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I was an almond skeptic. But I have been won over. There are very few foods I won’t eat; I eat just about everything with great joy and abandon. But I confess that almond things have been on my very short won’t-eat list.

People who play around with words all day, like me, tend to think that there is something clever or worthwhile to say about nearly everything. Once in a while we need reminding that the better part of valor is to shut the hell up. And once in a while, as well, we stumble into situations where, much to our surprise, there is simply nothing to say. Nothing to say. Nothing to say. Just let that sit a beat.

If you sneaked a peek at this blog late last night, or raced to check it early this morning (ahem), you already know that session 2 of my pastry techniques class at L’Academie de Cuisine was a bit of a wild ride. We crammed so much pastry dough into a brief period that our little heads were spinning. And in all the hubbub, my fellow students and I managed to make batches of pastry cream so tough you could slam

Week 2 of Pastry Techniques at L’Academie de Cuisine, and once again, there’s so much to tell that just about everything will have to wait until tomorrow. We had a wild rollercoaster of an evening packed with pâte à choux, pâte brisée, pâte sucrée, and the Mysteriously Muscular Pastry Cream. Charming cameo roles were played by the tiny éclair and the beguiling salambo. If you haven’t the faintest cl

I promised yesterday to tell you more today about the first session of my Pastry Techniques class at L’Academie de Cuisine, and CurvyMama keeps her promises. Here is how our evening ended: And here is how it began:

I never thought I’d live to say this, but I am too excited to blog right now. The first night of pastry class at L’Academie de Cuisine was so wonderful that I’m walking on a little whipped cream cloud. If I try to tell you about everything, I’ll never get to sleep and I’ll never wake up in the morning, and that means I won’t get my story done tomorrow, and that means there will be

CurvyMama’s puttin’ on her white chef’s jacket again. But this time it’s not my off-the-shelf chef’s jacket. It’s a jacket embroidered with the L’Academie de Cuisine insignia and my own name. Isn’t that the damnedest thing? This kitchen adventure isn’t another hang-around in a New York City restaurant kitchen. It’s a five-month pastry course at L’Acade