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April 07, 2005

2nd Quarter - Week One

Here it is. The first week of my Second Quarter of culinary school and with my work schedule and all... the week ended up pretty much one big blur.

My new classes are going to be interesting.. and a LOT more work than last semester.

My first class, my only lecture class, is Menu Management on Monday evenings from 7:00 - 9:00pm. On top of the normal chapter reviews as homework, we also have three Menu Projects where we have to design three menus. The first one is due next week, so much for easing into the quarter nice and slow.

I have two different kitchen lab classes. One is from 5:30pm-10:30pm on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. It is called American Regional and we learn about and cook different foods that are native to different areas of our nation. Our weekly homework, includes typing out recipes on index cards, vocabulary and we have a research paper due on Tuesday of Week 10.

The first week we "studied" New England foods. Tuesday night we made Butternut Squash Soup, Cod Cakes with Tartar Sauce, Linguine Alle Vongole (Pasta with Clam Sauce), Boston Brown Bread, Fresh Corncakes, and Green Beans with Fried Onions. Wednesday night's menu included New England Clam Chowder, Mesclun Salad with Cranberries, Apples and Cider Vinaigrette, Boston Scrod with Beurre Blanc (baked fish with butter sauce), Summer Squash Noodles, Mashed Sweet Potatoes, and Boston Baked Beans. I regretfully, do not have any pictures from these two days... see previous post entitled HELL WEEK and you will understand why I couldn't remember my name, much less my camera. I promise to try to do better on getting pictures for the rest of the quarter.. and feel free to email or IM me and remind me to grab my camera Tuesday - Thursday evenings.

My second lab class is from 5:30pm-10:30pm Thursday nights. It is also a Regional class, but it specializes in just Southwestern cuisine. This class doesn't have any real weekly homework except for typing out our recipes on index cards, but we do have to do a separate research paper for this class and it is also due on Week 10.

I did remember my camera for the first week of this class and will post those pictures in a few minutes. Thursday's menu consisted of Grilled Vegetable Gazpacho (cold veggie soup), Quesadillas with Jicama Salsa, Shrimp Tacos, Pico De Gallo, Guacamole, Refried Beans, and Green Rice. This class lasted until nearly 11:15 pm the first night. The chef-instructor for this class runs his class differently than any other class we had been in before, and since we weren't even given our menus or recipes until we arrived the first day we were kinda blindsided with this new structure and it took us a little longer than the normally scheduled class time to see the light.

Anyone wanna take me out for a drink Friday night of Week 10 after I turn in those two papers?

Posted by FutureFoodTVStar at April 7, 2005 10:06 PM

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