One of the best days of my life happened over the weekend.

How do you start off an awesome day?  I’ll tell you how I do.  Coffee and a muffin from Bouchon.

What made it one of the best days of my life?  Here’s a hint…

Can you figure it out yet?  How about now…

Okay no, I didn’t enroll myself into pastry school.  Well, sort of.  For my 30th b-day my wonderful in-laws sent me to a one-day cooking class at the Culinary Institute of America.  I chose “Chocolates and Confections,” since chocolate is one of those areas that you basically need to be a scientist to “get it.”  I can do cakes, I can do breads, I can do cookies, cake pops, and even french macaroons.  But chocolate?  Forget it.  Until now!

The instructor for my course was none other than Chef Stephen Durfee, past Executive Pastry Chef at the French Laundry, James Beard award winner for “Outstanding Pastry Chef,” named one of the 10 best pastry chefs in America, etc.  Last month he competed as the chocolatier on “Team America” at the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie (which is basically the Olympics of pastry competitions).  He made a flipping bicycle out of chocolate (and was 4th in the world).  You can see him in the above picture, stirring blanched almonds, sugar, and butter into what would eventually become Almond Dragées.  A-MAZ-ing! You might think they’re like other almond candies, but that’s only true in the same way that Bentleys and Hondas are both cars.

Pulling apart the almonds so they don’t stick together.  Rather important.  God bless silpats.

We learned all of the basic fundamentals of chocolate, including how to (correctly) temper chocolate, how to make ganache, and how to use molds.  Chef Durfee is seen above spreading ganache out to cool.  Apparently I’ve been going about ganaches all wrong–turns out it requires more than just microwaving a bowl of cream and chocolate bits until it’s melted.  You have to cool it.  And agitate it.  And love it.

Here’s something interesting.  Truffles.  Chef said you could scoop them out of the ganache, but he prefers piping because it’s faster.

Behold my mostly perfectly shaped truffles!  

And for comparison, behold my neighbor’s sad poop-y ganache.

A quick coat of cocoa powder for some of the truffles (after two baths of perfectly tempered chocolate, naturally).

In addition to the milk and dark chocolate truffles, we also made coconut lime truffles.  Above, covered in toasted coconut.

What’s this?  Chocolate on your workstation?  No, no, don’t clean it with a rag…

Burn it off with freaking propane.  Yeah.  That’s how chocolate gets cleaned off of marble counters in commercial kitchens.  Kind of awesome.

Back to the almonds.  Added a bit of perfectly tempered chocolate and stirred like crazy.  Chocolate is a weird and delightful thing.  When you first add a bit of chocolate, it’s kind of shiny and soft.  But then it starts to stick to the nuts and it goes absolutely matte, like powder.  It’s science I tell you!

See?  You just keep mixing and the chocolate totally changes.

I guess if you are a pastry chef god amongst mere mortals, you have your name put on all your knives.  I pity the fool who tries to steal Chef’s knives.

Oh!  And we made peanut brittle!  It was SO ridiculously good!  There are several key things to know when making peanut brittle: 1) cook the peanuts raw in the sugar so that the sugar gets the flavor (instead of cooking the sugar and then adding the peanuts at the end); 2) add the baking soda carefully at the end–it will make the batch brown more, so make sure it’s not too brown when you take it off the stove.

Pour it out onto one of those amazing silpats and spread it out.

But don’t just spread it out… When the brittle has cooled enough so that you can touch it, get your hands underneath it and gently pull and stretch it.  Doing that makes the brittle easier to eat and not so thick.  Mind blowing I tell you!  It’s science!

Here’s the start of something fabulous.  Above is the first layer of pecan butter crunch (toffee).  Super buttery and delish!

But obviously this is a chocolate class, so we’re going to cover it in chocolate and then flip the whole thing over and cover the other side in chocolate too.

See how the chocolate toffee on the silpat on the right is perfectly shiny and smooth?  And that smear of chocolate on the left looks like matte shit?  There’s a reason!  If you spread chocolate too many times, the back and forth motion will actually dull the finish of the chocolate.  It’s science!

We made a pretty good looking spread.

This is a picture from one of the students.  I was kind of mesmerized by her chocolate skills.

And molding!  We learned how to make molded chocolates.  I made some last night with chocolate cream Bailey’s fillings and dark chocolate shells.  Kind of amazing.

Draining the inverted mold.  It’s a whole–dare I say it–science.

