Actually, 4 days. Or 20 hours.
I've been reviewing some of my old posts. It's incredible how far I've come. The following is from "59 Weeks and Counting" last Feb.
"Friday was our first around the hotline, two twenty foot rows of burners, making stock. Chicken stock, fish stock. My partner for the stock exercise was one of the students that after the first week tends to end up in the weeds before anything has really happened in the kitchen. A fine kid, yes, but struggling with the technique and lexicon more than the rest of us. The end result was me soloing the stocks and talking him through the steps." -He is still a little behind the pace, but he really is a great kid, and he's landed a nice externship, so he's gonna be fine.
"This is an aggressive education. Though I'm not working during the day right now, I still end up sleeping until 9 or 10 each morning. What is going to happen when I get a job, something I will need in fairly short order as the wallet thins out? Stay tuned, kids." - What happened? Well, let's see...I sleep about 5 hours a night, eat whenever and probably drink more than I should. I'd say I'm a mess. Actually, I've been better the last two weeks, but through the three weeks of Careme, my liver was wondering what the fuck was going on.
"I'd like to thank Mom's spaghetti sauce for giving me a goal, Dad's scrambled eggs for showing me that cooking with an equal part butter will better any dish, Meredith for repeatedly asking me what I wanted to do, and Dale for paying bills during what had better be a brief interim." - Well, it wasn't that brief of an interim, Mom's bolognese became Perry's recipe while I was there, I still can't make scrambled eggs quite like Dad. As for Meredith, I'd thank her if she'd let me.
Knee deep in Banquets and Catering, knee deep in boredom. I can crunch numbers and riff pretend menus all day, but it doesn't do much for me. We did have a buffet tonight for the class, in which everyone brought in a dish (most of them anyway, I didn't have time to put anything together), and we went over table set ups then sat down and ate.
The highlight of B&C so far was last week's trip to the Anchor Steam brewery. What that has to do with banquets and catering, I don't know, but we got a :30 tour around the facilities and then settled down at an on-site bar to do tasting of the 6 beers they produce. Tasting. You think 1 or 2 ounces, right? Nope. 8 ounce glasses. The better (or worse) half of the class wandered back to school for lecture after consuming 48 ounces of beer in about a half hour. To say that the last few hours of class were unproductive would be like calling the atom bomb a firecracker. I would never complain about such a thing, though it occurs to me that the instructor might be better served by handing us a case of beer and telling us to go home. At any rate, getting loaded on CCA time was a nice change of pace.
Here's another old post to revisit: "Today felt like our first day of real cooking. We had to prepare two sauces, an espangole and a demi glace, and potato leek soup (the sauces were perfect, as I have nailed my routine on roux, and the soup was tasty if a little thick)." - Holy crap. If all i had to do in three hours was two sauces and a soup, especially the sauces we did that day, I'd have been able to get a cup of coffee and go home twenty minutes into class. Those were the days, man.
"There is no way to work clean when up to your shoulders in spent cow bones and compost-ready vegetable matter. You walk away from stock team looking not only like a butcher, but like a butcher that was pulled through a 6 inch diameter sewage pipe. As the kicker, everything you own now smells like beef stew. Enjoy." - I'm still a bit of a slob with the uniform, something I will need to get over quickly. Working fine dining while looking like a homeless guy that's been dumpster diving behind a Taco Bell ain't gonna fly for long.
"Add to that picture, reader, the second cut I put on my left hand back on Monday and a couple nice looking burns that I profited from forgetting the physics of heat transmission. Ignoring pain while working the hotline is critical, but that will be examined with a later post." - Ah, yes, when I could count the number of scars I had without a calculator. Even if you take away the big scar, my dream of being a hand model is OVER.
This is fun, let's do another: "I guess this really is a sort of trade school: some poor slob got a 17 out of 50 on the food science final. Ouch. Pal, you dropped almost $50k to learn this shit. Open a book, huh?" - That guy is still around, and he's a class favorite, and he's working. He's a stud.
"What doesn't kill me: between week-old, room temperature stocks, buffet steam tables that haven't been changed in three hours, and all the raw egg products I've tasted, I am building up some serious immunities to food borne illness." - Actually, CCA food safety standards are spectacular, especially compared to everywhere else I have been. People, the next time you have a stomach ache after going out to eat, you know why. That chicken breast you devoured was probably at room temperature for a good 4 hours before it hit a pan. Cheers.
"I think I left that rosetta stone around here somewhere: Chef tends to interchange "t" on the recipe board for both teaspoon and tablespoon. Trust me, there's a big difference." - What's funny about that is I haven't carried a tablespoon or teaspoon measurer with me in about 8 months. Everything is experience and eyeballing. In fact, Zach and I were outside the other night and we heard the clink-clank marching of new students, freshman, with their full sets of measuring cups. Put those things away until you get to Baking and Pastry, kid. You are better off without them, we said. They looked confused.
That was nice. Being out of here will be nicer, however. I don't think I've posted anything about my pending externship, which will take place in Houston. Yep, Houston. More on that later.
