• 7 school days into my culinary career, I wonder how an aromatic sachet of Taco Bell would go over with the inmates. Whip up all the sauces you want, not much beats a soft taco supreme.
• In every class, be it history or PE or whatever, there is that one student that asks unnecessary questions with the regularity of a fine Swiss timepiece. Worse yet is the student that dots the barrage of bad questions with statements of fact that are obvious to all. Now, friends, the students have 9 inch knives with which to rectify all complaints. Butchery class is but a scant 4 weeks away.
• Fish sauce, ALL fish sauce, is horrendous. Horrendous is not a food word, but fish sauce is not a food. Tonight we made a white wine sauce for fish. I taste half a dozen takes, including the chef instructor's. Give me a red pepper coulis, a nice vinagrette or, better yet, nothing but grill marks, a little lemon and pepper.
• Mark my words, I Will Never Work At An Establishment That Serves Tourned Vegetables. Ever. You want a tourned potato? How about me and the boys tourne your face?
• Yes, the education runs a stiff $47k, but we use week-old stocks and boxed wine for sauces. If you were served this swill in a restaurant, you'd send it back.
• We have access to weapons-grade heavy cream that CANNOT BE SCALDED. Seriously. You can lube your engine with the stuff.
• Of the 24 students in my class, only 5 smoke. This has blown my impression of the creative arts as the last rest stop on the road to fashionable nihilism.
• I love Chef Jackson, but his classroom patter (as opposed to skills lab) is about as compelling as white wine sauce for fish. Minus the wine.
• If you had to learn about food safety, you would drink sanitizing solution and learn how to dry saute urinal cakes. The list of microbial and viral possibilities is fucking endless.

All lists aside, I managed a 94 of 100 on yesterday's knife skills test, which I am satisfied with. I went into the test hoping I could just manage the 70 required to pass. Nice.

For good measure, however, I burned the hell out of the first 2 roux mixtures today. I got it together in time to have a reasonable sauce supreme (chicken stock, roux, butter, seasonings). I did complete the fish stock, though it made me nauseous. If someone out there likes white wine sauce with fish stock, speak up. That way we'll all know who to avoid.

Tomorrow is espagnole sauce (brown sauce from brown veal stock), which should be good. More roux to burn, for sure. Just wait until I get a chance to turn hollandaise into scrambled eggs. At some point I will get a feel for the heat the burners put out. For the time being, I burn everything the first time. What I'll do with a true convection oven, I don't know.

You've been a great crowd. Tip your waitress. G'night.