Friday, May 23, 2008

TGIF.  This was a rough week.  We have a different teacher and he is tough.  He gave us a test the other day.  All fill in the blanks.  He is not a fan of multiple choice, I hate to say.  I studied but not hard enough, I know I didn't make an  A on that test.  Well, if I did, it had to be a LOOOOOW "A".

We have been studying the parts of a pig, cow, and all the different types of poultry.  We have prepared chickens, lambs, pigs, ribs, veal, adult beef, short ribs.  Next week we will be cooking prime cuts of beef such as ribeyes, sirloin steaks etc.  Before taking this class, I was looking forward to learning about the different cuts of meat and what part of the animal they are from but now I am not so sure.  Yes, the next time I go to the grocery store and see beef shanks, short ribs and pork loin, I will know exactly what body part and how to best cook the cut of meat, but it also personalizes it.  It gets me thinking about those baby calves that are under 5 weeks old (veal) and how they take them away from their mothers.  Oh, Jesus, I better just change the subject.

We started out with seven in our class but now we are down to five and two out of the the five only show up about 80% of the time.  Today, we only had three people.  We were busting our balls to make every dish.  We had to make short ribs with a brown sauce, Beef bourguinnane, grill flank steak that was marinated for 24 hours with a mushroom brown sauce, wild rice pilaf with shitake mushrooms, meat loaf made with ground pork, veal and beef, a tomato sauce, green beans, garlic potatoes, and a  cauliflower, broccoli medley.  Since there were only three of us cooking, we had plenty of food to split between us to take home.  There were eight or nine meat loafs alone.   We had to also do all the clean up and when you have just three people to split the work in an industrial kitchen, it is more work for everybody.  We got through it and our teacher was proud of us even though we were an hour late getting out of lab.  I am just so thankful that we have a long weekend.  It is getting harder and harder and more exhausting every day but I am learning so much.  I know so much more than I did just two weeks ago.  I can feel myself being more confident and am still excited to be exposed to new knowledge.  I just have to keep reminding myself of that when I get overwhelmed in class.