Last Week of Freedom

This is my last week until cooking school begins. I realize I have been somewhat lax in my blogging, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that it has been a month since my last post. I hope this will all change once school starts, when I will undoubtedly be boiling over with amusing stories. Unfortunately, when you have many stories to write, you usually have no time to write them.

This isn’t to say that my vacation from posting is due to an absence of inspiration. I have spent a good deal of the last month in the kitchen, enjoying the August harvest’s bounty. I made a delicious coconut rum cake, which was probably the most beautiful cake I’ve ever baked. My hand still bears a scar from a tiny mishap opening the coconut, but the cake was definitely worth this minor disfigurement. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the cake, but it looked exactly like the photograph in Gourmet.

I also made a horrible grilled tuna with tapenade butter. While the seasoning and cooking were successful, the fish was Trader Joe’s deep-frozen tuna for the palateless cheapskate, which was probably the worst tuna I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing. I was quite optimistic about the tuna, because of many delicious meals from Whole Foods’ deep frozen sushi-grade tuna, but the Trader Joe’s version hardly seemed like the same species of fish. It was stringy and flavorless, and for the first time in my life, I understood James Beard’s oft quoted remark that, “Tuna is a fish that I think is better canned than fresh.”

I will try to be better about the blog, and hope I will have the stamina to chronicle my adventures at cooking school. Until then, I plan to enjoy my last week of freedom with a great deal of sloth, as well, I’m sure, as my usual share of gluttony.