So, I bought a Thank You card to send to the English professor who has helped me with my writing outside of class for some time. I debated over what to send at this time because although he said he'd be happy to write me a letter of recommendation I wouldn't receive it for months from now. So, after gathering information on him (the places he likes to eat, his lack of allergies, etc.) I decided I would save a gift certificate to one of his resteraunts until after I'm totally done with JCC, but that I would still send a Thank You card now with a small gift certificate to Mat's (because in my research no downtown restaurant came up and I insist that everyone, even those in the sticks, receive an education about the actual city of Jackson), and I would send baked goods.
On the one hand, I am excellent at making cheesecakes, tarts, tortes, and all those fancy high end items, but none of those travel well, so I decided I would make simpler things. I nixed cookies because those seemed too simple. I decided to try making Whoopie pies for the first time, hand pies, and an apple crumb coffee cake.
Oh yeah, and last week I installed a brand new oven to replace the oven that hasn't worked in five months. Unfortunately, this oven doesn't turn off unless you turn it off at the gas valve. The company that made it was supposed to be out here last week but after not showing up and not calling the customer service rep said the tech was hung up at another job, but half an hour later they claimed they had shown up and no one was home. I don't know where the hell they showed up to, but it sure as hell wasn't here. SO, I continued to use the oven to make a small test batch of whoopie pies. Those came out pretty well, although they were much larger than I thought they'd be. It's like carrying around a double whopper. The hand pies were a complete and utter nightmare to make because they were so time consuming. Putting the dough in and out of the freezer and refrigerator around five times was a little much. Then when I finally tasted a hand pie I thought it would have been a lot better if it had been a regular pie with more filling.
SO, on Sunday before making the large batch of whoopie pies, I made the apple crumb coffee cake. I stuck it in what was supposed to be a 325 degree oven for 45 to 55 minutes, and I left it in order to do geology homework. At forty minutes I came upstairs and smelled something burning. Of course it was the coffee cake. The top didn't look too bad, but the bottom was totally black and crunchy. The oven decided that it would operate at about 400 degrees instead of 325, hence the carbonized coffee cake. Well, that was too high to do whoopie pies, so after an entire day of work I gave up at nine o'clock at night. I was feeling a little angry and feeling a whole lot of defeated.
So now I'm going to try this all over again on Sunday, minus the ridiculous hand pies. I'm also reconsidering adding cookies because they are harder to mess up, plus they travel well. Supposedly, a tech will be out this week, which means I need to ask for time off of work. Suckfest.
Especially suckfest because I received the most awesome email I've ever received: an invitation from JCC to attend a discussion with some sort of VIPs who are coming to evaluate their online courses. One of my former professors recommended me as a student who might be willing to attend, apparently. Of course it's during my normal work hours, so. . . we'll see. And by "we'll see" I mean that I'll see what kind of mood my boss is in today. Work is a little stressful for everyone right now because about five different people have crawled up our department's ass to evaluate it or investigate it, or whatever they call it when they get five clueless people in a room to analyze data that will take them weeks to understand, rather than just asking one of us a simple question. Efficiency in the private sector? Yeah right, don't believe the hype.
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