G'night.
I've been reviewing some of my old posts. It's incredible how far I've come. The following is from "59 Weeks and Counting" last Feb.
"Friday was our first around the hotline, two twenty foot rows of burners, making stock. Chicken stock, fish stock. My partner for the stock exercise was one of the students that after the first week tends to end up in the weeds before anything has really happened in the kitchen. A fine kid, yes, but struggling with the technique and lexicon more than the rest of us. The end result was me soloing the stocks and talking him through the steps." -He is still a little behind the pace, but he really is a great kid, and he's landed a nice externship, so he's gonna be fine.
"This is an aggressive education. Though I'm not working during the day right now, I still end up sleeping until 9 or 10 each morning. What is going to happen when I get a job, something I will need in fairly short order as the wallet thins out? Stay tuned, kids." - What happened? Well, let's see...I sleep about 5 hours a night, eat whenever and probably drink more than I should. I'd say I'm a mess. Actually, I've been better the last two weeks, but through the three weeks of Careme, my liver was wondering what the fuck was going on.
"I'd like to thank Mom's spaghetti sauce for giving me a goal, Dad's scrambled eggs for showing me that cooking with an equal part butter will better any dish, Meredith for repeatedly asking me what I wanted to do, and Dale for paying bills during what had better be a brief interim." - Well, it wasn't that brief of an interim, Mom's bolognese became Perry's recipe while I was there, I still can't make scrambled eggs quite like Dad. As for Meredith, I'd thank her if she'd let me.
Knee deep in Banquets and Catering, knee deep in boredom. I can crunch numbers and riff pretend menus all day, but it doesn't do much for me. We did have a buffet tonight for the class, in which everyone brought in a dish (most of them anyway, I didn't have time to put anything together), and we went over table set ups then sat down and ate.
The highlight of B&C so far was last week's trip to the Anchor Steam brewery. What that has to do with banquets and catering, I don't know, but we got a :30 tour around the facilities and then settled down at an on-site bar to do tasting of the 6 beers they produce. Tasting. You think 1 or 2 ounces, right? Nope. 8 ounce glasses. The better (or worse) half of the class wandered back to school for lecture after consuming 48 ounces of beer in about a half hour. To say that the last few hours of class were unproductive would be like calling the atom bomb a firecracker. I would never complain about such a thing, though it occurs to me that the instructor might be better served by handing us a case of beer and telling us to go home. At any rate, getting loaded on CCA time was a nice change of pace.
Here's another old post to revisit: "Today felt like our first day of real cooking. We had to prepare two sauces, an espangole and a demi glace, and potato leek soup (the sauces were perfect, as I have nailed my routine on roux, and the soup was tasty if a little thick)." - Holy crap. If all i had to do in three hours was two sauces and a soup, especially the sauces we did that day, I'd have been able to get a cup of coffee and go home twenty minutes into class. Those were the days, man.
"There is no way to work clean when up to your shoulders in spent cow bones and compost-ready vegetable matter. You walk away from stock team looking not only like a butcher, but like a butcher that was pulled through a 6 inch diameter sewage pipe. As the kicker, everything you own now smells like beef stew. Enjoy." - I'm still a bit of a slob with the uniform, something I will need to get over quickly. Working fine dining while looking like a homeless guy that's been dumpster diving behind a Taco Bell ain't gonna fly for long.
"Add to that picture, reader, the second cut I put on my left hand back on Monday and a couple nice looking burns that I profited from forgetting the physics of heat transmission. Ignoring pain while working the hotline is critical, but that will be examined with a later post." - Ah, yes, when I could count the number of scars I had without a calculator. Even if you take away the big scar, my dream of being a hand model is OVER.
This is fun, let's do another: "I guess this really is a sort of trade school: some poor slob got a 17 out of 50 on the food science final. Ouch. Pal, you dropped almost $50k to learn this shit. Open a book, huh?" - That guy is still around, and he's a class favorite, and he's working. He's a stud.
"What doesn't kill me: between week-old, room temperature stocks, buffet steam tables that haven't been changed in three hours, and all the raw egg products I've tasted, I am building up some serious immunities to food borne illness." - Actually, CCA food safety standards are spectacular, especially compared to everywhere else I have been. People, the next time you have a stomach ache after going out to eat, you know why. That chicken breast you devoured was probably at room temperature for a good 4 hours before it hit a pan. Cheers.
"I think I left that rosetta stone around here somewhere: Chef tends to interchange "t" on the recipe board for both teaspoon and tablespoon. Trust me, there's a big difference." - What's funny about that is I haven't carried a tablespoon or teaspoon measurer with me in about 8 months. Everything is experience and eyeballing. In fact, Zach and I were outside the other night and we heard the clink-clank marching of new students, freshman, with their full sets of measuring cups. Put those things away until you get to Baking and Pastry, kid. You are better off without them, we said. They looked confused.
That was nice. Being out of here will be nicer, however. I don't think I've posted anything about my pending externship, which will take place in Houston. Yep, Houston. More on that later.
G'night.
