First two weeks and A slice of Life

Greetings from the world of culinary,

I am aware that some of you have already heard some of the following email in phone/personal conversations but just wanted to keep you all on the same page.

Culinary school is hard work. The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of time management, learning knife skills and just plain exhaustion.When the director of the program said to tell your family and friends you will disappear for 10 weeks I thought she was kidding but nope. It is a constant steep learning curve of change.

I was as excited as I was nervous my first day. I had know idea what to expect other than the fact that my boss at work would be my teacher. All the fears and concerns of going to school again slapped like a violent wave against my nerves. My schedule is as follows....

Tuesday, 8-12, concepts and theories: This is where we learn via book all the things we will be putting into practice later in the week in lab. The past two weeks it has been a pretty enjoyable class. My boss, Jay, is a fun teacher. He has a lot of experience in food service, never a chef though. Before working at HG Hill, he was working with MAPCO gas station on their brand new line of stations where you can order food from the pump. Crazy huh.

Wednesday, 8-12 Safety and Sanitation: This class is nothing like it sounds. Sure we learning about how to clean and sanitize but the teacher is the director of the program so she would prefer to just talk about questions/problems we are having in our school. Last class we spent all but 45 minutes doing just that. We took a quiz, i did not do as well as I had hoped but I think I will do better on the final exam. We are required to pass it because it is a certification exam for the National Certification for Food Safety and Sanitation. If I make above a 92% I can become certified to teach a similar course. Many states require that restaurants have at least one employee is has taken the course.

Thursday, 7-12, Intro to Culinary, LAB: This is kitchen time. The instructor graduated from Culinard in Bham. The first day was on knife skills. Cutting carrots, celery and onions....Do you have trouble with your onion falling apart when you are dicing it...I learned a trick....let me know.

Thursday 1-5, Computer applications: The most frustrating and boring class. Worse than fingernails on chalkboard and other annoying things. The class is learning how to use Microsoft Office among one other software application specifically for culinary. That additional piece of software is why I can not get out of it. The teacher is again my boss. He keeps hinting that it will get better but needless to say it is driving me bonkers for 4 hours.

Friday, 7-12 Intro to Culinary LAB: More kitchen time. this past Friday was a treat. We got to change our plans and make cookies as well as celery and carrot sticks for the local YMCA kids camp.

So this is around 16 hours of school plus I am working at HG Hills Urban Market in downtown Nashville. I work in the deli,bakery and most recently meat department. The store is compact but does pretty good business. Especially when events are going on downtown.

Misc....We have to wear our uniform to all classes and we have to change into our uniforms here at school. So really I have be here around 30 minutes before just to get changed and prepared.

This weekend has been my first opportunity to take a breather from school...I read the last Harry Potter book of course. But it was really good for me to take a step back and realize that I can and am doing this. As crazy and out of control as I feel right now, I am actually learning stuff. Earlier in the week I was not feeling so confident, going back to school is not as easy as I thought it would be.

A Slice of Life...
Yesterday I was privileged enough to visit the ER of my local hospital. I went in to work at 2 and 20 minutes later was leaving because I had sliced my thumb pretty bad. Only skin and a bit of fingernail but deep enough that they wanted a Dr to look at it. I will probably always have a flattened skin area on that side of the thumb. It will take 2-6 weeks for it to heal...I am betting on 7.

I hope you are all doing well and are enjoying your weekend. Now I am about to write a paper on E.Coli. and learn about foods introduced between the period of 0 AD and 1700.

DD