Doughnuts!

Today, we basically made a whole ton of breads again. xP I can't even remember what they were all called. One was Pain De Something-nobody-in-the-class-could-pronounce. Campagne, I think. Pain De Campagne. Is that like Campaign? I really don't know. >.< Then there was also sourdough, french rye, annnndddd.... ummmm... Oh yeah! Soda Bread. xP Needless to say, I did not need the lunch I brought today.

Anyway, we finished early so then we made doughtnuts! Yay!



Raw and then in the fryer. xD We only had sugar to put on them but it was nummy. :)

Tomorrow instead of Garde Manger, we are having a class to get our liquor licenses. Shouldn't be too exciting. :P

Sauces

Lots of sauces. We made hollandaise... alfredo... bechamel... Then we talked about sauces. *blink*
I think second term will be more exciting. xD

At least the Hollandaise and Alfredo were me-friendly. I avoided the bechamel... I'm just so sick of trying that chicken stock every time we make something with it. It tastes like hell to me! >.<

Oh, for homework, as well as reading/taking notes on two more chapters, we have to make a stinkin' family tree for all the sauces that branch off the the 5 mother sauces (Allemande, Béchamel, Espagnole, Velouté, and Tomato.) There are quite a lot of them and we need to memorize them in the next two weeks. ;-;

Well, I'm sure I'll survive. xD Need to get my memory skills in gear!!

TV night tonight. Baking day tomorrow. =)

Penguin Suit

Service hurt. Badly! It didn't help that I had already slept on my shoulder oddly so it was in pain to begin with. Anyway, I had to lift those realllyyy heavy trays over and over again with lots of plates on them to bring out starters, salads, and then the entrees. *sigh*

Today is the day after and I've been on a constant stream of aspirin, which is taking probably 1/4th-half of the pain away. I also had a migraine last night... and headaches all day today.. I think it's coming from all the stress in my shoulders. I know this is all just whining, but I really don't have anything positive to say about being front of the house. Back of the house is good because it is experience in the field you're going to be working in. But... waitressing? Really? The school charges so I can hurt my shoulders and put on an overly friendly personality that I can barely pull off? I love the rest of my classes... I love cooking and learning about all the things that I feel a passion for. But I really can't wait until second term so I don't have to deal with customer service anymore! I don't see the benefit there!! Well, if I'm lucky, I'll be back of house 3 times, and front of house just 3 more times this term. And maybe they will be buffets so I wont have to lift the trays! xP Yeah. I'd definitely have a better attitude about this if it weren't taking so long to recover from it. xD

Anyhow, I am having a nice weekend in spite of it. I don't have any homework, because really we didn't get much! I finished the little we did get during the week! hehehe
Spent most of the day today with Patrick, which is always nice even though he was sleepy today. We bought snacks, played Sims 3 and watched nerdy television. <3 Tomorrow is reserved for cookies and playing around some more with my adorably small laptop that came today! And possibly more recovering. Jeez, I feel so old. :/

Sushi Day!

Yays for sushi makins! I had a lot of fun today. xD My class is getting more familiar with each other and I'm definitely feeling comfier, so yeah, it's pretty neat.

Anyways! Today in Garde Manger, obviously we made sushi. When we were done we got to practice presenting it whichever way we felt like. So I got to feel special by making sauce swirlies on a plate. hehe xD

My first rolls turned out freakin' awful and I ended up trashing it because it didn't stay together! My second roll held together but still looked awful. Then my third roll turned out super cute and held together perfectly. :) This is the first plate me and my teammate, Jen, made. My usual team person was sick today.



Those were made with my little sushis, and I came up with the nori x's under there cause x's are cool. xD Actually I did the sauce on this one as well... it's a bit globby but it was my first time so that's okay!! hehe

Oh, here's another one we did.

Heh. The sauce pattern was my idea, we each did two. The ginger under the sushis was Jens idea. Unfortunately the middle one has rice on the outside and is totally tipping over! hahaha Good thing this is our first term. ^_^


Here's one of some of the other presentations. Jen made the one on the bottom right corner and upper left corner while I was running around taking pictures like a crazy person. :)

MOAR PICCYS! The first one has an awesome carrot flower, the second one is like a sushi tower that I was seriously worried was going to fall over, and the third is the table my sushis were on again. :) I'm trying to avoid pictures where you can see my classmates faces too well, seeing as how this is the interwebs and I'm not about to bother asking permission to everyone. xP



So, tomorrow I have to take lunch out to a bunch of seriously old ladies who have made donations to CCI... I DON'T WANNA DO CUSTOMER SERVICE! BLAH!!! Wish me luck. xD

Tiiirrreeeddd

The more days off you have, the harder it is...
But that's okay... because I still <3 days off. :)

Today, we made lots of bread!
BEHOLD!


