*TemperMental

A Bit Of Comparison For You, Once Again.

When you do surgery for a living and publicly disclose it to a crowd of people at a cocktail party, invariably, one of two things will happen- Either the room will hush as people shudder, fight back the urge to say, “Ewwwwww!” aloud and migrate towards the opposite end of the room from you, or clothing will be pulled up, down or sideways to show battle scars or request a diagnosis from you.

When you tell the world you make chocolates for a living, all kinds of batshit crazy people come out of the woodwork and ask you to send them a goodie package.

Lets think long and hard about this for a moment, shall we? When I cut people open for a living, I really made a promise to myself to not bring my work home with me. That meant no free tummy tucks on the dining room table, no gratis A&P repairs on the Barcalounger and no gender reassignments in the bathroom. Not too hard to keep my promise, although a few hangover remedies were infused, a coupla sutures went in and came out and more than a few dancing shoe blisters were painlessly glued over on clubbing nights, thanks to the forces of gravity that dropped sterile supplies upon the OR floor.

That said, how many of you get calls requesting you bring home products of your daily toiling or to perform your work duties for remote aquaintances? Any septic tank service people out there? Strippers? Morticians? Get the idea yet? So, here it is- Fuck off and go get a fun job of your own. Chances are, if you ask me to send you chocolate, its not gonna happen. (If any of you out there in Blogland work for Prada, please call immediately. I think we can make something beautiful happen together.

How The Hell I Fell Into The Coolest Job Ever

Way too many weeks into my “This job market sucks and I am now depressed” period, I took to fighting the anguish with exercise. As I was hauling ass and walking the paws of my dog’s feet raw, I received a phone call from one of the coolest cats on the planet. I did some playing around in the Lillie Belle shop this past summer as an intern and lo/behold, The Dude came-a-callin’ for a little temporary help. Since choking up, weeping and doing the whoopie dance is inappropriate on a public greenway, I did my jumping up and down like a Jack Russell terrier on espresso when I got home. Not only was the call very, very timely from a financial standpoint, but the mental and emotional toll of my completely ridiculous and mostly useless summer internship at the inn was damned near breaking me in half. For saving me from embarrassment once again, I am eternally grateful to my boss.

Temporary or not, I have begun to learn how to make molecules behave, which in turn, makes people moo with delight. Never one for science, I am happily using that part of the brain I applied to physics and physiology in medicine to the world of the cacao bean. Learning a whole new art and science after almost a year and a half out of the work world feels pretty damned good.

The part of me that was a teacher has easily slipped into the student role, slowly remembering how to think critically, get organized, even dance like a fool like I did in the OR. Face it, when the music is THAT loud, your feet and ass can NOT help themselves. For once, my wiggling or dancing about while bellied up to the table is not frowned upon- its actually encouraged and embraced. Part of my chocolate education will most likely involve belly dancing, which was totally not allowed during surgery.

“Just wanted to tell you that you rock, you know that?”

That was texted to me the other night after work by a coworker. Ummmm… What do you say when you realize that you are completely appreciated for what you can do, what you can not but are willing to do and have the potential to do? When I last wrote about this tiny team of people, I touched on their devotion to perfection, to Jeff and each other. What I have found, and shyly I might add, is that their attention and unique affection is a great part of what makes me feel welcome and keeps me coming back every day. Their faith in me gets me up and at ‘em at 0600.

Its not easy to have a newbie underfoot. After a long week, I am sure everyone retreats to their corners and seeks their own kind of sanity and order that soothes them. With patience, humor, time spent explaining- each and every person at the shop puts up with my rookie ass and nudges me forward. Its equally hard to be the orphan in the mix, but the gap narrows a little each day.

As I mentioned before, I am totally grateful for being asked to lend a hand. Not everyone gets to work for a completely insane, talented, hyperactive, creative, ballsy and extremely politically incorrect boss like I do. Being brought up by people who genuinely want me to learn their way and don’t lead me to hang myself is refreshing. There is no competition, just cooperation. There is lunacy and love. There is perfectionism and silliness. There is blatant anarchy and cohesiveness. There is tye dye and Lady Gaga, whether Jeff likes it or not. I am one lucky chick…

Whats It Really Like?

