October, 2003

Geomagnetic storms, baby yeah! I felt a bit like Mary Poppins as I left school last night. The weather was so freaky! For those of you who don’t live in California, let me just give you a quick debriefing: It’s always beautiful, sunny and warm here. It’s rarely–if ever–windy, and almost never rains. So, taking this into consideration, you can imagine my surprise as the palm trees were bent in half by the wind and the night sky seemed to be howling! It was also about 10 degrees colder than it usually is at 6pm.

The wind and howling continued all night, and our power flickered and died completely at several points! Apparently, this was all due to a geomagnetic storm. There’s a magnetic storm on the sun right now that creates these flare-ups of gas that shoot off the sun into space. Besides the flare-ups, there are also CMEs, or coronal mass ejections. These are much more intense, and are basically giant eruptions from the sun that blast a billion tons of highly charged particles into space at speeds greater than a million miles per hour. The particles that are flying around in space thanks to this eruption cause auroras (read: the Northern and Southern Lights). Luckily these types of emissions only affect earth by disrupting satellite communications and power grids–which is what happened to us last night!

I’ve finally updated Hotshots a tiny tiny bit! You’ll find some pictures of our first few days at Greystone. And since I was at it, I thought I’d share the rest of these random “product pics”! In this first photo, Team HC prepares some goodies for the cafe.
And here’s a bleu cheese & chive quiche our group made the other day. It was so delicious–and extremely rich. Perfect for those family Sunday brunches when you’re looking for a savory adult-type treat.

Wendy proudly displays her traditional bially.

Below, the cake with the powdered sugar stripes on it is a roman apple cake, and one of the first items we learn how to make.

Moving right along to the laminated dough station, here’s a variety of croissants–some savory, some sweet, some filled, some not. I filled mine with gargonzola dolce, carmelized onions, sage and walnuts. Yummers! SIDENOTE: gargonzola dolce is my new favorite cheese.

These little numbers are filled with — you guessed it — chocolate! And when they’re hot out of the oven, oh baby oh: soooo good.Moving clockwise from the back of the plate, here’s a Christmas stollen (one of my new favorite breads, stollen–pronounced schtollen–is NOT a fruit cake). Next we have Kugelhopf. And finally panetone. Filled with golden California raisins that were soaked in dessert wine for two days, our rendition is a decidedly Norcal-style pastry.

Here’s Ann with some more panetone. Seriously good stuff–for any meal!

Daily wrap-up with Chef Jorin. It’s important to evaluate each new product and share constructive criticism.

Here’s a close-up of that stollen. When it’s hot out of the oven, we brush it heavily with butter and dip it in two different kinds of sugar. This helps preserve it for a long period of time and makes stollen an ideal bread to make early for the holiday season.The flavors of the rum-soaked fruits and nuts mature with age.

I am so happy that Autumn has finally arrived! It’s been a busy couple weeks–I’m helping edit the recipe book for the Worlds of Flavor conference that’s coming up in November, working on the hot side for our special events department on the weekends. Dave came to visit this weekend and we had loads of fun! Pictures and stories to come soon!