That's our Banana Nut Bread in front. There weren't any loaf pans left so it is cute and round like a cake. :)
Back there are Baguettes. which I think turned out underdone, but someone else was in charge of watching the oven so WHATEVS. xD Oh, and those are just more soft rolls on the side, there. They looked really small and round today because we weren't supposed to braid them this time. So, they don't get as much spotlight as the other things. Pooooor little soft rolls.

The rectangle thing is Focaccia, which was really pretty so it has it's own pic.


So nice! I brought home half of that and most of it was gone within ten minutes. xD

Good news is I don't really have homework. The quizzes in blackboard are screwing up and confusing everyone so we just have to redo the quizzes... that I already have all the right answers to...

Now I am going to go to the library, get some books, and pretend I don't have to wake up early again tomorrow.

Weeeekeennnddd!

I've been having an awesomely relaxing weekend! There are still two days to go and I'm just amazed at how much free time I've gotten. xD The only bad thing that happened was my computer totally died earlier today. >.< If it doesn't start up again, then I've lost a few pics, and a ton of music as well as episodes of House and Avatar that I hadn't watched yet!! -_- Luckily most of the pictures I had on my comp are posted here or on facebook but there's this really adorable one of Patrick that I'll never see again. :C

By the way, since this is a foody type of blog, the point of this post is food-related! Just thought I'd ramble about me some first. :) Tonight I got to use my newly developing chopping skeelz to cut up a bunch of veggies to turn into a deliciioouusss potato chowder! Paired with that, I made the soft rolls from class at home, so now I have an actual picture to post. :D

So, here they are! My cute not-so-little braided soft rolls! :) And here's my piece that I obviously chose with my eyes instead of stomach, alongside the chowder.
Quality is pretty bad on this one because on the camera screen it looks better without flash, but then ya put it up and it turns out completely opposite! xP

MLK day on Monday so I'll post after Baking on Tuesday.

Dining Room Service

Well, that was actually pretty fun.

Like I said, I got in the back of the house group... so I ended up on beverages team which had to be the most relaxing team there. xD It was just me and another girl, Angie, pouring coffee and making arnold palmers for an hour or two. Before lunch started, we just sat around polishing silverware. Then after lunch service, we got to eat the leftovers and there was some awesome gnocchi and ravioli! ^_^ So, yeah. Good day.

I feel pretty exhausted... this is day 7 out of 8. However, all I have to do tomorrow is wake up sometime before 1 and take the ServSafe exam. Then I get a three day weekend! WOO!! TIME OFF! OMG!

Gonna go see Heath Ledger's lastest ever movie today. ;-;

Pasta!

So, I got distracted yesterday and forgot to post...

Yesterday was Garde Manger, and we got to make pasta. Which was pretty weird, I guess. You have to roll the dough through the machine like a billion times before it's flat enough to use. xP
Anyways, it was fun because I got to dice up and cook some of the vegetables for the filling for the ravioli we turned it into. We also made two soups that are apparently supposed to be our lunch today. So, I was really happy because one of the soups was a carrot ginger, and it called for vegetable broth! ...But we don't have vegetable broth so we used the ucky chicken. ;-;
Ohhh, well, at least the ravioli and marinara sauce were still good.

Today is Dining Room, which means it's service day... never done this before so I don't know how it'll go. Half of us are front of the house, who I guess have to refill drink orders for old people who came to the buffet or something like that. Then luckily this week I am back of the house. So, I don't know if we are making fresh food or heating up the food we've made this week, but I will soon find out!

Wish me luck.

Bread Bakin'

I am SO sad that I forgot my camera this morning! We made these adorable biscuits, sweet rolls and baguettes today, and I can't even show anyone! ;-; However, we should be doing more rolls next week, and I will definitely remember my camera!!

I was pretty proud of myself because we got to practice making knots and braids out of the sweet rolls. I made a triple braided one that looked something like this, only shorter and without the stuff on top.