But there’s also some creativity involved.  These are two molds that the students were doing.  You put the decorations into the molds before you put the chocolate shell in.  Then when you pop the chocolate out of the shell it’s already decorated and smooth and beautiful.

See what I mean?

And I couldn’t help but take a picture of the super top-secret ingredient list for the chocolate kitchen. Some of it is a little “WTF.”

And how fun is this!  There were several classes going on the same time as ours and we each made each other lunch.  Well, we made dessert…obviously.  The other classes were “Asian Classics” and “CIA Favorites.”  It was one of the best buffets I’ve ever seen.  Everything was phenomenal and it went on for multiple tables.

One of the best fundamentals I learned was just how to temper chocolate.  I had no idea.  I feel like I have stepped up my pastry game considerably.  My class size was 7 people total, and I received an apron and a fabulous cookbook–kind of a fab deal.  I am definitely planning on taking another CIA At Home class–and you should too!

Thar she be: The Navigator of the Seas.  Not so much a “cruise ship” as a “gigantic floating country.”  We left the port in New Orleans on Saturday, the 17th, for a 7-day Western Caribbean cruise.  As a first time cruiser, I can safely say, I LOVE cruising!  I can’t wait to plan my next cruise!

On the inside–this picture is of the promenade, where there are several shops, cafes, bars, etc.  It’s kind of ridiculous how much fits on the ship.  They had multiple parades during our cruise, which were extremely impressive.

I think this was from our first night.  Cruise ships are mostly about eating ridiculous amounts of food, so forgive me if meals run together a bit.

Roxana, our server throughout the cruise, was hysterical.  She liked to make fun of Rene, but we were all guilty of ordering like gluttonous fools. 

On our second night at sea, we had our first formal night.  Awww… aren’t we cute!

And then… a surprise.  We were invited to dine with the captain!

The Staff Captain turned out to be less of a salty sailor, and more of a shy, soft spoken Swede.  

After dinner, another surprise.  The infamous towel animal!  Our first critter was a rather good looking snail.

On our fourth day, we arrived at Falmouth, Jamaica.  A view from our balcony.

We decided to do an excursion to the Good Hope Estate, which is a sugar plantation tour.

Part of the tour involved going up to the main house at the top of the hill.  Totally gorgeous view from the top.

The house was absolutely beautiful.  I have lots of shots on my flickr page, if you’d like to see more.

And the sugar plantation itself.

You know what else was awesome?  Lunch.  Red Stripes, jerk chicken, and johnny cakes.

When we got back to the port, we did a little shopping.  Rene found Wilson, who we all fell in love with.

Wilson is so pensive.

The following day we arrived at Grand Cayman.

Arrrrrrrrrg!  There be pirates in Grand Cayman!

We took another excursion while there, which turned out to be the best idea ever.  First stop, the turtle farm!  Which had wild chickens running around the front of the building?

Next stop, the rum factory.  Or really, a store where they try to sell you rum and rum cakes (which are SO GOOD!).  The bus actually started driving away before we realized Cindy and Rene weren’t with us.  Whoops!  Too much rum cake?

Next stop?  Hell.  No seriously.

Turns out hell is really just a dead coral reef tourist trap in the Cayman islands.  Who knew?  At least I found out that they do indeed serve beer in Hell:

Next stop, and my favorite activity of the entire trip (NOLA included): swimming with the stingrays!  We took a boat out to a sandbar, jumped out, and swam with the stingrays.  They are very tame and actually super cute.  I fed** one of them a squid and he came back and rubbed up against my legs, like he was saying “hey thanks!”  They were like big, wet, slimy dogs.

** When I say that I fed a stingray, what I really mean is that I was given a squid, which I promptly dropped (and screamed like a little girl) when a giant flipping stingray came swimming at me at full speed with it’s mouth open.  I stole this picture off Google, so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:

When we got back to the boat later that day, they had decorated for Thanksgiving!

The following day, Thanksgiving, we went to Cozumel, Mexico.  Not a bad place to spend a holiday.  Cindy being thankful for beer.

Jumping up and down for beer!

There’s not much in this world that compares with my mum’s turkey and gravy.  However, if forced to spend Thanksgiving in Cozumel, shrimp tacos on the beach is not a bad substitute.

And followed up by the obligatory Señor Frogs.  I am thankful for fruity yard drinks.

