Explosions and Stuff
Dec. 11th, 2020 06:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39This week was insanely more stressful than I had anticipated.
I knew it was going to be a rough week. The shipping deadline for Christmas is December 15th, so I planned to do all of my baking this week, especially on my days off. I'm trying loads of techniques I've never tried before, and a lot of time-consuming packaging and cookie decorating and gathering supplies and ingredients is involved.
What I didn't anticipate was going to steno class on Monday and finding out I've apparently been doing things wrong for weeks.
And having my teacher fly off the handle, telling me that I NEED to complete a bunch of evaluations NOW.
I had actually planned to slack off on steno this week due to all the Christmas prep. So of course, go figure, this would be the week that I'm expected to do way more than usual.
That said, a deadline wasn't given, except that I have a test on Monday. So, I'm meeting with another teacher in the steno department to find out EXACTLY what I have to do, from someone who will hopefully not start yelling at me because I forgot what to do and/or didn't understand what to do. I'll be the first to say I'm not very smart, and I often miss things that are obvious or straightforward to other people. Sometimes I need things explained in a different way in order to understand. Trust me, I know I'm worthless at lots of things. But I think if there was something so important that I was supposed to do, be it a test or assignments or whatever, all my teacher has to do is tell me in a straightforward clear way: "Do x, y, and z by X date". And I'll do it. That's all there is to it.
Anyway, mostly I was just caught off guard. I thought I was doing well in steno class, and now all of a sudden it's like I'm weeks behind, and right at the busiest time of year. It added a lot of stress to an already stressful week.
I did do some of the steno evaluations, but when the weekend hit I had a tough choice to make.
Either I scrap my baking plans and panic-study steno all weekend, or set the steno aside and make my gift boxes as planned.
After losing a night of sleep giving myself ulcers over this, I decided to stick with my baking.
First of all, I already bought all the ingredients. Second, I have zero backup plan for gifts for everyone. Third, although my teacher was upset that I haven't been doing the work she expected me to be doing at this point, she also didn't give me any deadlines or any specific assignments other than to be prepared for a test on Monday. Plus, if I can get as much done as possible over the weekend, I'll still have three days before my test to study or take evals or whatever. Maybe this is irresponsible of me, but frankly, this is the one thing I wanted to do for my family this year. I won't get to see anyone (like a lot of people) due to covid. It has been a really hard year...even for me, and I have had it LUCKY. Right now, this is more important to me. If it hurts me in the future, or disappoints my teacher, I guess I'll just have to swallow that pill.
Let the food prep commence!
During the week, per my boyfriend's request, I made my mom's "magic window cookies" recipe. We have wheat flour right now due to trying to be healthy, so they're a bit darker than usual and have a nice texture but otherwise taste just the same. I was really happy with how they turned out. I probably won't be sending these to friends and family as they'll probably be stale by the time I'm done making everything. Oh well...more for us to enjoy!
On Monday night I made two big batches of my favorite homemade granola. Lucky me, it clumped nicely. Why won't it do that when I make it for myself?? Lol! I put it in plastic 16oz mason jars and tied cute little plaid bows around the lids.
On Tuesday night I chopped a zillion apples for apple butter. So many apples that I never wanted to see another apple again.
Or so I thought, until they cooked overnight in the crock pot with bourbon, spices, and sugar, turning into a mushy pile of caramelized goodness.
I mashed the apples and let them cook for another hour with the lid off the crock pot to help it reduce down. Meanwhile I prepped a canning bath. I have never canned anything in my life and was very nervous about this, but if I didn't seal the jars they'd have to be refrigerated and then it wouldn't be safe to mail them. Plus people would have to eat it within a few days, that's no fun!
Luckily I have friends who have been canning food for their whole lives, who were willing to walk me through the process.
I won't bore you with the details, just look up "water canning" if you're curious. Suffice to say, all of my little jars got a good seal, so I'll be sending apple butter in my gift boxes. Yay! I was really worried about this so it was a huge relief that everything worked out and the jars sealed properly.
Next, I decided to try making some toffee. Originally I was going to just do caramels, but toffee is SO good and seems a lot easier to make than caramel. I boiled sugar, butter, water, and salt on the stove until it reached 300 degrees, then poured it out into a square pan and let it harden. While it was still warm I melted chocolate chips on top and sprinkled it with pecans. A few hours later it was ready to cut. Wow! I can't believe how well it turned out!
