The world shall be saved by cookies, part 1

So I just so happen to be one of those awesome people that is blessedly friends with a pastry chef.  Not just any pastry chef.  Not some token kid trying to play fun at spun sugar, laminated dough or trying to imitate those pretty creations they see in a Whole Foods dessert display case (guilty) with their pastry certificate from a community college.  No, I am friends with Stella Parks.  Who is Stella Parks you may wonder?  Well, if you would like to know a little about her, please allow me to point you in the direction of Food and Wine magazine's May 2012 issue where she is listed as one of America's Best New Pastry Chefs.  Oh, and it just so happens that this is the first list of "Best New..." lists F&W has made just for pastry chefs.  You know... no big deal :)

My meeting of Stella is basically what can only be described as social networking at its very best.  Remember my ranting about how obsessed my brother and I were on the mystical world of macarons?  Well, this intense desire to go above and beyond the amateur world of baking actually began way before he and I decided that one activity that must take place before we headed out on our Summer of 2011 Road Trip was trying our hand at these elusive French sandwich cookies.  (Doesn't calling them sandwich cookies seem to degrading and rude?)  Before he flew out to lovely Phoenix, we agreed to combine forces with our mutual food blog and recipe site expertise and decide one recipe each that we thought sounded the most stable and well written.  He arrived.  We discussed our plans and... you know where this is going, don't you?  In all the 100's if not 1000's of websites, recipes and silly quibblings and ramblins on macarons in the blogsphere, we had landed on the same recipe.  The one and only, BraveTart, aka Stella Parks.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  At this point, Miss Parks was still very much BraveTart and just a seemingly awesome and well versed chef with a cool website.

Jump ahead to lots of macaron experimentation, months and a summer later.  I got a Twitter account.  Not really for any particular reason but being that I am a 20-something and have a Facebook, shouldn't I also round out my personality in the social networking prison world and get a Twitter handle as well?  Why the hell not!  It seemed only natural that the first people I should start following would be all my favorite celebrity chefs, authors, actors, comedians, blah blah, you know what I'm talking about.  By some magical twist of fate, I just stumbled on the BraveTart whilst dicking around on Twitter one day.  When I began following her I felt it only right to mention in a personal Tweet to her how much I enjoyed her website and how she had sparked a mutual obsession and love for macaron making between my brother and myself.  To my great amazement and excitement, she responded.  She thanked me for my compliment and was happy that I had gotten into macarons.

Yet another fast forward.  Feeling a little ambitious, I start testing the waters and sending little Tweets to who I realized was quickly becoming my new kitchen super hero about my latest baking projects asking for tips, tricks and recipes.  Then came the prodigal return home for Christmas break.  I was finally going to escape the desert hell hole and return to the lovely midwest, family, and of course copious amounts of weight lifting (have I mentioned yet that I do that? - I do.  A lot.) and coffee drinking with my brother.  Then, an idea struck.  Now was the moment.  I decided to send BraveTart a Tweet asking if by any crack ass chance she would be willing to let two of her biggest fans come into her "pastry dungeon" as she calls it, to watch her in action.  I really don't know what I was thinking.  In hindsight, could I have been put on creeper status any more hardcore?  Seriously... I'm pretty sure all previous experience with logic and social skills were not with with me when I send that send button.  Later that day, whilst on an eliptical machine at the gym I got a... yes.  Wait... what??  YOU MEAN WE CAN COME???  I flipped my lid so hard that I honest to God almost fell off my cardio machine, no joke.  I immediate forgot all about my workout and informed him of why no matter what he got for Christmas that year, it would pale in comparison to the awesome event that I had just secured for us.  We were going to Lexington's lovely restaurant, Table 310, to meet our cyber chef hero, The BraveTart.

I feel like this post is giving way to extreme length so to preserve some interest in my ramblings I think it best to break this story into parts.  The next installment is soon to come!!

p.s. I think I'm starting to like blogging.

p.p.s. I still kinda suck at it.

p.p.p.s. In the words of Julie Powell: "Is anybody reading this?"