 🙂 Let me know what you think of my essay in the comments!!! Thanks guys!!

2 days later… So I talked to my admissions counselor. So far things are looking great!! She has recommended me for acceptance!!!!!!! I can’t describe how excited I am about all of this. There are no words!! I feel like I have taken that first small step toward my dreams and it feels so exhilarating! I’ll find out later next week (probably) if I have been accepted. I am trying to find a place to take the accuplacer test. That’s a test that all new students have to take. I hope that I do well on that. I just looked it up and it seems pretty straight forward, but there are a few concerns I have. Mainly the math I’m not very good after algebra and precalculus? Forget it! I am hoping to do well on the English though. Fingers crossed!

Today I have to talk to my financial aid officer. I’m worried because we are going to be using the GI bill and the plan that the financial officer sent doesn’t include that.  He wants me to pay 33 thousand out-of-pocket!! OUCH!!! I’m sure there is a way that I can cover the entire cost of school without having to pay out-of-pocket. I’m searching for grants and scholarships that will help me. There has to be more out there somewhere!!!

3 days later… Ok I know that I haven’t posted in a few days. Things have been hectic with the house. I reminded my financial aid officer that I wanted to use the Hubby’s GI bill and he said that the GI bill should cover everything except the “Starter Kit” which is fine because I can make payment arrangements to pay that off really quickly. Also there is talk about a book stipend from the GI bill so that should help out too!! Things are starting to look up!! Also we are looking at getting a new car (or rather “New to us”) so that I can get back and forth to the school. I will get there!! Basically there hasn’t been much going on around here to blog about just housework and things. I haven’t even really made anything new in the kitchen. I am working on re-purposing an old dresser to make a new counter for the kitchen, and I got a pallet to make a pot and pan holder to hang in the kitchen. But due to funds and the weather, those things have been put on hold. I’ll keep you all up to date as things progress 😀

 

 

Saturday

So just a little cute back up to Friday then on to Saturday! Friday night I was sitting around and decided to open up a fortune cookie. We have a few on the house from when we went to Panda a few days ago. I opened the fortune after making my wish (its something I always do when I open a fortune cookie, I’m not sure why…) and the fortune I received blew my mind!! “YOU WILL SOON BE CONFRONTED WITH UNLIMITED OPPORTUNITIES” Now remember this is the night BEFORE I go take a tour at the Culinary School I am applying to. It was just so coincidental!! It literally had me gaping at the little fortune paper! lol

Saturday was amazing!! We had so much fun touring the Art Institute’s Culinary School and learning about their programs! They even let me take pics of all of their kitchens!! Soo awesome!! They let me turn in my application and I have started doing all of the little things that I need to do to be able to go. I still have to be accepted, but I hope that’s just a matter of time. I’m afraid of how I would feel if I got rejected. I would be devastated, depressed, disappointed, and so many other things. I don’t think it would be very healthy. But I am NOT going to think about that. Not now. I’m going to think about how much fun I had on Saturday and how much I WANT this.

I found out that 100% of my education would be at the school!! They won’t send me out to be an apprentice and then make me pay them for it! I think that’s so awesome!! They have a restaurant that the students run! Its called Assignments!! I think that is so awesome!! They said that no matter who you are if you are a front of the house person or a back of the house person you are going to work every job in the kitchen and the front of the house! That makes me so nervous! But whats so cool is I WON a coupon to go to the restaurant for 20% off!! I’m going to save it for when someone very close to me comes and visits I want to see fi they want to go down to the school and see where I am going to be going to school. Or at least I’m going to do that if I get accepted lol. I don’t want to go down there to eat if I’m not going to attend their school, it would hurt too much you know? I am all for supporting the students, don’t get me wrong. I’ll give the coupon to someone who goes down there a lot. That way I am still supporting the students and I don’t have to go down there and get upset… BUT I am NOT going to think about not getting accepted. I am going to be POSITIVE for once in my life! I am GOING to go to CULINARY SCHOOL!!!

New Recipes!

So the other day I was on Pinterest. Pinning the things about food that I like and things that I want to make. I found one about pizza and thought how fun it would be to make our own! So we got busy… I made the dough which isn’t hard at all (flour, water, yeast, olive oil, salt, sugar) super easy dough. Then we got to talking about toppings. The hubby wanted a white sauce pizza which became a huge hassle, but we got through it. Then we had to actually make the toppings… suddenly my fun idea became a couple of hours worth of work. Browning off the sausage, cooking the bacon, baking the chicken, draining the black olives and opening up the fresh and already sliced mushrooms. When all was said and done it took us like four hours to make home-made pizza. The only reason I think it took so long, is because it was a last-minute idea and we were not prepared. Note to self, if you want to make a pizza at home make sure that you are ready for not only the extensive prep and cooking, but the HUGE mess!! lol The pizzas were delicious though! All that white sauce and mozzarella cheese melting together! The perfectly cooked chicken was juicy and tender, and the sausage just added that much more flavor. We mixed some parmesan in with the white sauce too. This made the sauce even more tasty! Next time I think we are going to get even more creative with our toppings and see what tasty combinations we can come up with. Any ideas?

Lately I have been trying to come up with new recipes. Mostly just a list of things that I would like to try. Like veal… I have never had veal, and rabbit, I have only ever had rabbit once, and that was when I was a little girl, but it was so good. I remember how buttery it tasted and how tender it was. This is something I would love to try again. I’m searching our town for a real butcher, you can get things at a butcher’s shop that normal grocery stores shy away from, like rabbit. There are so many different tastes and flavors out there that I can’t wait to try! One day I will, I will taste and experience the world all from whatever kitchen I am in at the time.

Catching up…

 

So I haven’t really cooked the last couple days, things have been hectic. Housework has taken over lol. I finally got my washing machine fixed so I won’t have to do the laundry in the bathtub anymore, and the kitchen is slowly coming together. I still have major storage issues, but we’re getting there lol. Not to mention all of the other things I have been working on lately. We did cook last night though! We made a fabulous white sauce meat lovers pizza! It was divine! Sausage, chicken, black olives, and mushrooms. The hubby and daughter even added bacon to theirs lol It was sooo good! though and we even have left overs for lunch tomorrow!!

I started researching scholarships to see what I could do to get  one or two to help supplement the other financial help I’ll be getting. Books are expensive you know as well as gas for the car. Then I found out that the GI bill the hubby is going to give me is going to actually pay the entire tuition bill!! The only thing that will come out of our pockets should be about 900$ for the “Starter Kit” and gas for the car (hopefully I’ll be able to find someone to carpool with)!! I am totally excited about this!! I also found out that if we get all of our ducks in a row I’ll be able to start school in July! I’m really looking forward to this! It’s all I have ever wanted! One day I WILL have my own restaurant and I WILL be able to make my dream become a reality.