Awards Night aka The Party Where I Got To Wear My 50’s Dress

Look at it.

The Urvi likes it.

Me. Channeling Mad Men.

Signature line up on the stairs and smile picture. As you can see, we were very strict with our dress code.

we have fun together. we also made Josh go in the middle so we would look like his harem.

Before the year started my friend MPD and I decided to throw a senior awards night during the beginning of the school year to keep everyone from being bogged down in senioritis and stress. Basically we would come up with awards for our friends that had nothing to do with school and everything to do with our awesomeness, because that is and undisputable fact. Price and I planned the awards over pedicures and the next day went to dollar tree and bought party supplies, and sent out our invitations. They read as follows: “You have officially been invited by your hosts, Mary Price Duncan and Sophia Carmen Whitman Sandmeyer, to the 2013-2014 senior class awards night. The event will be held from 6 – 10 on September 13. The event is a formal dress or suit and tie affair with the request that you bring an appetizer for everyone to share and a big smile for the red carpet. RSVP to this number. Thank you.”

I won the yo yo award because apparently I am moody and have mood swing like a yo yo. HA HA not nice.

We felt fancy. In the end we had finger sandwiches, a red carpet, certificates signed with calligraphy pen and pawpaw ice cream. It was exciting. We also stayed way past ten and went to waffle house at 2 AM, which effectively canceled out the pawpaw ice cream and elegant hors d'oeuvres (which were actually cheese trays from Kroger.) It was lovely. And the pawpaw ice cream was a hit – or so I was told by annoyingly nice friends who don’t want to hurt my feelings.

The next party will be a Disney Princess Party. I will be Belle.

Pawpaw Ice Cream

This is the pawpaw tree in my back yard. I did this when it was still summer

The pawpaws look weird. Hence the face.

This is what a pawpaw looks like on the inside. Like baby food. Except it has 1,000 seeds in it that make it impossible for people to eat. I'm not a patient person.

The pawpaw man. He's excited about them.

Step 3. seriously. It's heavy.

Look at my cool whisk.

I cook in pearls. Deal with it.

Custard. Pawpaw puree. Leftover pawpaw goop.

Oh my god, I'm bout to use the machine. Ah. (Those were my thoughts)

Add the vanilla because you forgot to do it before.

Art.

My ice cream maker looks like a star.

Ingredients:

·      1 qt. cold milk

·      6 eggs

·      ½ tsp. salt

·      1 ½ c. sugar

·      1 c. pureed paw paw pulp (or more to taste)

·      juice of 1 lemon

·      1 qt. heavy cream

·      2 Tbsp. vanilla

Recipe:

1.     Scald 3 cups of the milk in the top of a double boiler. (Which I learned is a bowl on top of a pot of water, in case you didn’t know either.)

2.     In a bowl beat eggs well; add salt, sugar, and the remaining cup of milk.

3.     Slowly stir egg mixture in to the hot milk (which will take a lot of strength so prepare your muscles) and cook over a small amount of simmering water.

4.     Stir continuously until the mixture coats the spoon. DO NOT LET IT CURDLE. I’m not 100% sure of what that means but don’t let it happen. I think this means that you let it thicken but not clump up. It worked out well enough for me.

5.     Cool custard by putting the bowl in another bowl of cold water then chill it in the fridge.

6.     Combine pawpaw puree with the lemon juice and add to the chilled custard along with the cream and vanilla. (After I added the vanilla it pretty much tasted like vanilla ice cream so if you want the pawpaw taste to be stronger add less vanilla.)

7.     Pour into ice cream maker Follow instructions.

8.     Put in the freezer (I would recommend transferring the ice cream to a different container first instead of asking your dad to do it and end up opening the freezer and having the entire machine frozen in between the peas and popsicles.)

9.     Serve. It will be delicious. 

Quote of the Day: "You have to be somewhat indelicate to eat pawpaws anyways." - The Lexington Pawpaw Man

Nighttime Crave

Night time crave.

Hello band, you so good, but SO loud.

PICKLES WHATS HAPPENING

Look that's the salad I sorted. I'm important. And the apple strudel I tried. YUM

Desert plate. My favorite kind of plate.

Make shift kitchens have make shift cabinets. Where they put muffins.

