My First Week of School

Hello Everyone!

I am done with my first week of school, which went by in the blink of an eye. I am now 1/30 done with school. Yay!!

The first real day was more than a little scattered and crazy but the second was a ton better, thanks to Joel and Andrew our Sous Chefs (a randomly assigned rotating position). They really took control and laid out for us exactly what was expected and when it was due. The rest of the week went really well, crazy and fast paced, but well.
This week I learned how to cut vegetables into a zillion crazy shapes. We, as a class made stock, white chicken and brown veal, french onion soup, and chicken and rice soup.

Next week is consommme (which is a stock that is clarified using egg whites, ground meat, and veggies which come together and form a raft which then traps all the impurities). The stock ends up crystal clear and will be part of our Skills I test at the end of our first 3 weeks. Its super complicated and finicky so that will be he hardest part of my test, Im sure.

Last night Dave and Doug (6'7" guy from Iowa in my class) and Caroline (from Minneapolis, by way of Madison) and I went to see Ratatouille and it was awesome! What a funny movie. Tonight we are going to a party at some of my classmates house, and then Sunday we are off to the Gillroy Garlic Festival in Gillroy CA. Hurray!

I love you all tons and thanks for the cards and phone calls of encouragement. It meant a ton during this crazy stressful week (The instructors call week one RUSH week or hell week).
Lots of love and hugs to all

Abby :)

We're employed!

Abby and I interviewed at Dean & Deluca on Tuesday. It's a specialty grocery store chain with a deli and espresso bar. It also sells cookware and kitchen gadgets. We found out that we both got hired today to work in the Cheese and Charcuterie--fitting for two people from Wisconsin. It's a pretty amazing cheese counter. The manager said they usually have about 250 types of cheese at any given time. So we should both be cheese experts by the time we leave. Their website only lists the items you can order online, but you can check it out if you want. The url is www.deandeluca.com Horray for paying rent!

As promised, more Monterey photos.


Here is a jellyfish we saw off the Coast Guard Breakwater.















Here is Abby holding up her tiny pet seal.












This is the jellyfish-inspired art by Dale Chihuly.












The jellyfish tank at the aquarium. I wish I could live here...sigh.













A photo of one of the two mola molas in the blue ocean tank--just for Ann.

Photo of the week (Last Week)

For those of you not fortunate enough to know this man, his name is Bennett Compagno. He is the man behind Compagno's Deli in Monterey, CA. It is impossible to convince anyone who hasn't tried his sandwiches how amazing they are, so I'll just say that Bennett's chicken parmesan sandwich followed by a slice of chocolate peanut butter cake would high in the running for my choice as my final meal.

This photo was taken on the 13th of July when Abby and I went to Monterey for the day so I could show her my old hang-outs from my time at DLI, the military language school I attended there. (And as additional evidence of his greatness, Bennett hooked us up with free passes to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.) We had a great day escaping from our apartment.

We're just about to go to dinner for our 2nd anniversary, but I'll post more pictures from Monterey tomorrow. And I'll get to this week's photo of the week tomorrow or Wed.

We live here now!!

Our new home :)



Here is our kitchen :)












Bedroom














living room












Office

The Link to More photos

The last time I put it in it cut it off so here it is, and you do not need a facebook account to see them. Please let us know if you have any problems viewing them :)
Lots of love
Abby and David

http://uwstout.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=2063294&l=a79a5&id=185101732

This should be all one link when you paste it in. You might need to do it into two parts, Blogspot refuses to wrap the whole link to the next line of text, so it just cuts it off. There is no space after the "?" it just continues on to the aid=206... Hope this works!!

Here is a view out the truck window in Wyoming. The road as you can see is super twisty and we almost died...or so David told me after we were through the mountains.

The cow that you can see above Davids watch was right on the side of the road and other ones were on the road and all over the shoulders.










Here she is...Old Faithful












More of our photos can be seen at:
http://uwstout.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063294&l=a79a5&id=185101732
click on the link, or copy and paste it to your browser

We're Here!!!!

We got to St. Helena on Monday morning and are finally unpacked. Today we are going to go wine tasting , finally and ride our bikes around town. We'll post about the end of our trip in a few days when we get the internet at home. We have lots of funny pictures to share.
Until then- Lots of love,
David and Abby

We’re still alive despite suicidal deer, wildfires, and driving a U-haul through the mountains.

We are currently diving through Nevada, which is having some serious wild fire issues. We can see the fire damage about 500 feet from the highway and the news this morning said that 50,000 acres are on fire. Ick. I feel sorry for the firemen we see in orange suits in the 110 Nevada dessert heat.

Soo we last updated you from South Dakota, since then we drove through Wyoming, and stopped to have dinner with Amy Heikes, who is newly engaged. Congratulations to Amy and Arik, have fun at wedding counseling ;) . We then drove to Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful and the bubbling mud pits, which were super cool. The drive back out of Yellowstone to the little town we were staying (we dumped the u-Haul at the hotel and took my car up into the mountains) took forever and there were some huge deer/antelope on the road who wanted to end it all. As always, Dave did a great job of getting us through safely.

We are hoping that this is our last night in a hotel (7/8) and that tomorrow night we will be in our cute little Napa apartment and then maybe we’ll be in cell phone range and can call and talk to you all!!

Hope everyone is doing well ☺

Abby and David

P.S. There were several spots in Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada when we lost our radio station and hit the seek button, and the radio just scanned through the whole band for 5 or 10 minutes or even longer before it found another radio station. There were people living there and I can't imagine living where there aren't any radio stations. Yikes. Just one of several reasons we don't want to live in any of those states. (No offense, Amy)

Our Adventure thus Far

Everyone -
Yesterday was long one. After coffee (and new shoes) at the Mall of America with E and Lauren, we had lunch with Leigh-anna and then hit the open road. Minnesota and South Dakota are both really boring and flat. Our first sightseeing excursion was to Mitchell SD, for the Corn Palace, which we both thought was a little weak.

We spent the night in the middle-of-nowhere SD and then we hit Wall Drug, The Bad Lands, a Prairie Sod House, the Black Hills, and Mt. Rushmore. It was a fun day of super lame tourist traps, which made Dave and I giggle. The Bad Lands were a lot cooler than either of us thought and we would highly recommend it.
Now we are watching the food channel ( go figure) after a dinner at a local brewery and running around the water slide park at our hotel.

I hope everyone had a great fourth.
Love,
Abby
PS We are doing really well on our no chain dining rule. Yesterday we ate dinner at a family restaurant called the Roll'n pin, and chocolate malts at the frosty king somewhere in SD. Today we had a diner breakfast in Murdo SD, lunch in Wall across from Wall Drug (mmmm indian tacos), 2 chocolate sodas at Wall drug, and dinner at the Fire House Brewery in Rapids City SD.

"The Big Rig"

Hi everyone,
Here is a photo of Abby and me in front our moving truck. Wade took it for us before we left the Twin Cities. Keep in mind that there is a trailer with Abby's car up on it. We've got plenty of pics to post from our trip, but our camera cable is somewhere in a box in the truck, so we'll post those later.
Happy Fourth!
David and Abby