How I spent my week-long break

So Rhee had to postpone the wedding due to scheduling conflicts and her poor baby's slew of health problems. She said she still wants me to make the desserts, but she's not sure when the wedding is going to be. Oh well. I'm still going to be busy with the upcoming church retreat... yessir, I volunteered to be the camp cook! About 48 people had signed up for it...I've NEVER cooked for this many people before, but I was stoked!

That was going to be over the weekend of October 1. Earlier in the week, I used this time to utilize the Asian pear given to us by our family friend. Behold, Asian pear galette...

...Unfortunately, the pear itself didn't taste very good, but paired with the buttery, flaky pie crust and sugar topping, it was delicious!

In the previous post, I made a peach pie with the yellow peaches we bought at the Farmer's Market. Well, the following week, we bought a box of white peaches. OMG. The white peaches were divine! I made some White Peach Cream Tart. A couple of our family friends went up the mountains to see the autumn leaves...

Oh, and see the black specks in the cream?? The aforementioned family friend gave me a a small package of real vanilla beans!! I was SO excited! This is also part of the reason why I made a cream tart, to see if there is a difference between creams made from extracts versus the beans....YES. There IS a difference. So much that I doubt I can go back to the extracts any more when making custard creams.

Our family friend, Tosh, is an Executive Chef at a local fine dining Japanese restaurant. During the picnic, he mentioned that the pastry chef at the restaurant is moving away, and was concerned about their future dessert menu; they can't keep serving just the Mochi Ice Cream, no matter how tasty they are. Then he asked me if I would be interested in making desserts for the restaurant! I was like, "Uh...WOW....SERIOUSLY??" This was close to a dream-come-true experience. He asked me to make a presentable dessert sample. So, later the same day, I quickly whipped up half a batch of choux pastry, and filled them with the vanilla bean cream.

Just for a sample, I made one of the cream puffs Green Tea flavor. Mom and I delivered them to him. I was confident that he'll like them...

A few days later, he said that he LOVES them and has asked the Restaurant Manager to contact me!

...But I had a bit of a reservation. PROCEED WITH CAUTION, the little voice in my head warned. After all, everything is in God's Hands. I should be careful to listen to Him before I go jumping into things too quickly....

....But just in case He DOES say "GO FOR IT!!", I started coming up with several different pastry cream flavors.

This one is pistachio. Who knows why, the cream gets very runny when I mix in the ground pistachio into the cream. Maybe I overmixed?

This one is black sesame cream. It was very nutty and quite good, but it tasted like Goma-tofu, a black sesame tofu served as a side dish in Japanese meals. Hmmm guess I'll play around with this one...

Then it was time for the retreat. The kitchen crew consisted of me and two other ladies from church. We were to make the Friday night dinner, all three meals on Saturday, and the breakfast on Sunday. Our food budget is $800--and I have no clue how, but one of the other ladies spent $400 at Costco. Only after spending that much money did she ask if she had left enough money for the rest of us. *sigh* I only ended up spending $100 for the meal I was responsible for, which was the Saturday night meal.

I packed all the food, clothes, toiletries, etc. in my car and headed off to the retreat (I'll leave out the gory details). For Friday night, the ladies made a vegetable noodle soup, chili, salad, cornbread, and banana pudding for dessert. We ended up with a lot of leftover soups, chili, and cornbread. For Saturday breakfast, we served cold cereal, muffins (from Costco--which, btw, are not really muffins but more like poundcakes. Real muffins won't have that domed shape to them unless overmixed), and assorted fruits. For lunch, we put out two kinds of cold cuts, three kinds of sliced cheese, six loaves of bread, and three kinds of chips (probably where the $400 went...). We also cut up some lettuce and tomatoes too. For dinner, (since I was in charge) I decided to make two kinds of lasagnas, one meat, one vegetable. I had a volunteer chop up some vegetables and one of the church ladies brown some meat. I ended up with way too much noodles and barely enough spaghetti sauce, but I managed to put together four 9" X 13" baking pans full. We got behind 20 minutes or so, but that time lag worked out great--definitely gave everyone plenty of time to work up some appetite. After baking the garlic bread and tossing together a salad, I put everything out and started serving everyone. The meat lasagna disappeared VERY quickly--somehow, all my vegetarians went missing. I think most people had seconds too; I cut 64 portions from the four pans and there was only 1 portion leftover.
The retreat itself went great! I got to share my story about how I survived stroke and how that event strengthened my relationship with God.

So that was about a week ago. Earlier this week, I tried my hand (AGAIN) at making Angel Food Cake...

...After being baked and cooled. So far, so good...

Hm. Not bad...no obvious caverns visible. Mostly fine crumbs....but the texture was kinda dry, and there was this funky, sour aftertaste--cream of tartar?? How can that be...? I checked the recipe. I can't remember, but I had a nagging feeling I accidentally added too much. Still have a long way to go...