Which will you choose?

I have few requirements for my life:
1. Find a career that pays more than the career path I strayed from (Food Scientist)
2. Love what I do
3. Dress pretty for work
4. Travel

So where does that leave me? I had a minor pre-quarter life crisis with it being my birthday month and all. I love my current job! I truly do. I don't like the pay but the customers and my bosses make up for that. I've done the research and found a couple of options.
1. Catering
2. Food writing/editing (I always did want to write that book on...I can't tell you! You'll take my ideas! lol)
3. Food styling (Mentioned this in a previous post)
4. Travel agent
5. (advertising) Account Executive but I lack the degree in business

Too many choices. Too many unknowns. So my solution to all this? Run. Run to another country and maybe I can figure it out over there during my adventures. I need a global map and darts. Next stop.....*throws dart*

Happy Independence Day America!

This was the only thing on my agenda today:
(Recipe coming soon!)
And then I ate it. By myself. NOM NOM NOM!

Eyes, not nose

It's a day where I have it off. It's the middle of the week! Whereas I would love to hang out with friends on my days off, I cannot as they have "grown-up" jobs with proper weekends off. But I can't complain about the flexibility. So with ugly weather outside, I'm on Tastespotting rather than out spending $$ at restaurants. I came across this recipe:  Cinnamon POPS

So I would like to thank Tastespotting. Thank you for giving me eye candy. My stomach and I thoroughly appreciate it. :)

Eau de Baked Goods

So my job ends the day at the cleaning yard which is located right next to La Boulange's baking headquarters.  As we're cleaning the contents of the day's work, we can all smell the fresh baked bread coming from the other side of the fence.  None of us has ever been inside the factory. Until me.

It was an emergency! I needed a restroom! Per usual, all the workers are Latino so I can only ramble in my broken Spanish to get in the door at 10pm. The guy was very amused and basically snuck me in.  When you walk into the building, on the left are the offices, to the right is the locked door into the bakery. He enters the code and waits for me to enter. By the door is a box of hairnets and shoe booties. OMGOSH! It feels like college when I had to enter the food laboratory. I hesitated since I can see in very large font: ALL WORKERS MUST WEAR HAIRNETS AND BOOTIES. I understand the importance of food safety as all the information was drilled into me over 4years of college. I grabbed both and threw them on immediately. The second I walked into the main floor, it was pure magic. There is flour EVERYWHERE. On the floors, on the walls, in the air. It smelled amazing. I wanted to stay there forever. Alas, I did my business and got out of there before anyone would question why I was there. But I do want to return. As a quality control inspector possibly? :D Yes, I'll need to eat everything.

As you probably heard from the news, Starbucks acquired La Boulange hoping to incorporate the baked goods into all their stores. Yay?

I'd like to contribute to this section: "With the acquisition, the Seattle-based coffeehouse chain plans to beef up its food offerings in Starbucks stores with La Boulange-branded French pastries, croissants, breads and muffins, which company officials hope will drive traffic and build the chain’s food attachment rate."

Read more: http://nrn.com/article/starbucks-buy-la-boulange-bakery-100m#ixzz1zVrFTQ00

Starbucks has been working on this for a long time.  In fact, I met the Starbucks marketing manager and she liked my shoes. But anyways, they were hoping to work on their food offerings. The company I was at did an analysis of their current offerings and bleck. Low quality and non-substantial amounts of food. Plus, boring and completely unappealing. So we were told to do more research into lunch "boxes" from major retailers. I guess they didn't want to go through more R&D as they clearly just bought La Boulange to give them that option now. Business is a fickle thing. Starbucks, to customers right now, is purely a coffee house. Well now Starbucks hopes to take more of your money by offering lunch options. I'm sure they are working with Pascal Rigo on that right now. A new panini or something? So get ready to see some test runs in certain Starbucks retailers. Only time will tell if consumers will associate lunch with Starbucks. 

That is all.

Dear Recruiter,

Food corporations have an entirely different method of sorting out applicants. It's the history book style of resume. I can hear the teacher from Peanuts cartoons when I think of corporate recruiters. Where's the fun? Where's the creativity? Where's the personality? People are NOT just words and experiences listed on paper. We're human. We like to interact. Try being friendly.

So I'm tired of stuffy corporations with their rules and rigidity. I have this to add to my cover letter for you:

ENJOY THE CREATIVITY! Embrace the change! Hire the future!

