Today I realized I’ve been hiding a lot of cake in my purse. Sorry about that. Cake is way too important to hide in my purse. You’ve met my first-ever apple crumble tart that was as “good as a goose” and you’ve seen the cinnamon meringue with poached plums that saved the day. But I’ve since expanded into sponge territory, and that’s as good as gold in these parts.

Sometimes Rachel refers to our school as “Buttermaloe” — this would definitely be one of those times. A classic sponge, as the British/Irish refer to what we know as just cake, is made with equal parts of butter, sugar and flour — and then you weigh your eggs to match. (Reminder that all ingredients here in Europe are weighed, not thrown haphazardly into cup measures like we do in America. Because that would just be crass.) This sponge therefore becomes a “mother recipe” to many, many other types of cake, with the Victoria sponge likely the most popular. Named after Queen Victoria, her lady-in-waiting was apparently credited with inventing afternoon tea — the Queen often got peckish around four o’clock in the afternoon (perhaps she should have stashed some cake in her purse) — and this cake was one of the Queen’s favorites. It’s as seemingly simple as sandwiching jam (preferably raspberry) and freshly whipped cream in between two layers of said sponge. Although, when you whip and beat everything by hand and make the jam from raspberries from the farm, it’s not actually that simple. I had never made a Victoria sponge before. Never. I know. It’s crazy. But it’s true. This was my first. And after the first bite, my teacher declared, “Now THAT is what we call a damn good cake.” Success.

Possibly even more cliche than the Victoria sponge, the sticky toffee pudding might actually be the national cake of the UK. (Hopefully those reading this are aware that Ireland used to be part of the UK, and some of it still is, and it’s all madness really, but if you don’t know at least that then I really can’t help you.) And because of its prowess, I pretty much decided right from the start that I wouldn’t like it. It’s sticky. It’s mucky brown. It’s not really a pudding. So, it’s just weird. Just ask Hannah, who is a huge fan of anything sticky or caramel or weird, how much I didn’t want to try any. I bet she would have tried to shove some in my purse if the situation arose. So, for pretty much the entire time I lived in London, I never ate it. If I did happen to have a piece, I have blocked it out of my memory. But as fate would have it, I was assigned to make sticky toffee pudding here. If I’m honest, there are lots of good things in sticky toffee pudding — dates, espresso, hot toffee sauce — none of which can be argued with really. So in theory, as a former colleague from Martha Stewart always used to say, it should be a good thing. I just never believed it would be. Then I set my wooden spoon to my heavy-bottomed saucepan and got on with it. That’s when I fell in love with hot toffee sauce. Essentially, you melt butter and sugar over a low heat, simmer for about five minutes, remove it from the heat to stir in a cup of cream and a dash of vanilla, and then simmer for a few more minutes and voila. Hot toffee sauce. It had me at hello.

When I bake birthday cakes for friends and family, as I’m known to do on occasion, carrot cake is one of the most requested. (Yes, I take requests, because life is just so much better that way.) Even my niece Jamie requested it for her birthday this year (and her mum helped me lick the cream-cheese icing bowl). My go-to had been Paula Deen’s recipe up until this point (controversial as she may be, the lady makes a damn good cake), but from now on it will be Mary Jo McMillin’s. Mary Jo runs a catering business in Chicago, she’s wise and kind and you just want to hug her. In fact, I did. Her carrot cake takes two days to make, but dare I say it’s worth it. (And, for the record, you could probably make it in one day if you were organized about it.) Mary Jo was a guest chef for one of our special Saturday lectures (yes, we sometimes go to school on Saturdays, after we eat pizza of course), and since I was assigned to bake carrot cake the following Monday I like to feel the universe played a part in this one. Her carrot cake is layered around a caramel pecan filling and topped with a lemon buttercream icing, breaking the mold of the cream-cheese topped classic. But trust me, you won’t miss it. In fact, I prefer this version — the lemon does something magical to the carrots, and combined with the caramel filling the whole lot is a marriage made in cake heaven. This cake caused quite a stir in my kitchen, with Mary Jo, Darina and Rachel all popping in on occasion to check on it. At one point I swear that Rachel jumped up and down like a school girl, exclaiming how excited she was to taste my cake. That, in and of itself, made the whole thing worthwhile. Any cake that can make the queen of UK baking jump up and down like a school girl is a star in my book. After two days of laboring over this magical cake, staying late after class and coming in early the next morning before class, it was ready. I covered the outside in toasted crushed pecans and the top with sprinkles of dehydrated carrots. I stashed it in the larder, signaled to Rachel that it was finished, and we both jumped like school girls over to see it. I actually never tasted my masterpiece. As the universe worked its magic once again, that day just happened to be the birthday of someone who had worked at the school for more than 25 years. She had lost a close relative on a previous birthday, and had also never had a carrot cake. So, it become her birthday cake. And I honestly can’t think of a better ending to such a labor of love. Happy Birthday, Doreen.