For those of you who are dying to know what its like to work in a chocolate making shop, lemme tell you this- It smells like heaven. Yup, you walk in the door and breathe in a chest full of air that has had chocolate vapor churned into it all night long and something good happens to your brain on a cellular level. Its INSTANT happy. Toasty warm vats of melted dark, milk and white chocolate gently paddle chocolate around 24/7 and the Magic Spout pours a cascade of semiliquid bliss into your waiting bowl on demand. Its kinda ridiculous, actually. A simple, edible bean made into a highly desirable substance of immeasurable proportions. Who woulda thunk it? Let’s all give three cheers to the Mayans, shall we?

It was hard to see all that chocolate going down the drain at first. For those of us that value chocolate as much as life itself, hosing down a 6 quart stainless steel bowl into the sink with an itchy finger for any stray smattering of the good stuff was just about enough to kill me. It was wrong on so many levels to watch as chocolate collided with hot steamy water- the very thing chocolate fears the most, and then watch the brown death spiral at the bottom of the sink carry that remnant of all that is good to the sewer. You get used to it.

Is it good clean fun? Lets just say that my clothes are trashed, I walk out with more birthmarks than when I went in and for once, I am not slightly embarrassed at having brown shit all over my shoes, ’cause for once, it really isn’t shit. Its chocolate. Try not to hate me.

I have learned that this liquid bliss, at 115 degrees, needs to be tempered before it is pretty enough to eat. It has to be shiny, it must snap distictively when it is broken, it must not be broken into cocoa butter streaks and solids like unmixed house paint. There are a few steps to tempering chocolate and once completed, a test smear of chocolate is laid out on marble or the steel table top and checked out as it cools. Its not uncommon for a first test to not look right, but be a slam dunk after a second smear is made. I spent a few days watching the process, mostly done by the tabletop machines, and finally on my day to whip out bacon bars, I got to temper my own batch of chocolate. I had gone through all the steps, added in my droolworthy bacon pieces, let it temper and threw down a splash of chocolate. No good. Splashed again. Not good. Decided to re-temper it. Did my test swipes and still flunked.

Words of a classmate came to mind as I temepered my bacon bar chocolate for the fourth time, “Is there ANYTHING you CAN’T do perfectly???” Well Mike, since you asked…  With a little expert guidance and a hardware change I was finally laying fat, shiny ribbons of bacon laced chocolate into sectioned molds and handing them off to be shaken free of bubbles and then cooled. I really did hate when shit always came out well in school. Not enough went wrong. Sounds crazy, but when the toilet flushes on your project, its a time to learn something valuable.

What Not To Do

As a young, budding pre-diabetic, working in a chocolate shop is probably the dumbest thing I could possibly do, short of becoming a brewmaster or winemaker. The battle between good and evil is not played out on my shoulders like they show in cartoons- its being waged within my pancreas. I do have to say that every morning, I haul my carcass out of bed at 6 AM, do a little smart energy food for breakfast, walk 4 miles with the pooch, pack a very sensible meal and stay off the carbs pretty much for the rest of the day. But then ….at work, my fingers do the walking amongst the goodies and in the name of science (and knowing how these things are supposed to taste) I nibble a goodie or two. Thinking I was safe unless I pounded down three coffee bean ganaches in a row, I thought I had a good system down. Not the case today.

I packed a few tortilla chips in my lunch. I had one or two peanut butter cup rejects off the enrobing line. Then, in the line of duty, I had a Fluffernutter ganache. Like a syringe to the heart, sugar entered my blood stream and kicked the shit out of me the whole way around the block. I hit the wall and fought through the exhaustion that left me wanting to crawl under a 50 lb bag of flaked coconut and die. My bad. My irresponsiblity. Its probably the same rookie mistake that countless other eager chocoholics make. Point taken, it won’t happen again.

To my endocrinologist, who will undoubtedly scold me at my next checkup, I say this:

“Hey Doc, can I send you some chocolate?”