And then Rene decided to climb the rock wall.  Because our cruise ship had a flipping rock climbing wall (of course).

That night, our second formal night, we celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast as only a cruise ship can do.

What a fabulous trip!  Thank you to all of you who joined, made it possible, or otherwise supported our silly shenanigans!

I can’t believe I’ve been 30 for over two weeks now and still haven’t blogged about my most fabulous birthday celebration trip!  It was truly a trip of a lifetime.  I think it’s best to split my blogging into two huge entries: one for New Orleans and one for the cruise (aka, “best trip of my life”).

I’ve never been to New Orleans before, or as I call it, “Land of Sugar and Booze.”  On our first day, we walked around the French Quarter and immersed ourselves in all that is NOLA.  First stop?  Cafe du Monde, of course!

The best cafe au lait I’ve ever had, and the (in)famous beignets!  If you’ve never been to CDM, the floor is disgusting.  Don’t look down.  

Right around the corner we found Aunt Sally, who was busy making authentic creole pralines, which are basically sugar.  And butter.  And delicious.

They also sold these crazy gay mermaid holiday ornaments.  We found these in other stores also.  Not sure what’s up with the gay mermaid ornaments and how they fit in with NOLA?  But they’re pretty fabulous.

As we walked around, it became very evident that NOLA is a city of street performers.  Some of the best street music I’ve ever heard, and some pretty amazing displays of magic, juggling, and balancing on silly things while throwing sharp knives.

NOLA is also apparently “the place to buy hot sauce.”  And alligator heads?

It’s really a pretty town, and I’m glad we were able to see it in all of it’s holiday glory.  It’s also quite hot there most days of the year, so I was very appreciative of the perfect weather. 

I have a lot of food porn to show you, as I’m sure you expect, but for some reason Larry didn’t want to eat as much as we all did?

We did convince him to join us at Acme Oyster House, where 97% of the menu is fried.  I had the BEST fried oysters ever.  To die for.

Jason, Colleen and I took a little streetcar ride to… actually… I’m not sure.  We got lost.  But the streetcars are nice!

Full day 2: Jason, Colleen, Ellyn and myself took a plantation tour about an hour outside of NOLA, just off the mighty Mississippi River (which is gigantic).  First stop, Oak Alley Plantation.  Totally haunted.  And very pretty!

This lady was our tour guide.  This picture really captures it: she’s in all the garb of the era, but wait, what’s that on the mantle?  A plastic daiquiri cup.  Which she drank while she gave us the tour.  “Ya’ll… this is the dining room.  Ya’ll, they all ate here.  It was hot, ya’ll…”  And so on.

None of this furniture is original to the house.  But you can’t sell a plantation tour unless the house has furniture, right?

This picture is a little creepy.  I took it through a window, and you can see me in the reflection in the mirror.  You can also see, just to the right of me, a ghost.  Legit!  I captured an image of a ghost!  (I’m calling that little green bit and the purple bit a ghost.  Roll with it)

The second plantation we saw was Laura Plantation, which is more of an original creole-style plantation.  A really fascinating story–a couple came over from France to start a sugar plantation.  They built this house, then just before the first harvest, the husband died.  So the wife inherited the whole thing and was allowed to run the business (back when women couldn’t tie their own shoelaces without asking a man’s permission).  And then, when it comes time to pass the business along to the next person in the family, she picks a daughter (not her son!) to run it.  And then she picks a girl, and so on.  Only women ever ran this plantation, which is pretty cool.

This is also cool–a bonfire!  They light it up on Christmas night so that Papa Noel knows where to come.  Apparently the whole town has bonfires.

There were more ghosts at this plantation as well, although I didn’t capture them on film.  We were standing in a bedroom during the tour and the guide told us that this man and woman were totally set on their daughter being the next in line to run the plantation, but she developed acne and they were worried that would ruin their chances.  So they took her to a doctor, who gave her a shot to cure the acne, and she died instantly.  The parents came home and the mother sat in this bedroom and never left the room until she died, like twenty years later.  Can you imagine not leaving a room for twenty years?  And the guilt of your daughter dying because you thought her acne was ruining her business prospects?

We came back after a day of plantations and walked around a bit more.  Not too far from our hotel we stumbled upon the Supreme Court of Louisiana/Court of Appeal Fourth Circuit.  Such lawyer nerds.