There are some days when you feel like just a dot on the map of the universe. Today was one of those days. In a good way.

While I spend many a weekend night in Ireland enjoying a pint (or two, or maybe three) of Guinness at the local pub, weekend days are for exploring. Today, walking along the insanely gorgeous and verdant Ballycotton Cliffs, on the literal edge of the country looking out over the Irish Sea, I was reminded that the universe is so much bigger than me. And therefore, there are so many places I can go in it. Today, the world felt quite literally like my oyster.

Some days, I’m very preoccupied with figuring out where “home” is. I’ve had many lives. One of my fellow students said to me just yesterday, “How many lives have you had?” Many, I answered. Most days, I’m very thankful for the many beautiful places I’ve lived in, the many beautiful people who’ve come into my life, and the many beautiful experiences I’ve had. But some days, I question my nomadic life and wonder what might be different if I had just settled down in my 20s, bought a house, started a family, and followed the course that many others I know have done. But today, I was thankful that I hadn’t, for I wouldn’t be walking on the edge of the universe, with beautiful friends who have become my Ireland family, on top of beautiful green that stretches for miles, with beautiful water a stone’s throw away from every step, if I had in fact taken the road more traveled. And I might not have been able to look out on the edge of the universe and decide where I go next. Eventually. One day.

Last week, I butchered like a badass.

And it was awesome. That used to be a lamb. Until I got my saw on it.

And I learned that a “chump” is a “rump” as we know it in the U.S. Rump roast, rump steak, rump shaker. (I may have broken out in my awesome American dance moves in the middle of the kitchen when a fellow student put the song on his iPod to humor me. I may have scared the kitchen a bit with said awesome American dance moves.) We butchered from the outside in. First the hooves and the shank, then the neck and shoulder, followed by the leg and the chump (aka rump), then the breast, and then separated the rack from the loin.

The diagram we received during lamb demo day reminded me of the one my dad drew for me when I was about eight years old in the meat department of the ShopRite of our hometown. My dad and I did the grocery shopping on Saturdays together since my mom worked every Saturday, and he likes to take his time (with all things, but especially with buying groceries). One day when we were buying beef, I asked about the cut we were getting. The next thing I knew, he had a pen and paper out and was drawing a cow — with annotations of course. And he had attracted a crowd, as he tends to do whenever he starts talking. That day will always be met with vivid and fond memories in my mind, even all these years later. And I will always be grateful to my parents for teaching me all that they have when it comes to food (and life). They are a huge part of the reason I am here. Living on a farm. In Ireland.

Contrary to my initial attempt at using the saw, you don’t actually need to whack it like you’re on HGTV, but rather stand with one foot in front of the other, using a strong but smooth gliding motion. When I finally got the hang of it, our illustrious teacher, Philip, told me I might have found my calling. He thinks I should open a female butcher shop with my cottage mate, Erin, and call it The Blonde Butchers. Maybe I just might…

This was an emotional week. “They” told us it would hit during week 5, but for me, I guess it came a little earlier.