Sadly the caramel did not go so well this time. I tried doing things a little differently per some internet advice, and ended up with a crystallized mess with some burnt bits in it. Although I have a lot of things to make yet, I'm pretty determined to try the caramel again. I will stick to the recipe that I know works, but just up the temperature as my ONLY change.
Anyway, after that frustration it was time to make dinner. I made us taco salad because it's easy and good, and jalapeno poppers because I wanted to use some of the peppers we've gotten from my little garden. They were pretty tasty! Kind of floppy because I had to freeze them, but still yummy.
After dinner I packaged some of my homemade hibiscus tea. There's only enough to give everyone one tea bag, but I doubt anyone's going to be raving over it anyway. It doesn't have a strong flavor, but it looks and smells nice so I figure why not include it. The hibiscus is from my own back yard after all, and I dried most of the other bits myself.
By this point I had literally spent the entire day in the kitchen. I spent the 1-2 hours before bed typing this up and just trying to decompress from any stress that has built up. Failing at the caramel was stressful, thinking about steno was stressful, canning was super stressful. But now I only have to redo the caramel, maybe an extra batch of toffee, and make four different kinds of cookie dough. Yeah, that's all x_X
On Thursday I got up and got going with a purpose, an hour earlier than usual. I would have liked the sleep, I need it, but I can't sleep when there's a huge to-do list. I ate a quick breakfast and went to Dollar Tree for colorful shredded paper (it's really good for packing cookies in tins) and to Target for a few things I forgot and some extra baking stuff like sugar, butter, and cream. Those items were nearly gone on the shelves so apparently I'm not the only one cheaping out on Xmas gifts this year.
Back home I unpacked and started making another batch of toffee. The first batch turned out so good, I figure in case I don't make caramel I may as well have enough toffee to send everyone instead. It came out even better the second time because I was more careful with my temperature regulation (and having hot water on hand to help prevent burning before the sugar hit 300F). While the toffee was setting I got to work prepping my breakfasts, doing a load of laundry, and making the dough for all the cookies I plan to make this week. For some recipes I'm having to double or triple the dough, so it took longer than usual.
A break for lunch, then I continued making dough until around 2pm. At that point I cleaned up the kitchen and assembled the sauce for bourbon chicken tonight, then packaged the toffee for shipping in little wax paper bags sealed with a festive sticker. The oil from the toffee is staining the bags a little but hopefully people will get over it, it's a butter-based candy after all.
At 3pm I had a meeting with other-steno-teacher to discuss what a mess I am and how to fix it (not really, but I'm still irritated about what happened and that's how I feel). After meeting and speaking with this teacher, I'm really bummed I'm not in her class. Mostly because she's SANE. I was easily able to talk with her and tell her what's going on, and ask questions. With my teacher, I get five words into a sentence and she's made an assumption about what I'm going to say, and cuts me off, and I never get to say what I ACTUALLY meant or ask the question I wanted to ask. I don't know if it's a personality clash or what, but regardless I was able to clear things up with the other teacher. Such as, no, I don't actually have like 30 evaluations due this week. Phew. My teacher made it sound like I was missing work! I almost scrapped my Christmas baking plans over nothing!! I'm still pretty angry about this whole thing, but at the end of the day I'm just happy to know what is expected. All y'all have to do is tell me what you need, and I will do it. I wish she would just CHILL.
After that meeting it felt like the big pile of stress I've been carrying around all week was lifted. Well, the steno part was.
Now that I wasn't stressed about whether or not I should be doing steno, I dove right into another attempt at caramels, this time sticking with the recipe that I know and upping the temperature to 257F.
You guys, it worked! The caramels turned out PERFECT. Sweet, a little salty, easy to cut and wrap (well, wrapping was a pain haha but still). I'm so happy that I will be able to share these with my friends and family!
For dinner we had bourbon chicken (didn't taste anything like the mall food court version but was still good) and binge watched some Fargo. I did a little steno but my brain was all tired and I kept making stupid mistakes, so didn't spend a ton of time on it.
Tomorrow I'll take some treats to my coworkers, disguised as a boring old Publix shopping bag. Hopefully no one will throw them out this time.
There's still a ton of work I need to do: making, decorating, and packaging the cookies; buying stocking stuffers and presents; buying shipping materials and printing labels. But I feel like I'm almost there. And once this is all done, I can relax at actual Christmas :) That will be nice. Maybe I will make us some cinnamon rolls, never made them from scratch before.
Looking at this week, although it was very stressful, I am very pleased that I got to make three things I've never made before and learn several new techniques. It's nothing special, lots of people know how to can and make candies and whatnot. But it's new to me, so it's exciting. I'm just hoping these treats will make someone smile this Christmas.
