Twice a year friends

No I swear that isn’t a bad thing. See I have a friend Jenny, she and I met many years ago back in culinary school. Not only do we share an interest in food but we also share the same mixed race background. (yes that is something I noticed the very first day in class)

She hooked me up with my first pastry job so I worked the weekdays while she worked weekends (she had a fulltime job in addition to school and baking). When she moved on I continued to work there alone until I started working at a local bakery. A few years later she once again hooked me up when she decided to leave her assistant pastry chef position and recommended me as a replacement. I worked at both the bakery and the restaurant for a very exhausting 6 or 7 months before both the pastry chef and myself ended up leaving. 

While our regular day jobs and lives are vastly different we always manage to meet up about twice a year to eat, drink and catch up.

Today was one of those days. 

Using the excuse of splitting a mailorder batch of vanilla beans (OMG they smell heavenly) we lunched on more dim sum than 2 people should eat and talked about the latest in our lives and of course our food adventures. Turns out Jenny is going to be launching her new food blog soon and I got to see a sneak preview. We chatted about the recipes our Mom’s made and how we both wanted to learn whatever we could from them before it was too late.  I’m hoping we can arrange a cooking lesson with her Mom and Grandma in a few weeks when they visit.

Eventually though the lunch had to end since one of us (not me) had a day job to go back to. I on the other hand came home and as is usually the case after I see Jenny I wanted to bake. Rather than making the foccacia I had planned on baking I decided to try and make the Chinese egg tarts that are present at any good dim sum restaurant.

I got Mom to translate one of her recipes (that is a project all in itself) and while the first attempt was too ugly for pictures I’m definitely on the right path. Turns out the type of pastry I like in my egg tarts is of course the most difficult one and from what I found out today…also the messiest. The flavor is close but my technique needs work.

It’s a good thing I like egg tarts because there might be a lot of trial and error

In knitting news: I wore the cashmere socks today and damn those feel good on my feet. The green sweater continues to make progress, I’m just past the halfway mark of what I had to frog last week. It’s been slow going not because it’s hard but mostly because frogging that much of my knitting was a little demoralizing. The next pair of socks on the needles are being debated right now. It’s down to some handspun or the yellow/orange Panda Silk. Decisions decisions.