Day two!

Didn’t post yesterday because frankly I was too damn tired. First day in classes wasn’t all that hard, but we had a lot of homerwork.

Bad start to the day – I hit the snooze button too many times and missed breakfast. I arrived at Dewey Hall right as most of my group was leaving. Mental note – snooze is evil. 8:30am and we’re in Inventory Management, which is all about making sure there’s stuff to cook. We had to take counts of the walk-ins, get rid of any rotten stuff (week-old chicken, yummy) and then a library research project.

Meat Fabrication had me seriously worried at first – the instructor didn’t really go over the math stuff all that well, but fortunately the chef from Inv Mgmt offered to help us with it. Then we went into the kitchen and learned how to debone pork butt.

I was asked to put up one of our homework questions:

You have to break down a case of chicken into grill portions (one Statler breast and one thigh.) The case of 16 each weighs 56.4# at $.98/#. The breakdown is 25.2# for the portions, 3.6# for the wings, 12.4# for the bones, blood and packaging is 3.2#, drumsticks are 8.0#, and there is 4# of fat. Based on set market values, what is the EP price per pound for the grill portions?

Homework consisted of problems like that, as well as a couple research projects. We also have to maintain a journal for Meat Fab. I tried to do the reading, but ended up fading out too much to comprehend it. I crawled into bed at 11:30, but kept waking up through the night.

Today was a bit better but not by much. We had to show up for class at 6:30am (The O stands for “Ohhhhh my God, it’s early!”), started inventory and receiving of produce, then breakfast at about 8. We then went over the math from last night’s Meat Fab, and talked about our projects. I did Red Peppers, and why they don’t have any taste anymore. Gotta respect the peppers… then we did a salt tasting, and on to Intro to Computers, which is more accurately named “How to use Word and Excel effectively.” In all the excitement, the guy forgot to let us out of there early enough to eat lunch. We got to Dewey Hall and lunch was over. One of the chefs was nice enough to break out some cold cuts and macaroni salad during Meat Fab though. Oh and did I mention all the soda we can drink? Well okay maybe not all… but it’s free.

Meat Fab was more interesting today, but damn did we work our asses off. Went over the math, then broke into groups. I worked with a partner to grind about 75 pounds of beef and pork. We had to set up the grinder, shuffle trays of meat between the work area and the freezer, make sure we stayed within temperature safe zones, and filled out the proper paperwork. The rest of the class was fileting fish, and was done well before 5pm. We weren’t. We were just finishing the grinding at 5:30, then the rest of the class jumped in and helped us package it. We were done around 6pm. I was so beat I skipped dinner and just came home. Luckily, no homework! Grabbed a sandwich and ironed my uniform, packed my books, and I can go to bed early tonight.

Tomorrow is another 6:30am day. Cry…