Hey, ShikamaruRocks, here. How ya doin'?
I have another world. One called "Shika's Busy-ish Nook" that contains less random stuff than you'll find here. For the most part. I'll leave all the official stuff that's on here though, but all new official stuff will be there.
I AM A GIRL. So many people think I'm a dude, but I'm not. I promise.
Soooo, let's get on with it, shall we?
Most of these are in no particular order...
Favorite Manga: Fruits Basket, Saiyuki, Saiyuki Reload, RurouniKenshin, DNAngel, Prince of Tennis, Trigun, One Piece, KareKano, Lovely Complex, Whistle!, PeaceMaker Kurogane, Fullmetal Alchemist, HanaKimi, Ouran High School Host Club, etc.
Favorite Anime: Hunter x Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist, Peacemaker Kurogane, DNAngel, Fruits Basket, TekkonKinkreet, Saiyuki, Mushi-shi, BECK, Avatar (it counts!!! grrrr....), Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, RurouniKenshin, etc.
Music Peeps: YellowCard, Death Cab for Cutie, Snowpatrol, A Fire Inside, The Used, Three Days Grace, Seether, Orange Range, My Chemical Romance, Hoobastank, Muse, The Pillows, Plain White T's, Angels and Airwaves, Flaming Lips, Bump of Chicken, and!!! The Jonas Brothers (my guilty pleasure).
I love cooking, drawing, reading (mostly manga but novels are wicked awesome too. I just don't have the time nor stamina for novels as much anymore...though I have been working my way back in. lol), knitting, watching my brother play Zelda/Metroid games (lol), and skateboarding, though I fail epicly at it.
Toodles!!
So, today was my last Monday is High School ever.
Dude!!! That's like, crazy!!!
I shall now give a picture of the one thing I will miss about school.
Bosco Sticks:
They are, in fact, bread sticks filled with mozzareala cheese. Yummy!!! And yes, one of them is half eatten. I was hungry. They are best with marinara dipping sauce, but they didn't have any today. They only serve them on Monday's so I'll never get to eat them again! Waaaaah!
Anyhoo. I have a Japanese and and English final exam tomorrow. So scary! My Japanese one is acutally two parts: a written exam and an oral proficency exam. Mrn.
Oh well. No use fretting over it^^
I'm going to graduate!!!!!!!
You guys have Borders where you live, right? Well, just incase you don't, Borders is a bookstore chain that has a cafe in it too. It's a great place to sit quietly and do homework or read manga and drink tasty beverages.
Well, I was at Borders for about 7 hours yesterday doing homework (on a window sill because all of the tables in the cafe were taken) and then I went to the cafe (which by now had open tables) with the final volume of Hana Kimi and volume 16 of FMA. I got a Green Tea latte and a snickerdoodle cookie. Yumz.
While I was drawing a picture of the main original character in my brother's Naruto fan fic (I felt that I owed him a present due to the huge amounts of irritable-ness he's been having to deal with from me) some friends of mine from school came up and scared the crap out of me.
I didn't have a chance to read any of my manga but I did recomend Muse's album Black Holes and Revelations to one of my friends. She wanted to buy a CD from a band she'd never heard of so I walked her around the music section saying names until she didn't recognize one. How could anyone not know who Muse is?
So, that was my day. Now I'm going to Border's with my mum again so as to buy an awesome book for my bro and to do more homework that is also taking notes that I can use on my English Final exam. Oh joy.
Later^^
I have a cold.
A bad cold.
I've had it since Monday night.
It got worse yesterday, and it's even worse today?
Why are all of my sentences on separate lines? Don't ask me.
Anyhoo, so. I had my Culinary Practical exam today! I was really nevrous so I got to school at 7:00 even though the exam didn't start until 8:00. I spent that hour cleaning off my table (in the kitchen there are five tables - one for each of the kids taking the exam) and getting my uniform on, and putting cutting boards and sanitizing solution and rags and bowls and my knife set and all that jazz on or under my table (there's a shelf).
I also was wearing a mask (the kind a surgeon wears) so I could cough up my spleen and not have to change my gloves and wash my hands, thus wasting time.
