Brain Cake

I'm still alive and kicking. I made a brain cake (red velvet cake, with fondant and raspberry jam) for my birthday dinner this Halloween. Cheers!

A photo posted by Célynne (@cosmicspider31) on Oct 29, 2015 at 5:36pm PDT

Arrowhead Park

I'm close to quite a few provincial parks here and I'm planning to take full advantage during my time here. On my last day off, I headed off to Arrowhead Park to walk some of their trails and revisit places I hadn't been since I was a young girl.

I camped here with my father, cousin and some family friends when I was young. It's one of my fonder memories of adventuring as a child and it was interesting coming back again after so long. Shockingly, when we were here, we were swimming at the head of these falls which now have NO SWIMMING signs everywhere haha...

 

I only met one elderly couple while there, but it was a week day and school isn't out yet. I can just imagine how many people must be here on weekends in July and August. I'm glad I was able to enjoy it mostly to myself.

There were a lot of little side trails I would have loved to explore but the bugs got really bad after the falls and it was all I could do to keep my sanity. Despite multiple reapplications of bug spray, I was still being bit and dive bombed. Not to mention it was hot and humid and I was getting uncomfortable. I think I'll have to buy some bike shorts to wear under my usual clothes if I hope to walk anywhere more than half an hour or so. *sigh*


All that being said, it was still a lovely little nature walk and I'm so glad I went. It was a beautiful day and it felt so good to be under the trees again. Cheers!

Diploma Number Two!

Wednesday the 27th I graduated from college with honours in a two year diploma in Culinary Management. It seems like yesterday that I was applying to the program, I almost can't believe it's over.

This last semester was incredibly intense and stressful for me, on top of working part time on the weekends. That's largely why I've posted so little here. But now I'm done!!!

My grandmother and my parents attended the ceremony. It's the second time they see me receive a diploma. My first was back in 2008 for Library and Information Technician, which seems like a lifetime ago. I'm almost a different person.

I'm already working at a great place, utilizing everything I learned over the past two years. Likely I'll get around to sharing some of what I do here eventually. Cheers!

Nature Walkin'

Now that I've started working again (yaaay!) I've been pretty busy, but I got a few days off and the first thing I did was go on a little nature walk in the nearby trails. It was a gorgeous warm day with lovely sunshine and it was nice to get out and smell the green freshness of all the growing things.

You can just barely see the momma spider and her egg sac (round white sphere) in the last photo. I heard her before I saw her, since she was a pretty big and made quite a lot of noise as she ran over the ground of the open field. Of course I had to stop and compliment her on her lovely egg sac and wish her the best with her little young ones.

At one point I'd almost totally lost the trail, it was barely marked and I was just about to turn around. As I was doing that, I happened to look down and see this snail! He was just slowly oozing his way along and I had nearly stepped on it. I love a good cute snail, so I snapped a few photos and then covered it with a leaf before leaving to make certain nothing spied it and made a quick snack of it. Cheers!

Tart Time

I'm visiting a friend to meet her new baby girl this evening, and I made this sweet treat to bring along. It's a basic flaky sweet tart crust, with a dark chocolate mousse and cinnamon poached pears drizzled with dark chocolate. Num!

If it tastes half as good as it looks, it will be so delicious. Goodness knows the mousse is tasty, I practically licked the bowl clean after filling the crust heh. It's great to finally have the time to do this sort of thing again, I've missed baking. I used this recipe, it's super simple and makes more than plenty of everything for a big round pie despite the recipe being for a rectangular mold. Cheers!

Abandoned Wanderings

I'm finally finished school - for good. Immediately I went to go spend a week with my honey on his job site. He's rebuilding a huge wrap-around deck in the muskokas, the boards of which had rotted in the shade, so he's had to trim all the surrounding trees, rip up the rotted wood and put down all new joists and decking. While he did all this work, I spent my time relaxing, reading, exploring and cooking.

The area he's working in is just gorgeous and I spent a good chunk of time wandering around through the old muskoka houses left half-abandoned. Families with too much money leave these big old houses badly shut up for winter and then squirrels get in and make a nightmare of the place - but they don't care because maids come in each summer to make it all disappear for the weekend or two they might spend there.

I like being in old homes, the smell of them, the strange sense that you can still feel the generations of people who stayed there. This one house in particular was built before there were even roads in to the place, its owners had to boat everything in on the lake, which is just mind boggling. Unfortunately its current owners have little respect to all the history, and effort that went into the place.

While a lot of the snow has melted away, the lakes are still mostly choked up with rotten ice. Little creaks and streams are sprouting up everywhere, rushing with spring melt. When the sun is out and you're out of the wind, it can be deliciously warm but the nights are still quite cold and the wind nips at bare skin.

A photo posted by Célynne (@cosmicspider31) on Apr 16, 2015 at 11:10am PDT

It feels like real spring will never get here, I'm still amazed at being able to see the ground. Spring has a habit of just showing up overnight here, you go to sleep and it's cold and miserable and grey and you wake to a world sprouting with green life. Hopefully that day comes soon! Cheers!

That Instagram

I suppose it's finally time that I got myself an Instragram account, now that I have acquired a phone capable of posting to it. You can follow me at @cosmicspider31  Mostly it's silly selfies with animals, photos of food and other snapshots of my rather bland life, but eh!

A photo posted by Célynne (@cosmicspider31) on Mar 31, 2015 at 3:57pm PDT

Lost

I've been insanely busy lately... Classes five days a week, and working both days of the weekend, and I essentially have no time to myself anymore. It's running me ragged, to be honest. I haven't seen my honey since the end of February, and likely won't see him again until April. I have no spare money to speak of, despite my job. I'm stressed, and tired, and worn thin. I try not to live in a state of 'I just want this to be over' but seriously, I just want this period of my life to be over. I know it's only temporary and things will slow down again in a month or so but that doesn't change how difficult this is for me right now. The last time I felt this way was working at Camp Wabun last summer and that just destroyed me, so I'm eager to be done with this phase. A few more weeks and I'll be done college, and leave my part time job to take a few weeks off before beginning my next job. *sigh* Why does our species insist on doing so much and everything at the same time?

Vintage Mink

My honey gifted me this gorgeous vintage mink stole over Valentine weekend. It was actually his mother's and - I'm still shocked by this - his sister was going to throw it out! So he snatched it up and made it a gift to me. I wore it out for Valentine's Day dinner and felt like an old time movie starlet.

We had a wonderful, dreamy, romantic time together. I couldn't have asked for more... Cheers!

Something's Fishy

We're still in terrine and tray mode in Garde Manger class - thankfully next week we switch over to sausages and charcuterie. Today we made poached trout in court bouillon, and scallop mousseline terrines on mirrors with tray garnishes of our choice.

I made the little choux pastry garnishes for our tray, it's so simple and quick, and with little discs of the scallop mousseline and some parsley mayonnaise, they were actually quite tasty. Giving the trout a little hot pepper to hold in its mouth also amused me to no end. Plus now I know that mousseline is what the little fish balls in phò soup are made of and I can now make my own. Eureka! Cheers!

Salmon Mousse Terrine and Chaud-Froid

We're in the terrine phase of our Garde-Manger class and today was salmon mousse terrines on decorated chaud-froid. That's just a fancy way of saying gelatinized salmon and cream, on velouté sauce with more gelatin. So. Much. Gelatin.

My partner and I had fun making our undersea scene with little carrot fish and dill seaweeds. The only bummer is I botched the clean whiteness of the chaud-froid with some dark aspic instead of the clear gelatin glaze Chef had prepared for that purpose. Ah well! We still got 84% and I am quite happy. Cheers!