Day one: The first day of my third, and last, term
Posted on | September 24, 2009
The catch words for today: Dishpan hands and hunger.
Let me explain.
“I was standing on a stool cooking mac ‘n cheese when I was four.”
~ Chef Pigtails
Last semester, my class started at 9:00. We had lecture until 11:00, then we headed into the kitchen where we cooked until 2:00.
This gave us two hours of lecture and three hours of production. And, always, I wanted more, more, more production than we were allotted.
This term, class starts at 7:30. Yes, that’s 7:30. In the morning. We go straight into the kitchen and have production until 9:30. Then off to the lecture room. Where we stay until 12:30.
For those of you that did the math, you will see that we have an hour less of kitchen time and an hour more of lecture.
And for anyone that pays attention to time, you have already noticed we are in at 7:30. Yes, that’s 7:30. In the morning.
Yawn.
“I learned how to cook out of self defense because some of the stuff my mother put on the table was some kind of scary.”
~ Chef Pigtails
Our kitchen chef is Chef Peacock. He is a smaller, Latino man with dark eyes and a stature that is decidedly peacock-like. Our classroom chef you have already met: Chef Pigtails. She is a very young-looking thirty-something woman who tends to wear sky blue eyeliner and, you guessed it, pigtails.
Chef Peacock started the morning by telling us he had some bad news. Apparently, a student on externship at a large restaurant was suing the restaurant for sexual harassment. According to the chef, this was bad news because the school will lose this restaurant as an externship opportunity.
He expressed no concerned for the student.
Then he told us he had not done our syllabus, yet, and we would not be getting it until next week. We were then told we had to act like professionals and were admonished to come to class with our uniforms properly buttoned to the throat.
Then he showed us where everything was in the kitchen.
“This is where the pans go. They go here because this is where they belong.”
“This is the PM reach in. You put your hand in here and you’ll lose it.”
“This is the freezer. You have no need to go into the freezer.”
And so on.
Then, as we did when we started the second term, we were told to spend the first day of our kitchen time scouring the kitchen.
I cleaned three prep tables, one wall, and moved five ranges.
And learned damn little.
“I love, love, love making people happy with food.”
~ Chef Pigtails
The lecture from Chef Pigtails was on why restaurants fail or succeed. It was fairly dry. But what was interesting was that she started class by asking the students what their goals where. Here are the answers:
- “Nutritionist”
- “Skim from boss and open own place then be a food writer”
- “Private chef for my stoner friends and travel”
- “More schooling; culinary”
- “Personal chef and travel”
- “Work under uncle who’s a chef”
This is going to be an interesting semester.
Comments
3 Responses to “Day one: The first day of my third, and last, term”
Leave a Reply
September 24th, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
UGH, for the first 3 months my classes will start at 7am and then they’ll move to 8am for the 2nd 3 months. That’s the one thing I’m really not looking forward to.
September 25th, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
Well, Chef Peacock certainly has an odd definition of professionalism.
Only one more semester!
What pray-tell was your answer?
October 9th, 2009 @ 11:54 am
Oh dear, hope its not as bad as you expect. Thats interesting on the aspirations, 50% of my class seemed to want to own their own restaurant (groan)