You call me cute, and I punch you in the face.

I can't count the number of times after telling someone I'm a baker, the response has been "Oh, how cute!"

I have a problem with this.

Baking a batch of cookies at home in your kitchen is cute. Making your Dad a birthday cake in your little 4 quart kitchenaid? Adorable. Puppy equivalent, I'm sure. But when go to work when most people sleep, your back aches from standing all day and not getting a break, your hands crack and burn from the flour and cornmeal, or you're up to your elbows in batter, it's not cute, or glamorous, it's freaking hard work.

It seems like only actual bakers understand how un-cute the actual job is, and frankly, just plain not respected like it used to be. It used to be all men, who dedicated their lives to being bakers. Women weren't allowed to work in kitchens, and they sure as hell weren't respected when they started to. I think people have this mental image of a modern day bakery being all women in frilly aprons... and hell, maybe some places it is, but it's still a male dominated field, and I know I'm the only girl in my department at work. Anyway, I don't want to get into a feminist debate, but just sayin'.

Maybe someday being a chef, pastry chef, or baker will have the same respect and prestige as being a programmer, or an engineer, or any 9-5 cubicle job. I think chefs and pastry chefs have both come a long way, but being a baker still seems to have that humble ring to it.

I'm not saying I want to change the world or anything, but I would like someone to eventually say, when I tell them I'm a baker, "Wow, that's a lot of hard work", and I'll smile and say, "You're right, it is".

Best meal of the day? Brinner.

You heard me. Breakfast for dinner.

Now, I love breakfast pretty much anytime of the day, but I also really enjoy sleeping in, so when I wake up at eleven I don't really feel like spending an hour making breakfast, so cereal it is, but when I'm going to be making dinner anyway, it's breakfast time.

I had the pleasure this evening to dine with some lovely people in a full on brinner extravaganza. With the help of Jesse and Monica, I think we had a pretty rocking meal.

Our menu included:

-Whole grain sweet potato waffles

-Homemade apple sauce

-Salmon cakes

-Bacon (second batch w/ brown sugar)

Oh man, it was awesome. The only disappointment I had was that there were no leftovers.

Brinner, ftw!

Red Dresses

I'm currently sitting here volunteering at Northeast Girl Jam - it's been a fantastic weekend full of hilarity and great quality dancing and workshops. Big thanks to Groove Juice Swing for putting on such a fantastic event.

I hope to post video of our "Naughty Sweeties" performance on Friday night very soon, but in the mean time I'll say I'm very proud of all of the girls, and we looked hot in our red dresses, damn it. It was great to see it all come together in the end.

I finished new job week number 1 on Friday, and so far so good, everyone seems pretty chill and pleasant to work with; I feel like I'll learn a lot there. I do feel like I need some sort of phrase to work there though... my highly entertaining superior from Bosnia seems to say "How sweet it is" on an hourly basis.. usually when something good happens, and my other coworker has "Mama mia" as his phrase.. usually when he realizes how much we have to do. They're both a riot.

Anyway, weekend's not over yet.. since this isn't really a dance blog I'm not going to do a whole recap of the week, but I will again say how much I enjoyed myself, and look forward to finishing it up with a bang.

"I'm tired" "My toes hurt" "My feet are sweaty" "I'm full of snot"

It happened on job search - day 20 - I got offered the job!

The past few days have been a little hectic between going home, packing all my stuff, taxes, trying to work out health insurance, driving back and forth and continuing to choreograph/practice with the girls.

But it's been good - I start work tomorrow at 2 in the am, and while I'm a little nervous, I'm really excited to actually have a job, be making money, and have it be in the field I want. I know that's more than a lot of people can say right now, so I'm extra feeling like I made the right career choice - people still want baked goods... and when they're depressed by how much the economy sucks, that cinnamon bun might just make it a little better.

Still won't be officially moved in for a couple weeks, but in the meantime at least I have something productive to do, and will be extra busy leading up to girl jam. Today it's practice performance hair: try #1, and continually try to break in performance shoes.

Did I mention the world might explode by how much hotness there will be on Friday night? Well, five beautiful girls, vintage hair and costumes (seamed stockings, FTW). Need I say more?

"..and no grabbing any boobs... or butts"

Well Cookies, it's job search - day 15 - Two interviews down; one declined, one pending. I think it's safe to say I really want the pending job, and I'm kind of getting my hopes up. The job is at a bread bakery, which is kind of my ultimate goal, and since I don't have much experience with bread, they would be willing to train me. Keeping my fingers crossed.

You may be wondering where the title of this post came from... a bunch of us Rochester girls have been hard at work preparing a performance for Northeast Girl Jam next weekend, so needless to say, we've had some pretty hilarious quotes from some of our practices. But on a more serious note, it's a great change choreographing a piece for five girls vs. two, and really seeing your vision come to life. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

In everyday life adventures, my and Ross's starter, who we've named Big Bertha, is coming along quite nicely. But one thing to definitely note: sourdough is weird. We decided on Saturday night that she was ready to start baking, so we proofed the sponge overnight, and made dough in the morning. All of Sunday - nothing. Absolutely nothing. She wouldn't rise at all, and was seemingly inactive, aka dead dough. I was extremely frustrated by this, especially with my last horrible sourdough experience. So by the end of Sunday, I stuck the dough in the oven, not wanting to look at it any longer, and not having the courage to throw it out.

Then the weirdness started.

Monday morning after P90X, I opened the oven, the dough at actually started to rise. After that, smooth sailing, like the disaster that was Sunday had never happened at all. It rose like a dream, baked beautifully, and tasted delicious. I'm still letting Bertha sit out a few days longer just in case, so maybe next time this situation won't happen again.

Alright, enough ranting about jobs, choreographing and sourdough - hope to see you at Girl Jam!

Job Search - Day 10 / What I do when I'm unemployed

Today is day 10 of the job search... my list of bakeries is ever dwindling and I've broke down and applied for a few barista positions in lieu of any leads. If nothing comes up by the end of this week, I might have to come up with a new game plan, but even though a lot of doors have been shut in my face, I still like to think everything happens for a reason.

Now, even though I've been kind of distraught about all of this job business, I've been doing a lot of things I always told myself I would do when I had the time, and even knocking off some resolutions... some examples include:

Re-trying starting a sourdough starter with the help of Ross - I tried this about a year ago and it ended in probably the worst baking project to date.. but a good learning experience nonetheless. This time we'll show this starter who's boss.

Going to the farmers market, also with Ross (Ross is pretty much my cooking/bread baking partner in crime, so you can pretty much guess all of my food projects will involve him), which resulted in some amazing dinner: roasted beets and parsnips over lentils and topped with goat cheese - Ross also made amazing rosemary/ olive oil/ sea salt no knead bread to go with this. We also plan on making homemade mayonnaise in the near future (which I've never made before), and last week we made eggs florentine with homemade hollandaise. Saying we've been eating well is kind of an understatement.

To go along with resolution #8, I started P90X with Mike/Jesse/Ross yesterday morning, and after plyometrics this morning, I'm sore in a lot a places, to say the least. Plus since I'm pretty used to getting up early and having to be ready to go, our 6:30am wakeup call isn't too out of the ordinary for me... but I still want to punch Tony Horton in the face sometimes.

-E

Job Search - Day 4

Instead of a recap of my past week, I thought I'd shake it up a bit and do a video blog - enjoy! Note: I started this one Saturday before I left Albany.