I knew it was going to be a rough week. The shipping deadline for Christmas is December 15th, so I planned to do all of my baking this week, especially on my days off. I'm trying loads of techniques I've never tried before, and a lot of time-consuming packaging and cookie decorating and gathering supplies and ingredients is involved.
What I didn't anticipate was going to steno class on Monday and finding out I've apparently been doing things wrong for weeks.
And having my teacher fly off the handle, telling me that I NEED to complete a bunch of evaluations NOW.
I had actually planned to slack off on steno this week due to all the Christmas prep. So of course, go figure, this would be the week that I'm expected to do way more than usual.
That said, a deadline wasn't given, except that I have a test on Monday. So, I'm meeting with another teacher in the steno department to find out EXACTLY what I have to do, from someone who will hopefully not start yelling at me because I forgot what to do and/or didn't understand what to do. I'll be the first to say I'm not very smart, and I often miss things that are obvious or straightforward to other people. Sometimes I need things explained in a different way in order to understand. Trust me, I know I'm worthless at lots of things. But I think if there was something so important that I was supposed to do, be it a test or assignments or whatever, all my teacher has to do is tell me in a straightforward clear way: "Do x, y, and z by X date". And I'll do it. That's all there is to it.
Anyway, mostly I was just caught off guard. I thought I was doing well in steno class, and now all of a sudden it's like I'm weeks behind, and right at the busiest time of year. It added a lot of stress to an already stressful week.
I did do some of the steno evaluations, but when the weekend hit I had a tough choice to make.
Either I scrap my baking plans and panic-study steno all weekend, or set the steno aside and make my gift boxes as planned.
After losing a night of sleep giving myself ulcers over this, I decided to stick with my baking.
First of all, I already bought all the ingredients. Second, I have zero backup plan for gifts for everyone. Third, although my teacher was upset that I haven't been doing the work she expected me to be doing at this point, she also didn't give me any deadlines or any specific assignments other than to be prepared for a test on Monday. Plus, if I can get as much done as possible over the weekend, I'll still have three days before my test to study or take evals or whatever. Maybe this is irresponsible of me, but frankly, this is the one thing I wanted to do for my family this year. I won't get to see anyone (like a lot of people) due to covid. It has been a really hard year...even for me, and I have had it LUCKY. Right now, this is more important to me. If it hurts me in the future, or disappoints my teacher, I guess I'll just have to swallow that pill.
Let the food prep commence!
During the week, per my boyfriend's request, I made my mom's "magic window cookies" recipe. We have wheat flour right now due to trying to be healthy, so they're a bit darker than usual and have a nice texture but otherwise taste just the same. I was really happy with how they turned out. I probably won't be sending these to friends and family as they'll probably be stale by the time I'm done making everything. Oh well...more for us to enjoy!
On Monday night I made two big batches of my favorite homemade granola. Lucky me, it clumped nicely. Why won't it do that when I make it for myself?? Lol! I put it in plastic 16oz mason jars and tied cute little plaid bows around the lids.
On Tuesday night I chopped a zillion apples for apple butter. So many apples that I never wanted to see another apple again.
Or so I thought, until they cooked overnight in the crock pot with bourbon, spices, and sugar, turning into a mushy pile of caramelized goodness.
I mashed the apples and let them cook for another hour with the lid off the crock pot to help it reduce down. Meanwhile I prepped a canning bath. I have never canned anything in my life and was very nervous about this, but if I didn't seal the jars they'd have to be refrigerated and then it wouldn't be safe to mail them. Plus people would have to eat it within a few days, that's no fun!
Luckily I have friends who have been canning food for their whole lives, who were willing to walk me through the process.
I won't bore you with the details, just look up "water canning" if you're curious. Suffice to say, all of my little jars got a good seal, so I'll be sending apple butter in my gift boxes. Yay! I was really worried about this so it was a huge relief that everything worked out and the jars sealed properly.
Next, I decided to try making some toffee. Originally I was going to just do caramels, but toffee is SO good and seems a lot easier to make than caramel. I boiled sugar, butter, water, and salt on the stove until it reached 300 degrees, then poured it out into a square pan and let it harden. While it was still warm I melted chocolate chips on top and sprinkled it with pecans. A few hours later it was ready to cut. Wow! I can't believe how well it turned out!
Sadly the caramel did not go so well this time. I tried doing things a little differently per some internet advice, and ended up with a crystallized mess with some burnt bits in it. Although I have a lot of things to make yet, I'm pretty determined to try the caramel again. I will stick to the recipe that I know works, but just up the temperature as my ONLY change.
