CULA-confidential

Big, fat worry wart

That's me. Final practicals in basic food prep were last night. I got an A. My first batch of mayo did fail to thrive but my second batch was aces. Although I lost points overall because the first mayo separated, I think I made up for it with a stunning ratitoulle and a beautifully executed potato salad -- on time and under budget.
We got our official Serve Safe certificates in Sanitation class. The test was so simple, just a three hour lecture would have netted a passing grade. Jessie Yearwood writes a much more difficult exam. I got one answer wrong so my grade was 99. I can take the certificate to City Hall and for a mere $35 become certified as a food service manager in the City of Dallas. wow.

Merde, merde, merde

Merde, merde, merde. Shit, shit, shit. I had big plans for this weekend. I was going to practice my mayo or whip up an emulsified dressing for final practicals this week. I even thought I'd write some of the volume of copy due May 5.
No. I hve a horrible cold. I've been in bed all weekend and I'm not having any fun.
I hope like anything I feel better tomorrow. Actually, I'd settle for breathing through my nose.

I did see one fun thing. An episode of Firey Food Challenge with me in it. It was taped a couple of years ago in Fort Worth. You only see a glimpse of me licking my fingers. How chic. How urbaine.

The funny pants +pastry knowledge

Just in case anyone was wondering, black & white checked chef pants are black and white to symbolize salt and pepper. Awwwwww, isn't that cute.
Here's a site for up-to-the-minute pastry conversions Pastry Scoop

Basic Food Prep final practical exam

Chef told us what to expect in the final practical exam. Ratatouille, coleslaw or potato salad, and either mayo or Caesar dressing. We have to demonstrate our command of emulsified dressings and our proficiency with vegetables. The final is cumulative so I have to rememorize mother sauces, and cuts and stuff on potatoes like mealy vs waxy and know the merits of cooking certain leafy vegetables with an acid.
Proper sandwich making will also be covered. Newsflash place wet ingredients (lettuce, tomato) cheese and meat so the bread doesn't get soggy. Woo hoo sure glad I'm in cooking school.

work+school sucks

Where is it written that going to school, working as a freelance journalist, and having a life (keeping a home, having a husband, walking dogs, etc) has to be so agonizing? I'm not the first, or last, person to wear three or four hats at a time. Other people do it, why can't I?
In the past two weeks I managed to overestimate the number of hours in a day, I got a couple of A's, had about three crying jags and found out that I'll have to fight to be paid for a large chunk of work. Writing in this market/this state has become so unsatisfying that I'm glad I have to get a job in a restauarant kitchen next year. Even a lousy, ass-grabbing, untalented, chauvinistic, misogynistic chef has to be better than some of the editors I encountered this week. (she says that now, just wait till she works for her first ass-grabbing, no talent loser chef, then she'll beg to argue about "A Clockwork Orange" and invoices.)
Here's to better days to come.

4/14 & 4/15

4/14/04
½ recipe page 781 Asian chicken salad (double the dressing, use half to marinate chicken)
¼ recipe page 784 Bread salad (artichoke hearts replace mushrooms, add 5 oz cucumber and 2 oz kalamata olives)
1 recipe page 455 Mayonnaise
(mayo will absolutely be on the practical exam)

4/15/04
½ recipe page 812 baked apples
1 recipe page 820 tropical fruit salad with yogurt
2 servings fresh berries with crème fraîche

Term is winding down

The term is winding down. Next week we make sandwiches, and the following week we make a sit-down dinner for the class. Exams loom in the near future. The practical will probably include the following: mayonnaise, beef consommé, and Duchess potatoes.

National Serve Safe exam

What a joke. It was so easy that a person off the street with only a minimal knowledge of sanitation could probably pass. Jessie Yearwood’s tests are much harder; they’re tougher by an order of magnitude.
Next on the list in sanitation is a HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point) analysis of a recipe. A HACCP plan identifies all the areas in which food can be made safe. It’s a royal pain in the butt because it was developed by engineers for NASA so a preponderance of time is spent verifying and record keeping and less time actually making food safer.

An EXCEL-lent lesson.

I feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway when he pumps his chest and shouts, “I have made fire!” Well, “I have used MS Excel.” I’m a writer and exceedingly math phobic so when we had to create a profit and loss statement for Intro to the Hospitality Industry, I panicked. I can do the math, calculating food sales as a percentage of total sales, and I can certainly add expenses, depreciation, and taxes and subtract them from gross profit, but I had no idea how to make a computer program do the math. I knew there had to be a way. I knew that the columns were numbered and lettered for a reason, but I didn’t know why.
What a revelation when Celeste, a very wise woman in my Hospitality and Sanitation classes, showed me how to tell the machine to add, subtract, multiply, or divide one cell by another.
It was exhilarating. I felt like a little kid who just learned how to multiply, not by memorizing the multiplication tables but by understanding the concept.
I know I’m a dope, but surely I’m not the only math-phobic writer in the world. To other excel-scaredy cats, don’t be afraid, I have gone to the mountain and it was good.

4/7 & 4/8

4/7
1/4 recipe 708 709 plain pasta
1/4 rec. 708 , 709 spinach pasta
1/2 rec. 710, 734 goat cheese ravioli in herbed cream sauce
1/2 rec. 736, 237 fettucine w/ pesto sauce

4/8
1/4 recipe Caesar dressing
1/4 rec. Caesar salad
1/4 rec. garlic croutons
1/2 rec. smoked mushroom & lentil salad w/ hot bacon vinagrette
1 recipe creme fraiche

(sorry so sloppy, blogging from class)