June 15th - Meat Fabrication Sucks

I am having all kinds of problems with Meat Fab. Inventory Management, I get it. It’s mostly counting stuff in the walk-ins, which CAN be tough if you don’t know what you’re counting. Chicken sometimes looks like pork when it’s frozen, I couldn’t identify some of the herbs, and fish, well… it’s fish. We’re also expected to clean up any spilled juice, and throw away anything that’s past its prime.

And then there’s Meat Fab. Today for example we’re shown a diagram of a side of beef, all the primals (main sections) are labeled. Then there are Sub-Primals, which are what the primals are made into, then from there you get cuts, and finally portion cuts. For example, Rib -> Ribeye Roll -> Delmonico Steak, or Chuck -> Outside Chuck -> Blade Roast -> Top Blade Steak. In theory, it’s simple. When it gets down to the muscle areas – proas major (tenderloin), Longissimus Dorsi, Trapezeus, etc. – these can be cut into sections. So the Meat Buyer’s Guide shows a cut, and we’re asked “how can you tell that this is a view from the Sirloin side?” The way to tell is how large the tenderloin is, but I had a lot of trouble finding it among the other muscles. I just get completely frustrated at it. After class today, a few of us went to tutoring where we worked on math problems and the student tutor went over the sections of the beef. I still don’t completely get it but I’m not giving up.

For my Inventory Management oral presentation in two weeks, I decided to get in touch with a pepper grower in Vermont (organic farming) to find out differences between peppers, what they are used for, etc.

We also had our first class on Sanitation today. It’s only about an hour long, and today all we did was take a quiz to find out what we already knew. It was mostly common sense, but there were quite a few questions on proper cooking and reheat temperatures, which I am not familiar with.

I actually have some downtime tonight, and there are no classes tomorrow until 1pm (Meat Fab!) I plan on getting some sleep and reading up on beef while I do laundry tomorrow morning. The weekend is supposed to be nice weather, so with luck I can ride up to Stowe to visit a pepper farm.