A Fig, Peach and Orange Vanilla Napoleon with Lemon Cookie, Diplomat Cream, and Strawberry Compote

This was my plated dessert assignment for pastry-class. There was plenty that went wrong with this dessert before I got it right...two batches of curdled pastry-cream, one batch made with baking soda instead of cornstarch, one batch of cooked juice filling with not quite cooked cornstarch, one collapsed mold, one batch of truly vile lemon-cookies, 4 rancid figs, and one sticky knapsack due to a leaky container of strawberry-kiwi juice. I'm probably forgetting some stuff too, this assignment has kept me awake in a cold-sweat for the last week, now it's done and I'm damn happy with it.

I'll have a photo of the finished product next week once the chef gets it back to me. He liked the flavour and components (once I got them right, just barely in time) but unfortunately the composition didn't completely hold together, it was slightly collapsed by the time I presented it to him. I got my end of the month mark so far, the first week I got an 88%, last week I got a 50% for missing 2 days, 20% each day, meaning I had a 90% going into it, bummer. However he told me he didn't have any criticism for me and to keep doing what I was doing. So who cares about the mark anyways?

I'm going camping tomorrow, sort of don't want to. I want a relaxing weekend and instead I get to go get drunk with a bunch of loud, snotty 17/18 year olds in the woods. They're all my friends but sometimes an old-man needs a break from rocking the cradle. I'm getting very tired of giving certain people directions and duties but today I realized not everyone has work-experience and it's not easy for everyone to look around them and see things that need to be wiped down, scrubbed, or swept up. However I also find it incredibly arrogant of some people to be able to so obviously be pretending to look busy while staring at people who actually are busy and clearly not happy about it. How is it that I can give someone a duty to do and once it's done they'll recommence their idling and actually have the gall to stare at me on my knees, scrubbing greasy equipment? I don't like being put in the role of supervisor but I refuse to be taken advantage of, it's a very very awkward situation.

Lately I lie in bed at night and consider the benefits of finishing the year at Algonquin College after my 1st semester here, but I won't. Sometimes I consider the benefits of living in a handmade shanty on Salt Spring Island and setting a honky-tonk piano loose upon the placid of the island twilight, I won't though. I consider leaving what I have now to memory and heading to San Francisco, thumb to the road, and completing my education in the back of a 45degree sweat-swamp-stink kitchen, I won't do that either. I think I've finally left my senseless spontaneity behind, maybe I used to run from time but the only way to ever get anything done is to compromise with it.

I'm super into John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and Blood On The Tracks lately. Falling off his motorcycle was the best thing that ever happened to Bob Dylan.