You all know that I want to be a baker, right?

It is mid-term time and I am constantly asking myself why I'm wasting my time, my life in academia when I could be studying the culinary arts. Each paper, exam, you-name-it and I'm thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I were learning how to make pain au chocolat?" Or something similar.

Today I had to do my Polish Society & Culture midterm. I'm sure it's utter shit as in one of the essays I started comparing Germans to ducks. Whatever, it's done.

Anyway, I don't do well with stress. I break out, my back starts to hurt, I drink way too much coffee and chain-smoke. I don't like deadlines and I don't like word counts and I just, in general, don't like having to think about stuff about which I just really don't give a damn. What do I do to relieve stress?

I create.

Depending on how bad the stress is depends on what I create. Day-to-day stress creates poetry and painting and weird songs. Heavy exams, family issues, money problems creates food. The more complicated, the better. I can have the worst week and then make a truly marvelous soup or bake some fuckin' awesome muffins and then I feel so much better.

Today I created White Chocolate Pomegranate Mousse and, oh, my motherfucking lord, it's splendid. I'm going to post the recipe because I think maybe some of you would like it?

White Chocolate Pomegranate Mousse

You'll need (for four servings):

1 cup of heavy whipping cream (hint: Publix carries many sizes. The smallest is one cup)
1 tablespoon of granulated sugar
4 ounces of white chocolate (I used just one bar of the Ghirardelli)
2 egg whites
1 pomegranate, seeded*

1. Melt the chocolate. You can do this in a pan but I chose to do it in the microwave. If you do it my way, break the chocolate into pieces and put them in something microwave safe. Next heat them on half-power for about a minute and half. Take it out and stir it. If it's not quite done, put it in for another 30 seconds (again, on half power!). Set it aside to cool.

2. Pour your whipping cream into a mixing bowl. If you have a kitchen-aid, I suggest breaking out the wire whisk. I, however, just used a hand-mixer (and a broken one, at that!). Whip the cream at a very high speed. After a few minutes it'll start to get thicker (you'll know this because as you're whipping, the mixer will start to make shapes in the cream but feel free to stop it at times to see). Keep mixing until it gets to be like the whip cream that comes in a can, not coolwhip. Add the sugar and mix for a little more. It should be thick enough to stick to the mixer, if not, keep mixing. Stick it in the fridge.

3. Beat the egg whites with a teensy pinch of salt until it forms peaks. This takes a while and if you're doing it by hand, you're going to get tired. Just sayin'.

4. Fold the egg whites into the whipped cream and then do the same with the chocolate. When it's all together, you can start putting it in whatever you're serving it out of. I chose some wine glasses. I also opted to put a few pomegranate seeds at the bottom just because the glasses were, well, glass and it looked pretty. Put some of the mousse on top and then throw a few more pomegranate seeds on top. Voila! Stick the glasses in the fridge for about a half an hour to firm up the mousse and then serve.



*How to seed a pomegranate:

I don't know if there's a correct way so I can only tell you how I did it. It's kind of messy and time-consuming but hey, if you don't like it, make the recipe with something cleaner / easier that goes well with chocolate (Bananas? Strawberries? etc?).

Cut the crown off of the pomegranate. The seeds are in kind of pod-like things so peel the skin around them. You can pluck the seeds out or kind of brush them out, if you're good. Some will pop and the juice does stain so wear an apron or be really careful. Do this until you've peeled all of the skin and freed all of the little red seeds.

Mmmm, I feel gooooooooooooood.

Things have been pretty good since getting out of the hospital yesterday. I HAVE BEEN ON A ROLL. Seriously. Amber came over for the most fepic Wii tourney EVER (it was fepic because I won EVERY single game of everything we played). No, really. Mario Kart? Check. Wii play? Check times fourteen. Wii sports? Check, check, check. Super Smash Brothers Brawl? Checkity check check.

There was one point where Amber thought she might beat me at table tennis and she got cocky and said, "This is where heroes are made." and then I won. BUT THEN WE LAUGHED AT IT BECAUSE I WAS LIKE, "HEROS? OR GYROS? SANDWICHES?" AND SHE WAS LIKE, "YEAH, THE PITAS. WITH THE LAMB IN IT. WITH THE LAMINATE!" It was all very funny and if I own a sandwich shop, our tagline will be, "Where gyros are made."

She went home and I was like, "It's almost 10 o'clock in California! Time to try to buy one of the remaining 175 SGA packs." So, I went into crazy refresh mode and got one! Yay for donating $50 to the CBLDF and also getting a perfume that NEIL HIMSELF described smelling as, "green apples and like sex and vampires, all at the same time. (Actually, it smells like sexy vampire apples.)" So, yay! Lots of yay! It was sold out by the time I woke up today, so that's good.

Right now I am baking! And experimenting! I'm basically a mad scientist in the kitchen. I'm making some beer bread and I don't know how it's going to turn out. After that I'm going to make my dad some brownies because everyone keeps asking for them and setting stuff out in the hopes that I'll make them. So, I will.

Tomorrow Mel and I are probably going to the Breaking Dawn release party not because either of us are overly or overtly excited about the release of the book but rather because of the possibility of free stuff. And we've read all the other books so we might as well read the conclusion, right? I am kind of over Stephenie Meyer. The Host was okay but it didn't even get interesting until 33 chapters in and the Twilight series has just been going on and on and on and on and Bella is still super annoying and ugh. So, yeah. FREE STUFF!

I kind of want to go to Rocky Horror this weekend. Would anyone be up for that? Maybe? I'll drive.

Other than that, things have been boring. I'm all moved out of Gainesville and getting ready for the leap across the ocean (still). I need to book my hotel in London and decide what I am taking and in what I am taking it. I have a place to live finally. I'm staying in Runnymede and I'll have my own room and bathroom but I'm sharing a kitchen with 6-8 flatmates. EXCITING! I'll probably be the only American since most exchange students have to stay either off campus or in the Founder's Hall (Jillian is staying off campus). So, it's exciting. I'm still waiting for a schedule of classes or something. At least a list of books I need to buy, you know?

Right.

So, now more baking and dancing.