Because we rarely have time to stop to pee, I rarely think about what I’m actually doing — and all that I’m taking on. So sometimes the universe hits me on the head to remind me. It hit me pretty damn hard on Thursday. Ironically, I started my day before sunrise at the dairy to milk the cows. My first time. And while my initial attempts at squeezing were a bit off at the start (I wrongfully equated the cow’s utter with a similar-looking body part on humans), I picked it up quite quickly and came away with a new friend, Peaches. She was the last cow to milk (and yes, we do use machines to get the milk out but the prep and clean-up is still all done by hand, a gentle one at that), and on her way out of the dairy she stopped, turned her head in my direction, nodded, and carried on. As a good friend said, we had a mooment. It was a blissful beginning to another gorgeous day in Ireland (and no, I’m not being sarcastic). And then I went into the kitchen.

Some days in the kitchen are better than others. There are the days when you finish on time, get very positive feedback and are proud of your work. Then, there are the other days. We start our mornings in the kitchen by 8:30 am at the latest — some days as early as 8 am if there is a lot of prep work to be done. Often we’re up way before then for morning duties — milking the cows, gathering the fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden, making the soup stock, preparing the salad for lunch, etc. There are massive rotas that organize where we need to be every hour of the day and who we’re meant to be with. It’s all quite amazing, if not slightly insane. But, it works. Thursday morning I practically skipped from the dairy to the kitchen, my tummy filled with fresh warm cow’s milk and my arms still smelling of (and slightly covered in) cow poop. Putting on my chef’s whites in the demo room, I stopped to take in the insanely pink sunrise and almost quite literally smell the roses (there are only a few rose bushes outside right now and barely enough petals to decorate our cakes). In the kitchen every morning we cook the recipes that were demonstrated to us the day before. We learn about 20 new recipes a day, plus a variety of techniques that we must complete to the school’s standards before we finish the course. We have technique sheets and grade sheets (each dish is given a mark) and recipe sheets and rota sheets and order of work sheets and binders to hold all of the craziness. It’s all quite mental (a phrase I have happily adopted from one of my cottage mates) and absolutely awesome. When I do stop for five minutes to smell the roses and the fruit tarts blistering in the oven, I can’t even believe how much I’ve learned in just three weeks. And I can’t even believe I’m really here. But once I snap back to reality, I am surrounded by a bustling kitchen with sounds of chopping and peeling and whizzing and whisking and stirring and creaming and rolling and what not. And, a million sheets. On this particular day, my regular teacher (we rotate teachers and partners each week) was called away to another duty, so my group had a sub. My game was thrown, as they say. An important lesson for me if I ever work in a professional kitchen one day — we come to get used to a specific style and order of things and it can change in an instant. Cue the beginning of a comedy of errors that was my kitchen morning, from a chicken-jointing massacre to squashed sweet potatoes to my middle finger sliced and covered in blood from a slippery mango and me in the cafe with my head between my knees, holding my hand higher than my heart to stop the bleeding. It was that kind of day. Despite the insanity of it all, I did manage to finish all of my dishes and was quite proud of them, even if my substitute teacher did not agree. To me, getting back in the game, keeping calm, and finishing with my head up was the victory.

I reckon that my exhaustion, oncoming cold (in full swing right now) and a slight case of “what happens when I leave here” all played into the disaster that was Thursday. But I was absolutely floored by the compassion and camaraderie of my classmates — feeding me orange slices (perfectly segmented, I might add) to keep me from fainting, staying late after demo to give me a pep talk about my meringue, and taking a long walk in the freezing cold to the local pub to buy me a Guinness to wash away the day, among other random (or not so random) acts of kindness. Spending all of these years in “Corporate America” have jaded me, sadly. I honestly forgot what it was like to work in an environment when we are seriously and truly all in this together. And the power of that, in and of itself, is absolutely amazing. (And a bit mental.)

Needless to say, I survived Thursday and the remainder of the week. My finger is healing, my water canteen is full of my teacher’s magic concoction for curing a cold quickly, and my cottage mate brought me a lemon from the petrol station this morning, which nearly melted my heart. I might be a tad more fragile than usual these few days, but my new friend, Peaches, and I have a lot more ground (or should I say, grass) to cover over the next few months. And no matter what anyone says, I’m still pretty damn proud of my meringue.

I just love Irish expressions. I can’t get enough of them, if I’m honest. The other day, my teacher said no less than 12 times that I was as “good as a goose” during my kitchen work. I was flattered. But I was perhaps even more flattered when I took this bubbling hot, ooey gooey crispy Crunchy Apple Crumble Tart out of the oven, plated a big fat slice for him paired with a dollop of fresh whipped cream and he said, “You must be quite happy with it — I am.” Happiness.