We started promptly at 8:00 and by 8:35 my appetizer was done and I was roasting my squash for my ravioli. About 1/4 of the way through preparing my entree for cooking, I preped my cake and started it baking. I was just about to start cooking my steak when the cake was done so I took it out and plated it (it looked lovely^^ I was very proud of myslef) before starting on the steak. This is where I ran into a problem. I had about 25 minutes left to cook my steak, let it rest for ten minutes, and cook my pasta and veggies and the sauces. My problem is this: When I practiced at home, it took about 20 minutes to cook the stuff, then 2 or 3 to plate it, equaling, 23 minutes.
Now, you may be thinking, doesn't that mean you had just enough time, Shika? Well, no. It doesn't. Because at home I practice with a 5 ounce tenderloin. My teacher bought me an 8 ounce. This means the cooking time for the steak was increased by a bit. Oh joy.
I did finish a little early though. That's quite simply a miracle.
Sorry, I was too busy and stressed out to remember to take pictures of the food (I promised Twisted I would. Please for give me...) but it's ok. My teacher said I did a really good job. I had a couple horrid coughing fits during the exam but maybe that encouraged her to be nice when grading me. lol.
She graded it on a rubric type thing where the whole exam was divided into sections like sanitation, preperation, entree, goal setting, organization, appetizer, things like that. Then, each of those sections had like 5 differnent parts like taste, garnish, temperature, washing hands, changing gloves, putting stuff away and so on. All of those catagories were then graded on a 1 to 5 scale thing with 5 being the highest. I got to look at the sheet about my stuff and the lowest I had was I think one 3 and I had about 3 fours. Everything else was 5s! I'm so happy^^
I wonder what my grade was?
Yes. You read that title right. I'm about to indulge all you fantastic people on the topic of my last Culinary Practical Final Exam of all time! w00t! lol. This will happen on Wednesday with four other students cooking at the same time as me, while our teachers watch us like evil hawks of doom.
First, let me discuss my program with you a tidge.
At my High School there is quite a well-known Culinary Arts program. This is part of the the 21st Century Programs that my school district has. There are other programs such as the Bio-Technology Program that my sister, TwistedCyberChick, was enrolled in when she was at my school. These programs have served to make my High School, and the others in the district, a magnet school of sorts.
My program, Culinary Arts, is a 3-hour block. I am in the class for 1st period through 3rd, which has 13 seniors in it. There is also an afternoon class, 5th through 7th period, which I was in last year. It is a two year program for Juniors and Seniors.
Now, about my final. This is the final for the Second Years (me and my class) which is different from the one for First Years.
We have to make up a 3 course menu, consisting of an appetizer (which must be an hors de oeuvre), an entree (which must have ravioli or tortelini as the starch, and fish or meat (aka: beef, pork) as the protein), and a dessert (which must be either a cake or a tart). We must prepare this all in 2 hours and 15 minutes or less. It may not sound so hard, but trust me.
It is.
Now, to tell you my menu. Ahem! *clears throat*
Appetizer:
Mushrooms en Croute:
This is basically a mushroom stuffed with creamcheese that has been mixed with fresh garlic, basil, and rosemary. Then, the mushroom is wrapped in buttered phyllo dough (a thin, flaky pastry) and baked until the pastry is crispy and brown.
Entree:
Seared beef tenderloin served with butternut squash ravioli and a sauteed vegetable medley:
I first put the squash in the oven to roast. Then I coat the 6 oz tenderloin steak with fresh ground black pepper, kosher salt, and cayenne pepper, wrap it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge. Then I mix the dough for the pasta and cut the veggies (red and green bell peppers, summer squash, and carrots) using various knife cuts. Julienne for the peppers, a biase cut for the squash, and paysanne for the carrots. When the butternut squash is finished roasting, I mash it and mix it with some nutmeg, cinnamon, kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, parmesan cheese, and some sugar. Once this has cooled, I fill the ravioli and set them aside. Then I start cooking the steak in olive oil, covering it with a lid. While doing this, I blanch the veggies for about 1 and a half minutes. Then I mess with the steak some, making sure to brown all sides. Around now, I make two butter sauces. One with nutmeg and cinnamon for the ravioli, the other with garlic and basil for the steak. When I take the internal temp of the steak and it is about 135, then I take it off the heat and wrap the steak in foil to rest (and stay hot). Next I sautee the veggies in some butter with kosher salt and fresh black pepper while cooking the ravioli. When they are done, I take them out of their pans and arrange them on the plate. Next, I slice the steak into five, biase pieces and arrange them in a fan on the plate and pour the sauces over the steak and ravioli. Yay!
