We had already planned the crawfish boil for the 9th, which turned out to be the day after our wedding, and so it became our unofficial reception. There was the mass genocide of many many bugs, plenty of other foods. DmentD’s delicious cheesecake, I made two sorbets (lemon lime and berry, the lemon lime was my favourite), and I used the event as an excuse to try out a cake recipe. One of our guests has some interesting dietary restrictions, and I sort of set myself the challenge of making her a cake she’s able to eat (I’m aiming to eventually work out cookies, cakes and a tirimisu!). It was vegan, gluten free, and cane sugar free. The frosting was surprising, I used a recipe she had for a chocolate avocado dip, I don’t like avocado and damn that frosting was good! For a first attempt it went down really well, though I’m sure in my experiments with this I’ll have plenty of failures. Anyway, it was a fun day (aside from the clean up!).

Then before I knew it it was back to school for finals week! We had the theory on Monday and we had basics to make to last us the rest of the week; pate sucree, pastry cream, ganach, choux paste, meringue etc. For the rest of the week, we knew what had to be made, however we didn’t know what we’d be doing on each day (there were four groups of items that people rotated around). I was lucky and got the order I wanted, starting with the easiest (fruit tart, macaroons, pavlova, muffins) and working up, so on Friday when I would have had the hardest group I only had to make one item! The Friday started with a toast from some of the Chefs and school officials (who we’ve never met before and know nothing about us but are going to give us a speech anyway), then the final exam, we cleaned up and then had a pot luck, some people were writing all over each other’s jackets.. as I need my jacket for my externship I let them write all over my hat instead.. it’s now perched on one of the skulls in the office!

I started my externship this week, so far I’ve done two days and I’m really enjoying it. Rather than having my schedule jump about lots (currently I’m set to do two bread shifts a week, one closing shift and one midday) they’re planning on changing it so I do a set period of just one shift, then move on to the next etc. I’ve currently done one bread and one closing and enjoyed both, though my arm took a couple days to recover from shaping the hundreds of bread rolls. It’s kinda cool to be able to say that if you ate bread on Tuesday at California Pizza Kitchen, Terra Burger or Do Good Deli (in Austin obviously) then I either made it on my own, or had a hand in making it.

Sunday night we made it to see Rent which was awesome. Aside from the usual number of people needing to go to the ‘special hell’ *grins* It was a fantastic performance, and the staging was very well done, just one set with props moved about. I also liked that if a person wasn’t in a scene but couldn’t move offstage as part of the performance then they stayed there, unlit, very still, and facing away from the audience. It meant there were less distractions.

Since we were busy with immigration paperwork all weekend DmentD and I went shopping last night, just as we got in the power went out! So we got to put shopping away and start cooking by candle and torch light! Our wedding present from my parents arrived, an awesome firepit for our garden, so we put that together as well.

Friday afternoon DmentD and I got married! We were actually very close to being late for our own wedding!

We had a few things to do around the house in the morning, and then left with what we thought was plenty of time to get there.. We got onto Mopac and almost immediately hit queues. So we managed to get off at the next exit and take the long route, with all the traffic lights.. we got there 5 minutes early in the end! As it was, the judge was running late too, so we had time to pose for photographs.

We had a few friends there, and they had been fantastic and wonderful and made up a bouquet for me, and a button-hole for DmentD.

The judge was fantastic, she performed a wonderful ceremony with the emphasis in all the right places, neither of us could stop grinning!

Our rings had thankfully arrived in time. DmentD’s arrived Wednesday, mine decided not to show until Friday morning, when we were making contingency plans over using a stand-in ring!

Everything was signed, and many more photos were taken, for a small wedding there’s a whole load of photos.

We headed out, and met up with a few more people at a pub for food and drinks and celebration!

Our unofficial reception was the crawfish boil on Saturday which was good fun, the official shindig will be in January when my family are here for Graduation.

It feels good to be married, to be commited to each other. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t feel different at all, we’re carrying on, living together precisely as we were, just calling each other husband and wife now.. It still feels fantastic though *grins*

I am so very grateful to my Chef for helping me to arrange having Friday off of class. Now it’s back to the grindstone with it being finals week!

We’re on to the immigration fun now, I had my medical Monday and my vaccines and TB test today, I’ll get the results of everything on Friday.

The last couple of weeks in class we’ve been making showpieces. The first week was a chocolate showpiece with a theme of books/films/animals. I decided to combine the three and go for Harry Potter and the Phoenix!

Surprisingly all my chocolate tempered nicely the entire week. I think this was because I was tempering much larger quantities than I was used to, so although it was much more tiring, it changed temperature at a much slower rate. I didn’t overheat it and it was wonderfully tempered! My showpiece probably took at least 20lbs of chocolate, a combination of milk, dark and white (we had to use at least two of the three). The two books on the bottom are solid pieces to provide a sturdy base, there is a support piece up behind the phoenix. Originally I wanted him up in the air, however he was 2lbs of chocolate before I put all the feathers on so he was too heavy to stay up. So I rested him on the books and had the tail out over the books. I was also going to have the sorting hat and Gryffindor sword as well as the glasses but decided it would be too crowded. Realised afterwards that I could have attached the sword handle onto the support so it came up from behind the phoenix, but never mind. I lost marks for untidiness and it having several smudges and chips from handling. Carrying him down to the demo kitchen to go in the display window was a feat! He was very heavy and the heat of my hands was melting him!

This week we did the sugar showpiece. Originally this use to be a two week task with a much harder piece to produce. However since they started doing finals on the last week to recap over the past 9 months it got cut down to a week. This meant we got no real practice, most of what we made ended up on the piece (whereas before they had a week to practice and play about and then a week to complete the piece). We also had no theme, just a list of techniques to use. We had to have an 8″ poured sugar base and a support piece, straw sugar (the large pink piece, look at a cross section and it looks like a bunch of straws) and a full rose with leaves. We then got to chose from either blown, net (the red and orange pieces in the background), rock or a different full flower. And for extra credit we could do either blown or another full flower (if we hadn’t already done them).

I quite enjoyed it, working with the sugar itself was fun, though we didn’t really have the best conditions for it. Really you need cold and dry for it to work best. We actually used isomalt for most of it, it doesn’t caramelise or crystallise. And though it does get sticky from moisture in the air, unlike sugar it will dry out again (though it will have lost its shine). I’m not a fan of abstract so visually it doesn’t really appeal to me, but I did good on it!

And I have school off this evening, I did my exam last night. DmentD and I are getting married this evening, which will be coming in a post soon, I just wanted to get this one out the way first so they didn’t have to share a post! And on that note, I better go get ready! *grins*

To the previous post.. it has just been decided that a rash of calls to the calendar commitee may be detrimental to the bill unless you are from their constituent!

Apparently phone calls from constituents are far more effective than phone calls from random people.. and it’s taken them a week to realise this!