Two Months In

I can hardly believe October is almost over -- which means I have 2 months of culinary school under my belt. It feels good to be deep into it. I am enjoying all of it. And I want more.

Next weekend is our class dinner and we've been busy preparing, testing, and more preparing. The buffet dinner is a showcase to what we have learned so far in our classes, and also is an assignment of organization. It's not all about cooking. Anyone can be a "good cook", but when it comes down to it, a chef must endear many more qualities than just talent in the kitchen.

I love it. The challenge. One of the things I have learned is that many of my classmates do not have the attention to detail that I do. It is frustrating, but at the same time -- it will be what puts me in the next level of my career. I have found that we all have different levels of passion, dedication, and skill. And of course, there is the biggest differences: age and maturity.

Tonight, I am working the front of the house for another class dinner. A first for this girl -- I have never waited tables before. I am excited, slightly nervous, but mostly excited. The patrons who come to our restaurant are there because they know we are learning and love to hear about us, talk to us, and of course -- enjoy the food!

More updates to come -- I will have to tell you of all the fantastic things I am learning!

Ciao!

Orange

It's been way too long, my friends, way too long. I haven't posted, I haven't seen you, and I just plain miss you all.

Many of you already know that my Grammie Coral passed away on Sunday October 3rd after a tough battle with breast cancer. She was one tough cookie, make no mistake, but God decided it was her time to let go of all the pain. At 3:15 pm she was gone.

I can't help but tell you that October 3rd was my birthday, and I suppose it still is. Many people have said they are sorry, or feel bad that it was my birthday. But the way I look at it is that God answers prayers when you least expect it -- and God knew we all wanted her to be pain free. I am grateful I will always remember this day, it was a blessing for her more than anything. She waited until J and I arrived with Milton and passed away quietly as she slept.

It was a surreal week as I spent most of it with my family, reminiscing about the good ole days and all the values Grammie had taught us. Grammie Coral was a beautiful woman who was married to a debonaire Gino once upon a time. After Gmpa Gino passed away in 1979, she started spending much more time at her cottage. It was there in the 1980s that she was courted by Milton, who came to be my 2nd Grandpa. What a blessing to have 2 loves in her life!!

My memories of Grammie include spending time in her house in Detroit, imagining I was a movie star sitting at her vanity. I loved how big her bathroom was -- it just made me feel like a princess. When we would get there, my first mission would to be to find out what kind of candy she had in her glass jars in the kitchen. Sometimes butterscotch discs, sometimes peppermint candies, and even circus peanuts!

Grammie always let me play dress up with her clothes, one item I remember in particular was a pink frilly short robe that had velure swirls all over it. Years later, my cousin also played dress up with the same robe. I remember all the brightly colored robes, clothes and muu muus she had in her closet at the cottage. I loved how she used to like all the bright colors.

Memories of Grammie and those bright colors is what makes my favorite color orange. She is what inspired my 1970s colored decor at my old place. She is what is inspires me to keep living in color. She may be gone, but memories of her and her influence will last forever.

Every year on my birthday I will now light those candles on my cake (or pumpkin pie, actually) and think of Grammie. I love you, I miss you, I am glad you are whole once again.

Whirlwind

Whirlwind is the perfect word to describe the past few weeks. School started, my job ended, and I had family in town. A wonderful whirlwind it's been!

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE going to culinary school!! I am having a ball in the kitchen and learning new techniques, history, and the science of cooking. Each chapter I read (it's about 4 so far in each book - so about 8) I find something fascinating or find myself saying, "Oh, that's why!"

Last week was our first week cooking -- besides the play dough we made the first week of school. Yes, I made mine orange and it was to practice our knife cuts. I am a little ahead of the game since I learned some knife skills at the restaurant, but I tell you the larger the dice the harder it is for me. I guess I am into the small detailed work. We also practice on potatoes and carrots. Carrots are difficult to cut (people cut themselves on carrots quite a bit), but since I cut about 4 lbs of carrots into brunoise over the summer -- I am pretty much used to it.

Sandwiches are the first project we worked on because they may use many pieces of kitchen equipment such as the grill, stovetop, oven, mandoline, deepfryer, etc. My team made a Pan Bagnet sandwich that contained tunafish with capers and green onions -- topped with thinly sliced tomatoes, red onions, and roasted red and green pepper. It turned out really good -- which surprised me since I am not really a tuna fan right now. The next day my team made french fries -- they were super yummy!! Nothing like fresh french fries in fresh oil! Mmmmm...

In my Pro Cook class we have to have our meal prepped and ready to go for "family meal". Yes, we get to eat our classwork. :) Our teams talk about what we made and then enjoy! Cleanup time is next -- we all participate in this and my class is really good about keeping up with the work.