I'm artistic.

Finished desert plates. I ate some of that. You can't notice. I hope.

People be cooking.

OMG more people are cooking.

Look at that rice. Its purple. Too fancy for this ish.

That's my mentor guys. That's him.

Those are miniature pumpkin things. And they put them on the purple rice.

Pretty good for not a real kitchen.

He was the one who gave me the coffee to pour. Broke Spoke sweater is Wendy. Wendy is cool. (Look at the girl in glasses. She wasn't happy about the classes.)

Plating. Like on the food network. But with out the dramatic music.

Look at them plates.

#stress

Even thought those look like creatures from the deep sea, they are actually mushrooms.

CHEESE, I LOVE YOU

I took a sneaky picture of the menu. Like a spy.

Well it’s happening. With great pain I am facing my procrastination. I’m not kidding about the pain part. I’ve had to take two naps just to face this. Once I put something off I have some deep trouble doing it. It’s been a lifelong struggle.

So. Nighttime crave. That was a while ago. Sorry bout that. Procrastination like this won’t happen again, but mostly because I will start failing my class. Yay. Here’s the story:

After I went to daytime crave and visited the goats, I went home, ate some cheese, put on my boots for the first time this fall and made my mom drive me to Crave again. (This procrastination thing isn’t just with my blog, I promise. It’s also why I’ve had my  permit for a year but only three lessons.) Anyways…I had promised John (my mentor) that I would meet him over where the band was playing so I followed the sound of electric guitar and found him and a bunch of other people in chef outfits. The plan was to watch them make a 15 course meal. It was going to be intense.

The menu was:

·      Amouse Bouche – Holly Hill Inn – Brown Bread Croustade with herbed goat cheese tomato jam and pickled baby okra. (This was super exciting because the cheese was from the goat farm that I had visited that morning. AND at Crave Susan Miller, the goat cheese lady won for best cheese. Yay for yummy cheese. You go, goats.)

·      Small Plate – Laurentia and Sebastian Torrealba – Pan roasted lamb belly stuffed with pears, finished with red wine reduction

·      Soup – Dan Wu’s pork and vegetable ramen

·      Pasta – Lexington Pasta

·      Intermezzo – Wendy Meadors pickled fall vegetables

·      Beef – jerry Broderick – Braised beef short rib with local tomato ragout (now I'm not super sure about this because I think I missed it or they didn’t include it because it was crossed out)

·      Lamb – Shannon Wampler – Collins

·      Pork – Jonathan Lundy – pork three ways

·      Greens – John Foster – Roasted wild mushrooms tossed with shallot sorghum dressing and baby fall greens (MY MENTOR AH)

·      Cheese – Pat Wylie

·      Ice creams – Crank and Boom, Pedal Sassy (remember them? Farmers market goodness)

·      Assorted Pastry – Jim Betts – apple strudel, Fatima Shamash – baklava, Sofia Wu – olive oil financiers

·      Coffee – A Cup of Commonwealth

·      Bread supplied by Bluegrass Bakery

I mean, wow. Really.

So I get there and there are a bunch of people running around battling this impressive menu, and I like, “Ummmm, hi, John what can I do? Um”. I am articulate. He assigned me to follow his friend Wendy (the one who made the pickles.) She was so nice. She works at my all time favorite restaurant in Lexington, Stella’s. Her girlfriend’s daughter was with her too so we both followed her. The daughter went to my old middle school and is currently taking a class wit my all time favorite teacher, Mrs. Jones. It was a good night. They kept giving us scraps to try. It was equally as delicious as it was fancy. And it was pretty fancy. My favorite was the apple strudel and the pork, and the rest of the menu. I was a proud pan holder during plating and lettuce sorter for the salad greens. I mean, such an integral part of the process.

It was an amazing night. So many cool things. And it was a lot of fun being behind the scenes. Except for the part where I was emptying coffee packets into a container and I accidentally shook it too hard and it went into my shirt. I smelled like coffee for like three days. Other than smelling like coffee and pickles, It was fabulous. (I got pickle juice on me. I'm clumsy like that.) I mean, who wouldn’t love watching delicious, organic, local food being made into magazine worthy plates. I mean, really.