Yeah, yeah...

I know it’s been a week since the last update. The first week of any class is sorta tough, even though for the most part I have easy classes this time.

First off, at 7am is Cooking Theory. We’re in a prep kitchen for 7 hours learning the “how’s” and “why’s” of cooking. All the stuff we did in AM Cafeteria last class, now we can learn WHY we did those things. Not just “make a valoute and do it fast and make 400 gallons of it because we have 500 people coming!” (and then you find out that only 20 show up, but that’s another story) but now we have the time to learn why we do it that way. We’re not just following recipes, but learning why we use things in proportion to each other. Some of this stuff, like making a roux, I have done before, but it’s nice to know a) that I’ve been doing it right, and b) why we do it the way we do it. Monday is the only day we have to prepare breakfast and lunch for anyone, but at least it’s 20 people at the most (far cry from 200!) The other four days we are mostly prepping ingredients for other classes (making 4 trays of a mirepoix is considered practicing knife skills) or making stuff that we then throw away. For example, we’ll make three different versions of a chicken stock to show which way works better. We’ll experiment with different ways to thicken veloute, either with a roux or a beurre manie (berr man-ye, cold butter rolled into flour.)

After Cooking Basics, on Monday we have Sanitation again, still leading up to that hallowed ServSafe Exam.

Tuesdays and Thursdays we have Intro to Nutrition, which talks about what happens to food after we eat it. (Besides the obvious trip to the “library” a few hour later.) As a diabetic, this is of great interest to me, as I need to watch my carb intake. Oddly enough, we spend 45 minutes of the last class on alcohol consumption (talking about it, not actually doing it) and the rest of the class on 5 or 6 other things. College students and priorities…

On Wednesday and Friday, we have Communications. This is sort of a continuation to the Professional Development class we had last, in that it shows us how to research an Internship site and how to write a good cover letter. Stress is going 2 b on propr speling and grammer. Im a shoo-in.