Baking is similar style -- we have to have our items baked off and ready to go for roundtable. Then we get a bag we can fill with baked goods to take home. Yes, BF is very excited about this part! Last week my teammate and I made Spicy Banana Bread, Morning Glory Muffins (with carrots, apples, raisins, pecans), and southwest Corn Muffins (with cheddar cheese and red peppers). Other groups made gingerbread, poppy seed bread, sour cream muffins, blueberry muffins, cheddar bacon muffins, and streusel topped muffins. All this in about 2 hours!!

I have 3 tests this week already and I am nervous! I know I will do ok, but I am not sure how the test styles are going to be. Once I get through the first one I should be good to go.

I will fill you in on more adventures later, but until then -- bon appetit!

Our first wine dinner...

Last Friday we hosted our first wine dinner at the restaurant with a special guest speaker, a wine maker from France. It was a fantastic evening to say the least!

Team effort was the theme in the kitchen. We had 52 guests that needed to be fed and everything needed to go smoothly. We rearranged the kitchen so we could have an assembly line for plating. We sent out dishes in groups by table: two 10s, one 8 and two 12s.

The amuse-bouche was a deep fried won ton wrapper in the shape of a cone and filled with lavender delice and topped with fresh lavender.

We also made hors d'oeuvres for the event. We had mini wild rice pancakes topped with a small slice of lavender roasted duck breast, a dot of lavender jelly, and garnished with fresh parsley. Also available were poached shrimp with louie sauce in a mini phyllo cup and egg salad with truffle oil atop a crostini and garnished with a fresh truffle slice.

We started out the first course with a sea scallop on a bed of sauteed local veggies topped with ginger wasabi dressing in a scallop shell. The shell rested on a bed of kale and we placed 3 dots of roux on the plate. The second course was roasted quail with couscous salad along with a pheasant sausage, sauteed veggies, and lobster mushrooms.

Third course was mixed greens tossed in our house fig vinaigrette with 2 wedges of fresh figs, a slice of bermuda triangle and a slice of manchego. Last, but certainly not least was the dessert course: a mini blueberry cobbler with house made vanilla bean ice cream, a mini quatro de leche cake with caramel, whipped cream and a raspberry, and a mini chocolate cup with a dot of de leche caramel underneath the chocolate mousse, and topped with sea salt, whipped cream and a marcona almond.

YUM.

Yes, this all sounds delish -- and it was! Let's see....4 courses, 52 guests -- we put out over 200 plates of food that night! WOW!! When we were done plating, Lady Chef and all the kitchen staff were invited out to the restaurant to be introduced. The applause was overwhelming and I thought I was going to cry! It was an amazing and proud moment that I will remember for a lifetime. Lady Chef introduced everyone -- I was first and so nervous, but so proud! This was such a team effort for all of us -- we all made it happen and put on our best.

These kind of nights are the ones that will make me miss the crew. Only 2 more weeks.

Mise en Place

Books -- check. Chef coats, pants, aprons and hats -- check. Knife and baking kit -- check. Excitement for my first lab classes that start on Monday -- CHECK, CHECK, CHECK!! WAHOO!!

Even though I officially started culinary school in January, it truly isn't real until you get your whites. I am excited, nervous, open-minded and thrilled to be starting my lab classes. This is where the fun begins!

Monday and Wednesday from 4:30 to 8:30 will be my Intro to Baking class. Chef Lucy is my instructor that I had last semester for Menu Planning. I didn't want to take night classes, but I wanted to take Chef Lucy's class. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice a little to get what you want. Just flipping through the text book gets me excited, and somewhat hungry, of course. Looks like there are a lot of breads, danishes, muffins, cookies, cakes, icings, (must I go on? ...ok I will), ganache, tarts, brownies, pies, ice cream, mousse, and petits fours I will need to make. Oh darn. Hee hee.

Professional Cookery is going to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 am to 2pm - I am so happy to have this as a day class! Pro Cook, as it is called on campus, will teach the basics of working in a professional kitchen from equipment to recipe writing to proper technique to plate presentation. I could go on for hours about what is in our text for this class, but I will tell you I am mostly excited about learning how to properly prep and cook meat, poultry and fish. This is one thing I wish I would have learned at the restaurant this summer -- things just got too busy for us for Lady Chef to teach me. But hey, that's what I am going to culinary school for!

Friday is my "boring but important" class - Safety and Sanitation. I took a mini test at work, so I am pretty familiar with it -- the class will just be more of the same. Since I am a clean freak, I think I will not have a problem with this class!

Can't wait!!!!

I love parties!