I need a drink

TOPIC: Beer

I feel like work has been non-stop and with the undercurrent of drama I haven't had a restful night in the past week.  What is there possibly to stress about?? I just want a dreamless night, please. So all I could think about after work is getting a beer.  Not just that but grabbing beer, heading to a rooftop and hanging out with friends while we talk about life. There is something about beer that makes me feel like I am allowed to be lazy.  Thank you Homer Simpson.

Credit: comicvine.com

That aside, here's the breakdown of beer:

WHAT'S INSIDE?

1. Where as wine comes from grapes, beer comes from grains.  Usually it's barley but others grain like oats, wheat, corn, and millet have been used.  Barley is best though and has become the grain of choice.  First, the grain has to be converted to "malt."  This is done by soaking the grains in water and allowing it to breakdown from the inside out.  Enzymes from the embryo (innermost center of the grain) work outwards by breaking down cell walls and starch + proteins that reside in the endosperm. It will sprout and signal starch digestion has occured. Yay! Longer soak in water means darker the malt. (sugars turn brown, just like when you make caramel). The kiln process is next where the grains are dried and heated to kill the embryo and retain the balance of enzymes and sugars. That dry grain can be stored and used whenever it is needed. TA DA! You have malt. 
2. Hops. It's the female flower portion of vine plant. Not saying the name because it's in Latin and we all know that's a dead language. Moving on, they are crucial to the flavoring of the beer. The more dried hops are added, the more flavorful the beer will be. Think dark, earthy microbrews. This is also where the bitterness comes from. Erm..not a fan of that but to each their own!

PROCESS

1. Mashing: malt is reconstituted with water and both starches and protein is broken down into it's most basic form of sugars and amino acids, respectively. Then you call that brown liquid wort. What a weird word.
2. Boil, boil, toil and trouble: add the desired amount of hops. During this process, flavors are extracted from the hops, bacteria is killed, and enzymes inactivated. The result is a darker, more concentrated wort.
3. Fermentation: yeast is added. Most common is Saccharomyces cerevisiae (for fast fermentation). The process takes about a week at a pretty warm temperature of 71F/21C.
4. Conditioning: Where the beer is clarified and bubbles are produced from carbon dioxide. Ideally it would happen naturally but who can wait for beer? So nowadays, carbon dioxide is pumped straight into the mixture. The beer is then filtered to clear it of all the yucky things floating inside, packaged and pasteurized. 

SERVE

Keep it away from light because the beer will develop a strong sulfur odor. Skunky is the term. The light reacts with the hop's acid creating an unstable free radical that in turn will react with sulfur compounds thus resulting in the skunk smell. Not so tasty. 

Cold for lighter beers. Room temperature for lagers/darker beers to get the full body flavors.

Yeah. I can't believe I typed all that. Here's a video of all those crazy beer myths you heard. Can't believe beer before liquor, never sicker has been debunked. Sadness. I need a beer. 

chocoLATE

A belated Valentine's Day to all the lovers. An amazing Single's Awareness Day for the better lovers!

I had a customer approach me with a bouquet of roses. They were absolutely gorgeous, until they weren't for me. pashaw. Get out of here, Romeo.

I would have to side with those cynics calling Valentine's Day a marketing scheme by corporations to make people spend lots of money on a single day's importance. That's ridiculous. To wait for one day to show you love your love? You're better than that.

So what's the deal with chocolate? Roasted cocoa beans smashed into a liquor to drink and savor. Or as they do now: blended with stabilizers & enzymes, pumped into molds, and cooled through long tunnels to be wrapped in colorful paper and purchased by you. Yum yum yum?

And old chocolate? I recently found a stack of chocolate bars hiding in an old lunch box from 3 years ago. Yum, Salmonella. Anyways, I opened one of the bars to see how it looked after being suffocated in a plastic lunchbox in a cool basement. It was the usual white-ish film I see on old chocolate. What is that weird white stuff? (that's what she said?) It's FAT BLOOM. Super sexy! The fat a.k.a. the cocoa butter separates from the chocolate and raises to the top or surface of the chocolate. Still ok to eat but texture is off making the chocolate a bit grainy. What happened?? Basement was a pretty moist environment and the chocolate was clearly not stored well. Exposed to these elements, the chocolate had little chance of surviving the three years.

No. I didn't eat that.

Have a great week! Eat more eggs!