That's just a random image I got from google, but it does look pretty close to what I did. :)

Before we got into everything, things were kind of hard for me this morning. We got paired off and there were only 15 of us there today... Being the quiet one pretty much guarantees that the worst will happen and you'll be the odd one out. It's not that I'm totally silent or anything like that, either. I'm just not as loud as everyone else. xP But the group I ended up with turned out good because one of the girls wasn't very great at the whole teamwork thing so the other girl wanted to work with me more, meaning I've got my partner for the term. So... Hah. Seriously, though, we'd try to talk about something before doing it and she would just be rushing ahead! Yeesh. Inconsiderate! lol

Oh, yeah, Culinary Club was held today, as it is every Tuesday. We just talked more about the Pasta Buffet we will be holding on the 29th. I decided that I'm definitely going to participate in the club, even if I don't end up getting enough money for the trip. The extra experience is still something I want to have. :)

Chef Julian seems to be kind of a badass. xD He was demonstrating weighing the doughs out to equal portions and it turns out the scale was broken (really, most of the non-digitals were pretty crappy) so it was messing him up. So, instead of just setting it aside and grabbing a new one, he full-out picked it up and chucked it across the kitchen! Hehehe. Those things are pretty clunky so it made quite a satisfying *THUD* when it landed. :)

Yep. Baking class is fun.

Blegh!

Overall, today was pretty fun. We chopped up some more mirepoix for the stocks we were going to taste that day, then we chopped up some zucchinis, which are apparently called courgettes everywhere else. Because we're special like that. Then we got to julienne the hell out of some onions. xP And you know what? I still have all of my fingers in tact! Go me!

The only part that sucked for me, was the tasting. I really had to man up for this. The first one we tasted was... BABY COW!! ;-; ("Veal") which, actually, turned out to be the best one.
Best, meaning, I could taste the tomatoes and mirepoix and focus on that more than the meat. Barely. Actually, it was a demi glace(demi gloss,) meaning it had been simmered and reduced by half, so I guess it wasn't really a stock? The reason why the chickens were so much harder, was because there was a LOT of fat in there. Chef Thor said we needed to keep it in for flavor, but... I don't know many people who nom on chicken fat when they're craving snacks.

The second stock, and first of the chicken stocks we tasted was a "Brown Chicken Stock." It's called that because they roast the bones before making a stock out of it, which makes the color darker and the flavor bolder. The other one was your typical homemade chicken stock, lighter color and flavor. (If anyone doesn't know how stock is made, as far as I understand it.. they basically throw the bones of a certain animal into a pot of boiling water, sometimes leaving the meat on, add mirepoix, and then the flavor/fat/marrow gets boiled out of everything, then it's strained. If it's a veggie stock, then only veggies are used, obviously.) Luckily I didn't feel so lame during the tasting of these, because everyone in my area seemed to agree that the fat that coats your mouth/lips after tasting this was more than a little unpleasant.

Well, at least if I weren't sure about being pescatarian before (I was xP) I am now. This day did not make me miss a thing.

Anyway, I knew what I was signing up for, so I don't make a huge fuss if I can help it. In class, I mean. I can fuss all I want here! :D
Still, I can't help but think about not only the animal, but what could've *happened* to the animal, when we make a dish like that. Which is good. I really don't know where the school gets their meat from. I'd probably feel a little better if it was all happy little animals. That are then shot. lol

Now, we did do something awesome with the onions. We caramelized them! Yay! They were so cute. They smelled awesome and were tasty. I took a piccy of the tasting cups we were using, as well as the adorable onions in there that I ate. xD



Might've been a better pic, but I felt weird taking the camera out in class to snap a pic of onions! xD So, yeah. That's them. And my chopping board with bits of zucchini left on it.

"Hey! Psst! Look at that girl over there..."
"What... what is she doing?"
"...taking pictures of onions? In a cup?"
"...frreeeaaaaak."

Dining Room Day 1 ... didn't happen.

I feel that I need to take a moment to express my appreciation for ice today. My class was scheduled for 9:45 today and the ice ended up canceling all classes before 10AM. YAY ICE DAY!!! hehe

Okay, so I was actually looking forward to seeing what this class was all about, but seeing as how it is out of my control... I will enjoy this day off as best I can. :D Now, instead of going 12 days straight, I got 3 days, break, 8 days, break. :)

So far I've been productive enough to finish up my Hot Foods reading assignments. I also just got done with the equipment checklist quiz... I got a 17/20. D: Two of the questions were fill in the blanks, with 3 blanks each you had to fill, and I was only wrong on one thing with each but it still counts as wrong. WAAHHHH!! D: Oh, well, there is always extra credit to make up for things like that. At least, hopefully there will be. Anyway, I'm actually pretty happy about it because it was all from memory, and usually my memory tends to crap out on me if I've only heard something once. Now the only homework I've got is 3 chapters in Baking and 1 in Garde Manger. :)