If an apple tart and an apple crumble had a baby, this would be it. In all my years making tart after tart after tart (or as some would say lovingly, taaaaaht), I never thought to marry the two. Genius. (Or as the Irish would say, Grand.) The unmistakeable crunch of the chopped almonds and the sweetness of the vanilla sugar in the crumble topping elevated what was an already solid apple filling and shortcrust pastry bottom to a new level. I don’t usually wax this poetic about a tart (OK, maybe I do, sometimes), but the high you get when you create something magical like this in the middle of a busy kitchen with pans sizzling, saucepans steaming, and whisks bashing around in metal blows is pretty intense. And then when your teacher takes one bite and agrees, success.

It was dark when my plane touched down at Shannon airport, so I couldn’t see that I would be landing in what could quite possibly be the smallest airport I have ever been in. Not exactly how I pictured the grand entrance to my new life.

As I sat at the Atlantic Coffee Co. on the other side of the Atlantic, inside the airport waiting for my bus to Cork, I counted 1 coffee shop, 1 newsstand, 6 rental car stands, 2 strands of Christmas garland with glittering lights, 1 green “meeting point” sign and, well, that’s about it. Quite different from my days landing at Heathrow, fresh off a posh ride, glancing around for Victoria Beckham, tummy happy with the hot cinnamon buns served at breakfast, clad in my London travel outfit: A long gray cashmere sweater, black leggings, black high boots, lavender pashmina, and Mulberry purse — the purse that has come with me everywhere. Quite different to those Heathrow days, but not necessarily better or worse. Just different.

On January 1st, I packed up my purse, I bought some new boots, and I started my new life. It feels weird to say it, and I’m not sure how long it will take me to get used to it. To saying it and to it being true. My job of six years ended on December 31. I’ve challenged myself not to think about what I’ve left behind but rather what I am taking with me from it all. A life in London and trips all over the world; my Godson and his mom; a year in a San Francisco start-up rent-a-desk dungeon that smelled like onions and engineers; monkeys outside my hotel window in South Africa; the smells of Chelsea Market wafting up from below my cube; proper Thanksgiving dinners with all of my coworkers; teaching the Brits about Thanksgiving (and sidewalks and buckets and nuggets and how you might ping someone); the day we pressed the LIVE button on ulive.com, the day we pressed the goodnight button on fineliving.com; a salted-caramel apple pie lesson from the ladies of Four and Twenty Blackbirds with one of my favorite ladies on the International team; countless laughs from one often-inappropriate mustached video guru in Knoxville; lots of wise yoga quotes that kept me going on the tough days; breakfast burritos on Leather Lane with my London ladies; shopping at Liberty with my Canadian partner in fashion crime; a New Zealand/British family of cheery faces that I will meet up with around the world for the rest of my life; baumkuchen from Japan; sticky bun emergencies; show tunes, lots and lots of show tunes; baking with my favorite five-year old; 800 photo galley captions about bedrooms; the night at the Mexican restaurant in the Meatpacking District that started it all; brisket in my purse; learning lots of things about China, sharing office supplies with my cube-mate from Maine; running in Hyde Park with a marathoner; my first treacle tart, my first Scotch Egg, and tons of London Jack flags; creating the best peanut butter frosting I have ever tasted in a bakery basement in London during the riots; a life-changing trip to Dublin; white boards full of funny quotes and priceless memories; Alec Baldwin’s hair; baking scones in the SF office kitchen, eating hot paratha in the UK office kitchen; a Hackday win (that sadly went nowhere); Cupcake Week, Cupcake Week Part Deux, and more cupcakes; teaching my baking protege how to use a piping bag and watching her skills explode (in a good way) in the kitchen; new friends, helping hands, loving hearts and all that sappy jazz… and more. So much more. 

And so I’m starting a new life filled with cows and pigs and chickens and things, on a farm, in Ireland, where I cook every day and plan what’s next. One week in and I already can’t imagine a future without cooking in it. Of all the journeys I’ve been on in my life, I think I’m most excited about this one.