Susanna Gilmore is a small-town girl, and she loves everything about it. Now, she and her sister are going from a public school to an elite private school. Despite feeling like she doesn't belong, she determined to make it.
Chef Marie was leading the class in how to make briouat. Anna was feeling an emotion that she never felt in class before, flustered. She was having a hard time folding the small pastries with her chicken filling. Chef made it look easy in her demonstration to fold the small pastries that she had filled to the brim. She thought about doing a smaller amount of filling like others were doing but that felt like a defeat for her.
"Fuck." She cursed when some of the fillings broke through the seams.
"I think this is the first time I have seen you as human." Jaci teased. She never saw Anna struggle with food.
"You never saw me have to stuff something before." She was never good with fillings. She found that she was always over stuff or under. It would either explode in the oven or when you ate it it was all bread and little filling.
"Here's a tip." The chef came over when she saw Anna didn't have any briouat made yet. "Just put half of what you want at the start and when you fold it makes sure to keep the shape of how big you want it. Then before the last fold, you can put the rest of the filling in." She grabs a strip of phyllo dough to show her.
"Thank you." Jaci was happy with the tip. She nudged her friend.
"Thank you for that. It's a very useful tip." Anna nods. It was a useful tip but she hated that she needed it.
"You're welcome." She went to check on the next station.
"Light up, Anna. You're not going to be a natural at everything." She scolds her friend for acting like a brat.
"If this was my first time, I wouldn't be frustrated but this has been going on for years with hand pies, cream puffs, dumplings." She decided that she didn't need to stuff things.
"Why do you think that is?" She asks.
"I guess I like to overstuff my first time, then on my second try, I put too little. I get so frustrated that I have to take a break then I repeat the cycle." She thought about all her failures as she used the tips that Chef gave her to do her first successful briouat.
"I got to see this might be your first successful stuffing." Jaci watches her make her next one.
"I think so too." Anna looks down at the small pastries.
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Anna and Jaci were eating their pastries during their lunch break at work. "They taste even better because I struggle with them." She ate her chicken briouat.
"They are pretty good." She ate one.
"Yours is good too. The spice is yummy." She ate the cajun shrimp pastry.
"We're living the life. Learning new food every day and getting to stuff ourselves with them." Jaci rubs her full stomach.
"Definitely." She smiled, thinking about how she was living her childhood dreams. "But, I don't know how I'm going to get through the rest of my shift when I'm so full." She wanted to take a nap.