I love to plan parties, host parties, and cook for parties. Getting together for the simple reason of celebrating life is enough for me to start planning. So when Lady Chef asked me if I wanted to help her cater an event -- without hesitation, I said, "YES!".

Last night I participated in my first catering event and I loved it! Sometimes I can't believe I get paid to do what I do. Really. Truly. The event was a two hour fundraiser in a private home on Lake Michigan for about 40 people.

I arrived at the restaurant about 11:30 am to discover the store was really busy. I was afraid Lady Chef wasn't going to make our deadline it was so busy. I started by making cookie dough, (which we both knew should have been made ahead, but so be it) then onto making crostini, and even made mini twice baked new potatoes. YUM. Lady Chef worked on lamb chops, roasted duck and passionfruit mango slaw. Our newest cook (lets call her Protege') helped out with grating vegetables, baking brownies, and making phyllo cups.

We prepped all we could then, with the help of a few of the servers and dishwashers, we packed up the van and off we went! It was not a far drive, thank goodness, and I also found out we would be working in the basement - score! It was extremely hot and humid last night, I swear we would have melted on the main floor! Anyway, we had plenty of room to work with -- it was a full kitchen in the basement that was larger than our entire house! Lady Chef's husband (Winespert), our bartender, and one of our servers worked the party upstairs. They said it was really hot and they were wiped out by the end of the night! I suppose it was our little treat for the summer since we are used to working in a hot kitchen and they get the cool dining room. :)

Crunch time arrives! I started by working on assembling mini BLT's (YUM!), then cucumber and radish mini sandwiches (YUM!) then baked chocolate espresso cookies (YUM, YUM!). Lady Chef worked on the lamb, twice baked potatoes, shrimp, hummus and cheese plates. Protege' garnished the cheese filled phyllo cups, helped me with assembly of sandwiches and put all the brownies in cups. After each assembly we would arrange on trays and place a garnish in the center. Plating is one of my favorite things to do, so I was really enjoying myself. Protege' also did a great job and I am really grateful Lady Chef picked her to work with us. She kept telling us we had "attention to detail" and I joked and said, "you make it sound like a condition". Haha. She said "Well, it really is and a good one to have!"

As quickly as we started, we packed up, cleaned up and were out the door! We made sure to thank the hosts and headed back to the restaurant. After just a few minutes of unpacking we headed home.

Shower, feet up, glass of chilled wine. Ahhhhh.

I don't want to rush it, but.....

Summer. It flees by so quickly, doesn't it? I can't believe I only have 5 more weekends of work at the restaurant. I have mixed feelings about it, but I know it's what I need to do - more importantly - WANT to do. I love working there, but the 40 minute drive in the winter is really, really tough. Not to mention, BF and I haven't had any chances to have a full weekend to ourselves in almost a year. We've been fortunate to have the days we've had and it's been wonderful.

Starting the last weekend in August, I will officially be a full time student. I haven't been there for YEARS, in fact, the only time I didn't work while going to school was my first year in college at the age of 17!! Because I like to do things different, the last time I went to school full time I was also working full time - NO social life, just work and school. But I loved it! (Yes, that's the nerd in me alright!)

Of course I need to shake it up a bit and be different again. Full time school and the only "job" I will have is my home based business, which I truly don't consider work. The only thing that I am not so thrilled with is that I have 1 class that is twice a week at night. The upside is (because that's the way I roll) -- I took it because I wanted to have Chef Lucy as an instructor. I really liked her class last semester and I am really hoping to learn more from her. She is so enthusiastic about teaching and it really makes it fun to come to class. Well, I suppose my enthusiasm for learning helps too.

I went up to school yesterday and tried on the chef's jacket and pants to pick out my sizes. Putting on that jacket really made me feel awesome and VERY excited to begin my classes!! I also have to buy a knife and baking kit which has basically every tool I will need for the 2 years of training. It's pretty pricey, but not really when you consider everything that is in it. I might swap out some of the items with my personal stash - but then again, I don't want anything to get "lifted" if you know what I mean.

Lady Chef was joking around the other day about wanting to see report cards too -- she really has taught me some valuable lessons about working in a kitchen. My confidence level in the kitchen has really gone up too, and especially since she started giving me more responsibilities. I basically work as a sous chef during my shift and also as a fill in where ever I am needed. I make lists for everyone before they come into work so they know exactly what they need to do when they get there. You would be surprised how much direction some people need, although maybe you wouldn't. I keep everyone on task (Lady Chef says I am really good at this) and make sure we are all ready to go and all the staff has eaten by 6pm when the first reservation arrives. It's a logistical challenge, but such a rush!

Speaking of rush, I had better get moving! I have a few errands to run on my way to work and I want to be sure to arrive in a timely manner - who knows what adventures are in store for me tonight!