practice makes perfect!

I'm constantly practicing what I'm about to feed to my clients. I've got three big caterings coming up. 6-course seated dinner for 8, five-course seated dinner for 25, and a cocktail party for 75. over the past week, kelly's been eating like a king, as I practice the things that I will be making for the parties. Flourless chocolate cake? Dessert the other night. Chicken Roulade Florentine? Yesterday's dinner. Home-made-from-scratch ravioli? that was tonight's dinner. I'm covered in flour and my hands are positively aching. But I'm tapping away at this machine and blogging anyway.

Tomorrow he's getting Suppli (which I've always called arancini) It's Italian street food, which I fondly recall eating at those spectacular Italian festivals when I was a kid in Chicago. It's breaded balls of risotto stuffed with mozzarella and deep fried. Yeah, you want some. Good thing he's not a low-carb freak and that I don't give a damn about carbs!

So what's left to practice for the upcoming weeks? Might as well make a cassata. It's the only other thing I haven't made in a while. Do I force cake upon my poor husband AGAIN this week? Hell yeah.

Last thing I ate or drank: after all that fancy-schmancy home made delicious food, I'm drinking "cappucino" made from a powdered mix. ha ha.

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Taking a moment to write about this blog.....

I haven't blogged for a while, I know.

I hate to say it but I've had better things to do! Not that I find the blog a waste of time, au contraire! it's that I haven't been able to fit in the quality time with my computer. Even now, I'm multitasking. I'm on hold with the computer place, I've got one of those blemish-yanking strips on my nose, whitestrips on my teeth, and I'm letting my toenail polish dry while I'm blogging. go me.

My computer's been dead. right now I'm tapping away at my husband's laptop, which actually belongs to my husband's company, technically, but that he has had exclusive use of, so he keeps it here at home so that he can check his work e-mail and stuff... except now I've commandeered it while my machine is in the shop.

I've been working more days than ever: actually, more days on than off! For a few weeks there, I was actually living the life that I had set as my goal: three personal chef clients and a party every weekend. Let me tell you, that's a lot of work. I love it, so it's okay, but I was really starting to feel burnout creeping in.

I spent the entire month of january doing recruiting because january is supposed to be dead for caterers. ha. I was still busy every weekend!

I was "Miss January" on the mactopia site, which is pretty f'ing cool. Click here to see Yours Truly featured as the computer-geek-slash-chef.

Also, early this month, I managed to incorporate my business for the low, low price of $800.

My website, despite all the critiques I get from my IRL geek friends and online acquaintences, is actually generating business! People google me. People click on my site. People hire me. It's awesome.

I'll try to be a better online friend. I got hell for deleting the old blog, because the people who read it couldn't continue reading it... but as I said for that one, and as I continue to say for this one, I'm writing it for me. it's a journal, not a newsletter, but if you find something interesting, enjoy. I welcome comments, but I'm no big supporter of free speech, so if I don't like it, I reserve the right to delete it.

Now, to go remove all the strips, tabs and beauty aids affixed to my body, so I can go get the computer that the tech-dude just told me is repaired and complete! Hurrah!

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Dear Chef, Send me a recipe!

I get a LOT of requests for recipes. People who come across my photo pages, mostly, who tell me that they promised so-and-so they'd make them a cake, and oh, Chef, your cake looks so beautiful, can you please send me the recipe and instructions?

Most people ask for recipes for pineapple upside-down cake. Coming in second are requests for carrot cake recipes. I can understand the queries for pineapple upside-down cake (you can't just pour that out of a box) but what's the deal with carrot cake? They sell that in a box!

I must ask, my dear darling readers, why don't you simply look up the recipe? You found ME on the Internet, and I promise you, there are recipes for exactly what you want out there, too. Here are a few tricks that I use:

• recipe name plus and ingredient just google the name of the recipe and an ingredient (or two, or three) not included in that name: carrot cake flour egg or another one is pineapple cake upside down flour egg
  
• search for several of the ingredients Some stuff is named weird. You may not realize that the perfect recipe you are searching for will be listed under the obscure name of "Miss Rebecca's New England Summertime Delight". What in the hell could that be? Dessert? Salad? Hell, that sounds like it could be the name of a porno... Anyway, I digress. Just last night I did a search for black beans corn pepper vinegar and found a decent recipe for a bean & corn salad. Sure, I could make it up as I go, but I like having something to look at...and I'll riff off of that.
  
• use one of the MANY free recipe sites out there There are thousands of recipes that people have already typed up and are listed online, just waiting for you to use them. Here are a few I use:
  RecipeSource
  Food Network
  Festival Foods
  and if you're TOTALLY LOST, I just did a google search for free recipes and the reply it gave me back was "Results 1 - 50 of about 14,700,000 English pages for free recipes" That's fourteen MILLION pages of recipes. I can personally guarantee you that there will be a recipe for something that I've made somewhere in there. Even things I thought I made up. Well, ok, that's not how I make it... but it is a recipe!

and if you don't like google, just use your favorite search engine.

If you want to know specific techniques, then, uh, go to culinary school, or fly me out to where you live, and pay me to give you lessons. I'll do it...if the price is right.

Last thing I ate or drank: oatmeal with assorted dried-fruit and a latte.

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I got my car done! Finally!

WOO HOO!

Last thing I ate or drank: Pan-Roasted Breast of Chicken stuffed with Spinach, over Black Rice with Gravy
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Resurrected!

Well, I've decided to resurrect the Chefblog. Too many cool things have been going on that I don't want to lose them to the ether. This will follow in the same footsteps of the previous ChefBlog, the only difference is that I won't be naming names this time.

So much to tell, so little time right now... so I'm going to backdate this entry (which was actually entered on Thursday, December 16, 2004, 8:15 AM) and post in the past. Enjoy!



Last thing I ate or drank: scrambled eggs and green tea
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