Arsicault

THE. BEST. CROSSIANTS.

How does a bakery, only open for a year, get named as Bon Apetit's best bakery of the year? By having the freshest, flakiest, butter-iest, most delicious croissants you will ever consume.

As I may have mentioned previously, I spent my last semester in London. One of my closest friends was studying in Paris and before visiting,  I looked up lists on lists on lists of the best croissants in Paris, cross-checked, and proceeded to try MANY.  This is a bold statement, but Arsicault tops all of them. Valhrona chocolate almond croissants...i'm just gonna leave that there.

We waited in line for an hour in the brisk San Francisco fog. PSA - we arrived at 8:30, but I would recommend arriving at 7 or 7:30 before it opens. It was totally worth it and I have every intention of doing it all over again. Actually I plan to do exactly that when my roommates visit from Boston. Pro-tip: have one person go to Fifty/Fifty coffee shop and get some banging coffee/hazlenut hot chocolate/fruit tea while the others stay in line. And if you're feeling super adventurous, jump in an uber pool and head over to Dolores Park. I promise they'll still be warm when you get there, but I can't promise that you won't finish them on the way there.

So, I think you all know what you need to do. Run, don't walk. You'll thank me later.

-xoxo-
Kate

(sorry for the lack of pics.. everything was deleted off my phone 😢)

Timothy Adams Chocolate

It all started at 9am on a Friday morning. It was the weekly co-op meeting…this is how all good stories start, right?

But actually, one of the co-ops in our office, Anas, went on a team building excursion to Timothy Adams Chocolatier with the accounting team. As we were all catching up, he mentioned the experience and it immediately went on my bucket list. Luckily for me, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way and we decided to go to celebrate Krista’s 22^nd birthday (whoooo – happy birthday Krista!!!)

So, let me start by saying, THERE ARE TOO MANY CHOCOLATE GIFs.

But that’s ok because who needs words when you have gifs?

So here’s my story:

                                         

If you didn’t capture the general gist of my experience, I’ll provide a little summary. We started by testing all kinds of chocolate starting at 99% and working our way to white chocolate. We probably sampled 10 different chocolates. This was just the beginning. I repeat, 10 chocolates were just the beginning. We moved on to making the ganache. The whole point of creating the ganache was to make truffles. We tore up homemade marshmallows, crushed pecans, and started rolling them in with the chocolate for some Rocky Road truffles. On the other side of the table, they were working on coconut caramel truffles and chocolate on chocolate. Of course, we ate as we went, tried all kinds of specialty coffees (53% TCHO sipping chocolate with hazelnut milk and espresso…omg), and finally had 3 trays full of completed truffles. I’ll be honest, they didn’t look as good as the ones in the case, but they were certainly delicious. I “tried” each one multiple times, because let’s be honest, you’re never really “trying” something when you already had 3. At that point, you (being me) just really desperately want/need?!? it. Sugar is an addiction, folks. Sometimes it gets classified as a need. Anyway, we all ate way too much sugar, had horrible stomach aches, went home with a bag of our creations and an adorable box of the beautiful cased chocolates, and had a fabulous time. I said on multiple occasions that I would be taking at least a week long break from chocolate, but I made the mistake of leaving my chocolates at my office desk. That resolution lasted about 14 hours. Good job me. But, you know, it’s salad right?! 

If you're overwhelmed by these gifs, then you are feeling what I was feeling. Congratulations, you gained all the pain and none of the delicious chocolate upside. I highly recommend buying a chocolate bar right now. You'll thank me later.

-xoxo-
Kate

It's The Little Things (ft. co-op successes)

Today was a big day. I silenced that little intern voice in my head.

It’s so easy to get lost in all of that, “but am I good enough?”, “but do I ACTUALLY have something valuable to say”, chatter that runs rampant. I was watching a video the other day about the value or (lack thereof) of unpaid internships. As someone who has had both paid and unpaid positions, I could jump into that argument at length, but I’ll leave that for another day. The video was supposed to be comedic to prove a point about valuing the work of interns, but I saw a stereotype of the (mostly mythical) interns who only exist to get coffee. As for that argument – I’ll say only this for now, there is a reason that Northeastern requires co-op employers to pay their co-ops (with a few exceptions), but I have gotten great experiences out of unpaid internships as well – it’s completely situational.

