harvest dinner, crepes, and the bummer of breakfast

this last week i was in the 2nd quarter kitchen. past 1st quarter students have gotten to break down chickens and trim meat. last week was 2Q's breakfsat rotation. it wasa a lame week to be in there since so much of breakfast is a la minute, so prep is pretty minimal. the fist day, i peeled some cooked potatoes, shredded them and then sat around for hours - huge drag. after the first day, jenny joined me in 2Q kitchen, which always adds to my enjoyment. we got to make crepes on thursday - all day. it was so fun. we (jenny, josephine (whose "real" name is beth - only people in culinary school know her as josephine - how odd is that?) kerry, kim and i) all got to make crepes for friday's blintzes. what a blast. my first opportunity to cook!! despite only being able to flip a few perfectly, it was the fastest 3+ hours of school yet.

last night was harvest dinner - it's a huge fundraiser for the program and i volunteered to help. along with about half of the class. it was about 90 degrees in the atrium as we were setting up - didn't it occur to anyone (after 14 years of doing this) to make sure the h-vac system wasn't shut off for the weekend? (no, actually, it didn't.) so it was hot, and we were all clad in miserably unflattering tuxedo shirts and bowties. and i thought the chef's uniform was a lesson in humility. the most annoying part of the night (aside from the mutterer sitting behind me during the debrief) was the 5th Q students. they're all in charge of stations and generally tasked with making sure everything runs smoothly. my lead was very sweet - and only 20. she did fine, but planning isn't yet natural to her. our station gear was set up in the hall between the atrium and the room where the guests had appetizers and learned about our sustainability program. since it was exposed, mr. dillard (duke of dining) asked us to set up on the fly between the mingle and dinner. as such, we didn't really have a chance to make sure we were properly stocked. when we took inventory of our wine, glasses, etc - it became clear that we were missing more than 50% of what we needed. i trotted around to the other stations to pillage what i could. the other 5Q students were *(overly) protective of their bounty and i found i had to beg, borrow and steal from them just to get what we needed. it was annoying and unnecessary. don't they all work in restaurants? do sauciers horde plates from entremetiers? seriously - do they? it just all seemed terribly small picture.

once service began there were far too many rules (serve from left, ladies first, use a guard while pouring, etc) and too many people directing traffic. fortunately the bevy of bodies became a boon (sorry - wine makes me alliterative) at the end when we all got the room clean in less than 30 minutes. all the students (and most of the chefs) headed to Bill's Off Broadway - a dive bar - for the after party. i got to spend some quality time with some of my classmates. nothing like a little bud to loosen the lips of strangers - it was very fun.

next week i start back in 2Q kitchen and then spend a week in the dining room bussing tables. someday i bet i'll use my knives. they're sharp and ready.

hep-A, fractions, hot pots and a whole lot of brunoise

this past week i wasn't in the kitchen at all. it was my stocking & pot washing rotation. really, it wasn't that bad - mostly because i bonded with another classmate...without jenny, the entire week would have been much longer, and much less amusing.

the stocking of pots is kind of fun. you get to walk around the kitchen and put clean things away. it's kind of zen - doesn't take much skill to stack newly clean things on top of already clean ones. you also get to organize things to some extent, which is satisfying. those first 2 days a woman named jennifer was unloading the dishwasher. she's not a student, and she's somehow not all there, but her hands are made of asbestos - that woman can handle molten steel without a flinch. unfortunately, she also has a chronically runny nose, which disturbed everyone else in the room - clean dishes plus dirty nose...what would cynthia (sanitation instructor) say? the nose was bad enough, but at the end of day 2 i came into the dish ring to see not only the contents of her nose, but also a pickle, clutched firmly in her left hand. why that pickle put me over the edge i can't say, but it was really the final straw. luckily for us all, she was not in thursday or friday.

pot washing (yesterday and thursday) is the gross job. yesterday must have been very hectic because there were not only tons of pots, but also lots of burned on food. one pot was totally carbonized. cindy (duchess of the dishroom, supplies and food ordering) gave me some kind of toxic cleaner to get the stuff off. hard to know just how to feel about that. thursday there was no hot water in our 1st Quarter kitchen, so at the end of the day jenny and i were lugging our 30 QT stock pot (ringed with a fresh, thick layer of chicken fat) down to the ring to clean it. she came in yesterday with quite a memento...a constellation of fat across her shirt, happily baked on from the dryer. mark my words - it will be all the rage in 3rd quarter.

last week was all about knife skills. lots of small dice and brunoise. i think my cuts are good, but definitely not fast enough. next week i'll be in the 2nd quarter kitchen, assisting. hopefully i'll get a chance to improve my speed and maintain some precision. it was hard to be out of the kitchen for a whole week. jenny and i came back into the room after 4 hours of grossness to see our fellow students breaking down chickens. we felt bitterly cheated. i'm sure we'll get our chance too, but at the time, it was pretty hard not to indulge in a little self-pity.

i got a hepatitis-A shot on wednesday. seemed like a good idea. the oddest part was the release form. they ask you a bunch of questions designed - i guess - to make sure you haven't had any reactions in the past from vaccines. they asked things such as - after a shot have you ever experienced the following: dry mouth, extreme soreness, shortness of breath, convulsions (whoa, what?) seizures, (um...no - is this a concern?) and the best - high pitched crying. wtf?? spontaneous high pitched crying sounds comically terrifying. fortunately - my crying has remained at normal timbre.

personality-wise, my class is very interesting. there are several very young people, some much older than i am, and some i haven't spent much time with yet since we've all been on different shifts. there is definitely some fodder for drama - but since it seems likely that at some point people from class could read this, i won't go into any gossip. suffice it to say that there's no one i really dislike, there are a couple of total nut jobs, and it will be really interesting to see how all the psychology works out. i love not being super young...juanita and i were talking about how nice it is to be able to keep emotional distance. it's so striking for me because i've always struggled with it. not that i've been terrifically challenged yet, but so far - it's been fairly easy to keep from feeling overly dumb/attacked/lesser etc - the usual. i probably ask too many questions, and i probably participate too much...but whatever. i made my chef laugh yesterday. i brought in an article about heirloom turkeys and jenny, chef, juanita and i were all talking about factory farming. he was telling us that commercial turkeys have been so genetically modified that they can't even reproduce naturally. how gross is that? i made some comment about them all being bred to be stacked and he cracked up.

math rocks. my professor wrote "terrific" on my homework - i'm such a math dork! i can't believe i'm actually taking the class, but it's fun - my math ego hasn't been stroked since 3rd grade - which, actually, is about the level of math we're working at right now. i'll take it.

so that's the week in review. 6am comes very early ever day, but it's not nearly the struggle to get up that it used to be for work. it's wild to wake up every day and feel promise. i hope it stays that way.