Plans for the rest of the day... Hmmm let's see. Eat yummy food, laze around, watch videos online, and probably watch Dr. Horrible (thank you, wonderful boyfriend xD) downstairs on the big screen. ^_^

Tomorrow is Basic Sanitation, 12:45-3:15. So, that will be really good... I get to wear my normal clothes which will be awesome. Unfortunately Saturday and Sunday are also BS days but they are from 8:30-3:30. If I do update during the weekend it will probably only be to whine about how boring it is... unless the teacher is fun or something, then it might not be so bad. Anywhosles. That's all for today!

Garde Manger Day 1

Out early!! :D

Today totally kicked yesterdays ass. Yeah, we still didn't do... well, anything, really. But it was fun! Chef Jules teaches this class as well as tomorrow's class. It's nice having a female instructor for half of the week. :) One of the cool things about her is that she is a CCI graduate. That is pretty damn inspiring to hear from someone who has personally succeeded in life after going through this program! Since Chef Julian started the program, she has known him for a while so it will be interesting to hear the stories she has got. >:D

Hmmm... today, basically, we watched a few food related things on youtube ("Grocery Store Wars." It was painful) until around 9:30, then had a 10 minute break, met up in the south sisters room (long room with lots of tables, I think we use it for our Thursday lunches) and pretty much just talked until she let us out around 11. Played a tell-us-stuff-about-yourself game that didn't suck and then got to ask questions and just chat. It has been three days and the room has already gone from cricket-chirping to a whole chorus of noise whenever the instructor isn't instructing. I definitely am feeling more comfortable with everyone, which is good seeing as how I'll be around them for a year or so! xP

Next Wednesday will actually be doing things, and it will be awesome. We are going to be making pasta and practicing the skillful massacring of onions and potatoes. =)

We got some interesting homework at the end of class. Either we can eat at a local restaurant and pretty much write a one page review of it, or we can go to one of the kitchen stores in town and list 10 items we are clueless about. Seeing as how I am broke, I'll probably take the cheap way out. xD Sounds like fun though. The only other thing for this week is to read Chapter 1. Way easier than the other classes so far that want us to read 3 chapters each this week. It seems I'm a big note-taker so this takes FOREVER. :P
Ugh, I also have to do an equipment checklist quiz for baking. Yuck. >:P

But! Guess what I get to do tomorrow!? Sleep in! I think Dining Room may become my favorite class as it starts at 9:45. ^-^

So, what do with the huge amount of time left in my day? :) I know that later today Patrick is supposed to take me to see Up In the Air, a movie about George Clooney and that chick who is Bella's unimportant-to-the-story friend in Twilight. They are on a plane and do... stuff.... and things.... Should be fun!! Until then... you guessed it! Lounging!!! ...Okay, maybe some homework as well. ;)

Tomorrow! ...well, I already told you. Dining Room day 1!

"Baking" Day 1

Okay... now I've calmed down a bit, I can write about today. *ahem* Woke up at 6:50. Stayed in bed for two minutes. Dragged myself away from the comfiest place on earth. Skipped breakfast because I had coffee and yesterday I was barely even hungry by lunch. HUGE mistake!! Why? I forgot my lunchy. ;-; So I was fine through lunch but started getting shaky around the last hour of class. >.< Remember your lunch, kids....

On to class! Ummm... well, we learned about equipment. Seems Chef Julian got stuck with the job of telling us the boring stuff, so we didn't end up touching any food. Chef Julian is fun, though. He is British so it is easier to pay attention to him when he speaks. xD

I think you have to have a violent streak to be a cook, because yesterday Chef Thor mentioned how all the chefs that act like Gordon Ramsey does aren't around anymore because they are chopped up in dumpsters somewhere. Today, Chef Julian said we need to take the guy who invented the silly paper chef hats out back and shoot him. ^-^

Anyhow. We spent the first half traipsing the kitchen, learning where everything is and how it functions and how to not look like an idiot when it breaks down and you need to fix it. Unfortunately during the second half, someone had to go and mention how we don't know each others names because we never introduced ourselves.... (if anyone deserves to be shot... hehe) so we did the whole stand up and tell us why you are here thing and then Chef Julian spent about an hour(maybe more) listing off his entire culinary history. He has worked in a ton of different countries. It's pretty ridiculous.

