Gnomes

I am in a daze with school and everything else and am feeling a bit scattered these days. Lots of things have been happening one of which was the arrival of these gents:

They are salt and pepper shakers my mom found at a flea market in Cheyenne, WY. I think Mom, they are actually both pepper or salt shakers as they both have only two holes. I think I read once the reasoning behind the number of holes but I can't remember and don't feel like looking for it at the moment. At any rate, I am sure they were produced in conjunction, or because of this book:

The date on the bottom of the shakers is 1979, and I think that is about when the book came out. Interesting fact about this book, it was the book that Andy Stewart (ex-husband of Martha) published that made him a big shot. I remember reading an essay written by Erica Jong where she admitted to having an affair with Andy while he was trying to convince her to write a version of the Gnomes book about Witches. She did indeed write a book like that and it's totally LAME. I could rant for a good while on the lameness of that book, but I will save that for another time.

I love this Gnome book. I remember reading it when I was little. I recently checked it out from the library and read it again and I definitely need to own it. It's so clever, well written, and of course, my favorite thing about it, wonderfully illustrated.

Completely off topic: I got my "progress" grades the other day and I am getting an A and a B+!! I feel pretty good about the B+ as it's in my Color and Design class and it's sooo hard. I spent a crazy weekend completely re-doing the first two assignments for the class while at the same time completing the third (I have to ship them to the teacher to be graded) and at the end of it I decided to send in the originals. *Sigh* I can't wait for spring break!

Happy (Late) Valentines Day

I meant to post some kitty love yesterday. Better late than never!

Things that melt

The Fran Bigelow Chocolate class was this past week and it was pretty much amazing. As an assistant you sometimes get leftovers, if there are any, and I was lucky enough to come home with a wee bag of Fran-made truffles. They were so perfectly uniform in size and roundness. I learned a lot and am planning to pick up her book when I get the chance. I should have bought it at the class and then I could have had her sign it but I was in a chocolate haze and wasn't thinking straight. I really enjoy making truffles. The most important lesson about working with chocolate I learned was the importance of having the various ingredients at the same temperature (eggs, cream, chocolate...etc) . In making truffles this means not to refrigerate the ganache. Let it set up at room temperature. If you refrigerate it, it becomes too cold and thus becomes harder to scoop to form the little balls. Think about how a new stick of butter right from the fridge scrapes off in shards when you try to butter your toast, as opposed to the glorious smoothness of room temperature butter. And, the heat from your hands is too much of a contrast to the cold temperature of the ganache and when you roll the scoops of ganache into balls you will have a melty mess, literally on your hands. Fran put the ganache in a large disposable pastry bag and piped little perfect mounds that were left to set up at room temperature and then rolled into balls and coated with cocoa powder. (see pic above) You can, however, make and refrigerate your ganache ahead of time, but make sure it comes to room temperature before you try to work with it.

That being said, the MOST IMPORTANT thing you have to keep in mind about truffles is that they were initially made to resemble the lumpy dirt-covered fungi rooted out by pigs so don't sweat it if they are not "perfect." They will still taste Divine.

Switching gears, school is going well. I had a mini-meltdown this week with all of the pressure of my various responsibilities colliding. I had a good cry and all was right with the world. This is from my Analysis of Form class:

A lesson in Time Management

I just completed my first week at school. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and I had been preparing myself for a change of lifestyle, but until I really had no idea what it was going to be like until I was actually "in" it. Whoo-boy! It is immediately clear that one will not succeed, let alone excel, in an online school environment without self-discipline.

My horoscope for this week was so apropos: "I have one little whisper of warning and one big blast of encouragement for you. First, the warning: Don't be like the ancient Roman emperor Caligula, who declared war on Neptune, god of the sea, and commanded his troops to hurl their spears into the water. " I took that to mean "Don't shoot yourself in the foot."

In my Color and Design class we are using Gouache. I have been wanting to try this medium forever, and had quite a selection of tubes of paint, but it's SO helpful to see a demonstration. Just learning that you have to constantly mix the paint as you are working was a total light bulb moment. That seems so elementary, but it just never occurred to me. There are a ton of little tips like that I have learned already. It's pretty exciting.