Day 3: we visited the National World War II Museum, which is absolutely phenomenal.  If you go, don’t miss the movie.  It’s a “4-D” movie experience, complete with snow that falls on the audience and seats that rumble.

Clark Gable!  Swoon!

On Saturday morning we decided that we really needed to go eat something before we boarded our ship.  Because people starve on cruise ships?!  We visited Mothers, home of the best ham ever.  I completely agree.  I would also add that their biscuits are to die for.

Next… our cruise!

Guess where we went to celebrate our first anniversary last weekend?!?  Can’t guess?  How about….

It’s almost embarrassing for me to say this as a Northern California native, but I had actually never been to Yosemite before. On Friday we decided to take a little weekender in celebration of our first year of wedded bliss. Saturday morning we got up early and headed to the Hotel Charlotte in Groveland (about 45 minutes from Yosemite).  The Hotel Charlotte is a beautiful, relaxing oasis–with no cell phone coverage! Yay! The couple that owns it just reopened it a couple of weeks ago, and they’re doing a fantastic job. I highly recommend grabbing a habañero margarita at the bar and relaxing on a rocking chair on their second floor balcony. Avoid their ghost, Charlotte.

We spent Saturday walking around Groveland.  It didn’t take long, as Groveland is about half a mile from one end to the other. They do have a great museum though, and we spent some quality time there.  Jason got into a scuffle with a bear!

And I fought off a bobcat!

The best part of the museum is a table where you can sit and go through old magazines. I went through a few Time and Life magazines from the 60s/70s and check out this Anchorman ad! Ron Burgandy would be so proud!

You look like a blueberry.

And check out this article about an ambitious young politician running for Senate at age 29. Name ring a bell?

On Sunday we made the trek to Yosemite.  A lovely view of Half Dome:

Apparently May is the time to go to Yosemite, because everywhere we looked we saw gorgeous waterfalls. I literally have dozens of pictures of beautiful waterfalls from the trip.

Our first stop was the Ahwahnee Hotel for brunch. The Ahwahnee is beautiful and their brunch is one of the best I’ve ever had. We timed it right because after our first plate (it’s a buffet) they switched everything over to lunch. So we had the best of both worlds.

Check out this dessert sampler! 

After brunch we went on a little nature hike. Jason single-handedly fought off several squirrels. They are everywhere! We were looking for a bear, but didn’t find any. Next time we’ll bring picnic baskets and honey.

Then we went over to the museum (because we’re museum nerds). There was a great section about getting to Yosemite in the olden days and how much things have changed. These days you just have to sit in a car and drive four hours, going through such places as Oakdale, the “City of Action,” and the place next to the motel with the sign that just said “Girls! Girls! Girls!” Back in the olden days, you had to sit in a flipping wagon for 36 hours. And before that? God only knows. No thank you.

The museum also had a teepee. I don’t know why.

And a giant cross section of a tree. This tree is something like 900 years old.

A close-up. Every little white line is one year…

Our adventure continued. Can you find the bear in this picture? Okay, how about the squirrel? This is inside a restaurant by the way. See him? He’s moving fast.

Not fast enough to avoid getting a finger shaking from Jason. Where are your manners, Mr. Squirrel?

Our afternoon adventure involved a two-hour horseback ride up to Mirror Lake. Jason and his noble steed, Buck.

Buck was a bit of an asshole. But he came around.

My horse, Poco (short for Pocahontas, which is totally a girl’s name), was a doll. So sweet! Check out his pretty picture (you can’t see here, but he has a blue eye and a brown eye).

After the ride we hobbled over to another waterfall. Gorgeous! Followed up by a nice dinner at the Yosemite Lodge. The couple behind us was celebrating their 30th anniversary. Apparently they went to Yosemite for their honeymoon and have gone back every year for the anniversary.

Day two: more critters. This guy was just walking along the road.

We took a little nature walk to the giant sequoias. Jason sitting on a giant sequoia:

This guy was a little mad that we came trampling through his ‘hood. His fault for living amongst the giant sequoias.

After our hike we decided to check out Hetch-Hetchy on our way out of town. The park ranger told us it would take “twenty minutes” to get there.  An hour later…

I’m glad we went though. It’s so pretty!

At the top there’s a little drinking fountain. Imagine the freshest, most delicious water (if water had flavor).

And then this train wreck was parked next to us in the parking lot. Good bye beautiful nature land, hello crazy people world.

All in all, a lovely first anniversary. Here’s to many more adventures!