Why is it that I can feel alright and prepared, then stand up and say everything perfectly fine only to sit down and have to calm my nerves for 5 minutes anyway? Does anyone know this?
Screw public speaking.

Anyways, the first week is always going to be the hardest, right? Right now I feel like I can just barely survive the days... haven't thought much about homework yet. This will absolutely HAVE to get easier when Basic Sanitation(BS) is over and I will have a regular weekend to look forward to... Jeez. This is what I want to do. Stop doubting.
I've had my lunchables now and I am feeling more optimistic by the minute. :D

Oh, yeah, there was a meeting for the Culinary Club today. They do fund raisers and go on really cool trips if they get enough money. I'm not entirely sure if I want to do this or not yet though... I think I'd rather go on a trip with people I <3, you know?

Hmmm. That's it for now. Tomorrow is Garde Manger (guard-mon-je, only say it like you are pretentious and french) day. Hopefully it will be fun and have a nice instructor. Maybe we'll even get to work with food?

Hot Foods Day 1

I have survived! With minimal injury, even!

So, luckily my fear of "get to know each other" games was unnecessary. Skipped right over that after the syllabus and then headed to the kitchen where we chopped and chopped some more. Apparently chopping is what will be in store next week, as well.
Oh, and my HF Chef's name is Thor. Which is pretty awesome.

We were preparing "Mirepoix"(meer-ee-pwah!) which is basically a fancy word for diced veggies that will be used for stock. Two onions, two carrots, 3 celery, chop chop chop chop chop. This is where the injury comes in. I forgot to keep my silly thumb outta the way so I sliced it deepish. Bled through 3 bandages and fell behind on my chopping a little bit. It still hurts to touch but it did eventually stop bleeding. :D
Mummy thumb! I was the first person to slice myself, but as soon as I left the sink I was replaced by another. And there was one girl who cut her forefinger AND thumb.
Oh, the joys of learning knife skills!

Anyways, it is a good thing food network is around because I don't remember Chef Thor telling us the whole "extension of your hand" proper way to hold a knife. Could be that my exhausted state caused me to gloss over that part though. But it did seem easier that way so I'm glad I know about it. xD

Oh, I also learned about food guilds and a handful of important people in foody history. And Chef Thor met Julia Childs once! AWESOME. Unfortunately she was old and senile when he met her. Not so awesome. I guess my classmates are okay. Haven't exactly gotten to know anyone... a lot more people who appear over 25 which I didn't expect. One person who lets their mouth hang gaping open like a weirdo. Zero nerds as far as I can tell. ;-;

Ugh.... not enough sleep. Tonight I will be able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour and wake up with enough time to eat a real brekky. Seriously.

In store for tomorrow! Baking with Chef Julian Darwin, who is also the Culinary Adviser so I know I don't have to worry about whether or not the baking instructor is a jerk, which is nice.

Welcome!

It is the 2nd day of the new year today, and I am passing time until my first day of CCI begins on the 4th. I haven't been one to maintain a real diary/journal/whatchamacall it, simply because life is much too full of things and I never know what to focus on. Today that will change. This blog will focus mainly on my culinary school experiences, however I will post whatever the heck I feel like whenever I feel like it as well. :D

Since this is mostly for me and I have no clue if anyone will read this, I don't feel like I'll need to censor my thoughts. If I wanna have a cooking-related meltdown in text form, well, I'll do that and you can deal with it!!

Anyways... I just got done posing for pictures in my new uniform. It is a roomy outfit... maybe they expect us all to fill it out by the time school is over. :O Not gonna happen!! >.< This is my first blog and I'm seeing that there doesn't appear to be a section for photos, so I will put any pictures I want in my blog posts. Like that over there. ^^^

Oh, here is something cooking relatedish to start out with!! The other night, Misha, Johnny, and myself all watched a movie I've been wanting to see for a while now: Julie and Julia. It was absolutely adorable! In fact, it was the inspiration for me starting this blog! Julie is sooo cute, and Julia was freakin' hilarious. Whenever me and my friends get mail, or really anything remotely exciting happens, we will have to exclaim "OooOooo! OooHOOO!!!" just like her! xD

My first couple of weeks will be hectic, but I will force myself to write after my first day at each class. Due to the co-requisite of Basic Sanitation, I will be going to class for 12 days straight starting on the 4th!! ;-; I will have to endure around 19 hours (split among 4 days) of...*dun dun duuunnnn*.... FOOD SAFETY LECTURE. NOOOOOOO!!!!

Yep. See "you" on Monday after Hot Foods day numero uno!