Anyway, after that frustration it was time to make dinner. I made us taco salad because it's easy and good, and jalapeno poppers because I wanted to use some of the peppers we've gotten from my little garden. They were pretty tasty! Kind of floppy because I had to freeze them, but still yummy.
After dinner I packaged some of my homemade hibiscus tea. There's only enough to give everyone one tea bag, but I doubt anyone's going to be raving over it anyway. It doesn't have a strong flavor, but it looks and smells nice so I figure why not include it. The hibiscus is from my own back yard after all, and I dried most of the other bits myself.
By this point I had literally spent the entire day in the kitchen. I spent the 1-2 hours before bed typing this up and just trying to decompress from any stress that has built up. Failing at the caramel was stressful, thinking about steno was stressful, canning was super stressful. But now I only have to redo the caramel, maybe an extra batch of toffee, and make four different kinds of cookie dough. Yeah, that's all x_X
On Thursday I got up and got going with a purpose, an hour earlier than usual. I would have liked the sleep, I need it, but I can't sleep when there's a huge to-do list. I ate a quick breakfast and went to Dollar Tree for colorful shredded paper (it's really good for packing cookies in tins) and to Target for a few things I forgot and some extra baking stuff like sugar, butter, and cream. Those items were nearly gone on the shelves so apparently I'm not the only one cheaping out on Xmas gifts this year.
Back home I unpacked and started making another batch of toffee. The first batch turned out so good, I figure in case I don't make caramel I may as well have enough toffee to send everyone instead. It came out even better the second time because I was more careful with my temperature regulation (and having hot water on hand to help prevent burning before the sugar hit 300F). While the toffee was setting I got to work prepping my breakfasts, doing a load of laundry, and making the dough for all the cookies I plan to make this week. For some recipes I'm having to double or triple the dough, so it took longer than usual.
A break for lunch, then I continued making dough until around 2pm. At that point I cleaned up the kitchen and assembled the sauce for bourbon chicken tonight, then packaged the toffee for shipping in little wax paper bags sealed with a festive sticker. The oil from the toffee is staining the bags a little but hopefully people will get over it, it's a butter-based candy after all.
At 3pm I had a meeting with other-steno-teacher to discuss what a mess I am and how to fix it (not really, but I'm still irritated about what happened and that's how I feel). After meeting and speaking with this teacher, I'm really bummed I'm not in her class. Mostly because she's SANE. I was easily able to talk with her and tell her what's going on, and ask questions. With my teacher, I get five words into a sentence and she's made an assumption about what I'm going to say, and cuts me off, and I never get to say what I ACTUALLY meant or ask the question I wanted to ask. I don't know if it's a personality clash or what, but regardless I was able to clear things up with the other teacher. Such as, no, I don't actually have like 30 evaluations due this week. Phew. My teacher made it sound like I was missing work! I almost scrapped my Christmas baking plans over nothing!! I'm still pretty angry about this whole thing, but at the end of the day I'm just happy to know what is expected. All y'all have to do is tell me what you need, and I will do it. I wish she would just CHILL.
After that meeting it felt like the big pile of stress I've been carrying around all week was lifted. Well, the steno part was.
Now that I wasn't stressed about whether or not I should be doing steno, I dove right into another attempt at caramels, this time sticking with the recipe that I know and upping the temperature to 257F.
You guys, it worked! The caramels turned out PERFECT. Sweet, a little salty, easy to cut and wrap (well, wrapping was a pain haha but still). I'm so happy that I will be able to share these with my friends and family!
For dinner we had bourbon chicken (didn't taste anything like the mall food court version but was still good) and binge watched some Fargo. I did a little steno but my brain was all tired and I kept making stupid mistakes, so didn't spend a ton of time on it.
Tomorrow I'll take some treats to my coworkers, disguised as a boring old Publix shopping bag. Hopefully no one will throw them out this time.
There's still a ton of work I need to do: making, decorating, and packaging the cookies; buying stocking stuffers and presents; buying shipping materials and printing labels. But I feel like I'm almost there. And once this is all done, I can relax at actual Christmas :) That will be nice. Maybe I will make us some cinnamon rolls, never made them from scratch before.
Looking at this week, although it was very stressful, I am very pleased that I got to make three things I've never made before and learn several new techniques. It's nothing special, lots of people know how to can and make candies and whatnot. But it's new to me, so it's exciting. I'm just hoping these treats will make someone smile this Christmas.