Lastly, the Dessert:
Blackberry Cake:
This is a crazy easy recipe. I melt 4 tablesoons of butter and pour it in a cake pan. Then I mix a little flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and evaporated milk in a bowl. I pour this into the pan. Next, I sprinkle 2 cups of blackberries and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar over the batter. This bakes in the oven for around 40 minutes. I can tell you this: it tastes fabulous, but it looks like crap. lol. It's really hard to get it out of the pan and I'm hoping to be able to get a square piece out and cut it with a cutely shapped cookie cutter to serve it. That's gonna be rough....Oh, and I'm making a blackberry sauce/syrup to decorate the plate with. Neato frito.
The total time it takes to make the cake is about 1 hour, which means I should start making it after one hour. Gee. I hope that works out right...Anyhoo, when I tested out making all of this yesterday it tasted great and I got done on time, except for the cake. It was crap. I just made it right now and it worked fine, so I just have to make sure to start on the cake at the right time so I can still get done. Aaaaaah! So much stress!!!!
So, I hope I made you salivate. lol.
Sorry about this post. This is all I've been thinking about lately. I have other finals coming up (and a Japanese test tomorrow over chapter 12 of our book, not to mention the actual FINAL) but this one is the closest, so yeah. I'm freaking out. lol.
I hope that those of you who do actually cook appreciated this a little. And for those of you who don't, sorry if I just bored you to death. lol.
Toodles!
TwistedCyberChick and I live in Kansas, which, as I'm sure some of you who live in the US may know, is in Tornado Alley.
It's been pretty cold in Kansas lately. However, in the past couple days, it's warmed up quite a bit. It was a really nice day yesterday. I just wanted to go outside and walk and walk.
However. With the change from cold weather to warm weather, there are inevitably going to be weird pressure systems and storms and whatnot. Still, you don't expect hail in 75 degree weather.
At around 7:00 last night, a friend of ours called our house. She told my mom that some pretty scary weather was on it's way. I looked outside and thought that she must be crazy. Very blue sky and puffy, not scary looking clouds, and I could hear the Ice Cream man driving around town in his truck. No big deal, right?
At about 7:10 it started to rain. My mom, Twisted, and I went outside to stand under the tiny ledge of our roof in our driveway to look at the weather. It smelled really nice^^ As the rain got harder, the lightening in the west became more frequent. Definitely no Ice Cream man.
After 10 or so minutes mom and Twisted went back in. I opted to watch the weather. I just thought it was really cool until I noticed something pretty darn scary. It had been getting a little darker due to the storm, but to the west it was all of a sudden really bright. Not a normal bright. Usually, light doesn't scare people, darkness does, right? Still, I freaked out a bit and went inside.
The tornado siren went off.
We turned on the news. There were some really bad storms, some of which were verging on funnel clouds, in neighboring cities. Man. I wasn't expecting that 20 minutes ago.
We changed the channel. So, apparently it was actually a whole system of nasty storms all in a row. And one of the worst was headed right toward us.
Man.
We went outside again, because we're that smart. Twisted looked at the clock her phone. "That storm's supposed to be here right....now," she said. We looked around. Hm. Nothing new. It was getting darker again, though.
Wait. I lied about there being nothing new. Hail. Oh joy.
We went back into the house. The satellite had stopped doing it's thing, so no more news. Bummer. Dad, mom, Twisted, and I decided to die happy, so we popped in the second volume of Wall Flower and had fun cackling at Sakuno's creepy antics. After a while we noticed that it was pitch black outside.
Scaaaary.
We just kept watching our show though and by the time we were done it was 9:00 and I was crazy tired. Yesterday was my first day back to school, after all, so I had gotten up early and was wasted. The weather had calmed down by this time and I went to bed.
I did wake up around 2:00 AM to hail pounding my window. Great, I thought. I'm gonna die being crushed under my bed in my pajamas. lol (My bed is normally like a dormer/bunk thing but since I didn't want to hurt my neck climbing in it, my dad put my matress on the floor under the frame)
So, nothing really happened to us, it did in other places though. A whole section of a train was trown around by the winds. Crazy.
Just thought I'd share some of my ever eventful life with yall.
Peace :P
