As we creep up on the end of the trimester, schoolwork slows down. The written exams were this week, and they were as equally full of questions that we have never covered as they were last round. However this time around, I was able to pull more answers out of thin air and feel confident that they were correct; could it be that I am learning??? The dreaded list of possible recipes for the final exams were passed out as well. Again, I am very confident about cuisine, but I am nervous about finishing the elaborate pastries that we have done in the two and a half hour time limit.

This week in food was fairly ho-hum. We made a croquembouche, which is a tower of chou pastry (cream puffs) dipped in caramel and built into a tower. We made steak in a truffle sauce. The highlight was the fish dumplings in a crawfish sauce. Yes, fish dumplings are gross, but the crawfish were good and I miss them. The sauce has flambéed cognac, and that was really fun to do. It’s a very effective tool for quick hand hair removal. You can see my flambé a little in the picture, and my look of complete rapture- how lame am I? Could I be any more excited over a tiny bit of fire?