Ok, so let’s move on – TODAY WAS A BIG DAY.

I’ve been loving my internship. In a little over a month, I have learned an immense amount and started developing some great relationships, but I hadn’t yet asked for anything. If you’re like me, this is where you cringe and go…”oh dear, where is she going with this?”. It’s ok, stay with me. Today, I asked to learn. Knowing that a particular member of the team focuses on an area that I am very interested in, I approached her and asked to help. This is an area that co-ops aren’t typically involved in, but everyone at the company has constantly reminded both me and the other co-ops to just speak up when we’re interested in something. Even still, I was admittedly nervous. There was that little part of my brain that sighed a breath of relief when she was out of her office and I delayed a day in asking, but bigger than that there was a disappointment in the delayed excitement. Today, I did it. Maybe you’re reading this now and laughing about how silly I was being or maybe you’ve felt this and tomorrow you’ll ask your manager to learn something new. Either way, congratulations, you’ve got this.

So let me leave you with this – the worst thing people can do is say no. I know everyone has told you that a billion times, but it’s so true. Even if a manager can’t use your help, they will remember that you put yourself out there. They will remember your curiosity, excitement, and ambition. For me, it turned out spectacularly and I can’t wait to start learning. It’s the little things. Today, I feel accomplished and let me tell you, it feels great.  

The New Me:

P.S. I think we should make a song about this ft. rap god "co-op successes". It's what all the cool kids are doing. 

P.S.S. On second thought, it should really just be a whole album. Next single out: "eating spaghetti in the workplace without looking like a college kid who can't cook/messy five year old/failure at life". Still working on the song title. Open to suggestions.

-xoxo-

Kate

The Garlic Festival

Honestly, who thinks of going to a garlic festival? Apparently A LOT of people (a little over 82,000 to be *sort of* exact). And me...apparently me.

The Bay Area is full of strange festivals and traditions, particularly in San Francisco, but this garlic festival is an institution. The community of Gilroy hosted the first garlic festival in 1978 expecting 5,000 attendees and over 15,000 showed up. The hype is still there. Trust me, it was packed. Since its inception, the festival has raised more than $10M for local charities, because let's be honest, who doesn't want to eat for a good cause?! 

Day of, Laura, one of my co-workers (and friends - yay co-op!) brilliantly suggested that we get there right as it was opening to miss the traffic. As we were driving in, we could smell the garlic wafting at least a mile out. We parked the car in the designated lot and hopped on the bus to go to the festival. When we were standing in line for tickets I heard some people behind us say that they had waited in line for over an hour last year to just get on the bus from the parking lot (praise Laura). 

Alright, so let's get to the important stuff. GARLIC BREAD. In case you didn't get that, I repeat, GARLIC BREAD. 

There it is in all it's glory. Pretty great, I know. 

Now you might be thinking 

I present to you: Garlic Ice Cream. I'll be the first one to say it - it sounds disgusting. Truthfully though, it was pretty decent. I would give it a 6/10. It had the sweetness at the front end with just a bit of garlic bite at the finish. I don't think I'll be buying a pint of it anytime soon, but count me in for another free cone. 

There were plenty of other things to do at the festival (aka when we got full and needed a breather). We watched some live Chopped-style cook-offs, saw some people competing in a garlic braid race, wandered through many artisan's stands, and bought some cotton candy grapes (yes, they do taste like cotton candy). 

ALSO, this hat. Just thought you should see this. 

If you haven't had enough already, here's a pic of my fellow garlicky co-ops and me:

 And here's a pic of a fire breathing garlic (aka us after we left the festival):

Number 1 regret? I didn't get garlic fries. Don't repeat my mistakes. Always get garlic fries.

All in all, it was a pretty great day. Thanks for the gorgeous sunshine, Cali. Stay weird.

-xoxo-
Kate