Wow, my third term is upon me already. Less than two months till summer and I feel like I’ve barely even been in Providence for very long. I can’t really wrap my head around where all my time is going, but I’ve decided to say it feels invigorating instead of scary. Gotta love how good a positive spin makes you feel!

I have to tell you all….Sophomore Labs RULE. They absolutely and completely dominate every other lab I’ve been in yet. Maybe it is because I actually enjoy the people I’m in labs with this term; man does it make a difference when you don’t have a pack of cliquey girls roaming the kitchen, and I can truly say that I really have fun with everyone that is in the kitchen with me. What a relief right?! I no longer have to avoid conflict at every turn, yay! However, it also the absolutely amazing material that I have the opportunity to learn with the super amazing chefs that has me falling in love with these labs.

The Chef that I had for plated desserts was really a talented guy. He always had really amazing constructive feedback for my plate designs and I believe that he helped me grow over the course of the nine days in class. I truly can’t believe I did this but….I forgot to take a picture of my final exam dessert! And it was so AWESOME. URRGH, you can’t even imagine how upset I was when I realized that my desserts had been sent to the dining room and I hadn’t taken a photo…..

*Deep Breath* It’s okay though because I got lots of other great photos, so I am happy. We got to make all kinds of things in class too! Lots of sauces and we got to play with sugar garnishes and tempered chocolate! Above is a poached pear and a molten chocolate cake. Can you believe that the round circle with the poached pear is a cookie! No right!? It took about ten tries to make four of those babies because you have to shape the cookie when it is still very hot, and they kept breaking on me, but it was worth every finger burn (and believe me I had a bunch of those at the end of the class).

I think the most thrilling part of the class was all the creative freedom we were allowed to have. We got to choose flavor combinations for the main items, sauces, garnishes, etc. And we had to create a plate design for each day of the class so each of the things you see above I came up with from my imagination! I have to say the only bad part was that we didn’t really get to eat anything in the class because it was always going out to the dining room and being served to others. What a bummer right? Oh well, I guess not having dessert for a few nights won’t kill me.

Plus, this weekend I went to New York City to see two of my friends and I had such fun! We saw the Hunger Games….guys you must go see the Hunger Games. I hadn’t read the books, but on my bus ride back I read the first one straight through and now I’m hooked. Anywho, right now I’m in advanced breads and I can’t even wait to share with you all how completely awesome this class is in my next post! Look forward to lots of delicious photos!