Winter Break

I know every culinary arts student will have a winter break story to tell...so here goes mine.

We left Portland on December 10, planning to spend three days in Ilwaco. We were unable to return to town until December 29. The worst winter storm in 40 years hit the Pacific Northwest, including the coast. Snow and freezing temperatures made driving impossible. The Prius is useless in the snow, and after attempting to make it up the hill, sliding down backwards and sideways, it was parked at the bottom until the thaw. We trudged up the hill in the snow and cold and chided ourselves for leaving the all wheel drive Subaru in Portland.

During the storm, a woman from the top of the hill rolled her car upside down in a ravine and was able to climb out unharmed. The investigating police slid all over the road until a neighbor on an ATV brought tire chains for their vehicle. Everyone stood around looking on as the wife of the ATV driver attached the chains. A large flat bed truck with chains attempted to come up the hill to tow the rolled car out and slid twice into a ditch. It took another tow truck two hours of maneuvering to rescue the first one.

The regional disaster coordinator tried to get up the hill in her 4 wheel drive vehicle, slid into a ditch and had to be pulled out.

We were marooned 5 days, with only one or two vehicles able to navigate the hill. Our friend and neighbor , who lives half way down, came up once a day and took Merlin to the post office and little local store, in his 4 wheel drive pickup, with chains on the front tires.

We never lost power, had plenty of food, and I was able to walk around on top of the hill, in the snow, without falling. We even shoveled the driveway a couple of times, just for exercise.

Last Day of Fall Quarter

You finally get to see George, the one in the chef's hat, who is in charge of the basic culinary arts program, and Larry, who is in charge of the management student program.

So far, most of this course is enjoyable, so I have signed up and paid for winter quarter, which begins January 5th.

In theory we go over some tests we took two weeks ago. We do not go over the killer tests from last week, since some students have not taken them yet.

The majority of our time is spent deep cleaning the department. This means taking every thing out of the refrigerators and off the shelves to wipe them down, emptying all the cooking oil, cleaning the grills and generally spit polishing the kitchen and dining room. We meet for pictures of the class and for awards ceremony where some of us get awards for perfect attendance and others receive their program completion certificates. We have a sandwich lunch and are finished with everything around 11 am.

Last Full Week Of Fall Quarter

There is no rhyme or reason to where George places us in the work stations. I am in CTO (cooked to order) the first thing in the morning and serving in the dining room after lunch. Because we are winding down for the holiday break, we prepare a buffet meal for the dining room for Tuesday and Thursday, rather than menu items. We also prepare a fancy buffet for a Wednesday college board evening banquet. The management students are the servers for this event.
In theory, George gives us the hardest tests we have had so far, covering all his hand outs and lectures. They are still open book, but the volume of material they cover is massive. I tell George I don't think I did well, and he says, "Since you are only doing this for a hobby, it won't matter like it does for some of the students who will be applying for jobs".
We are allowed to keep any tips we make as a waitress in the dining room. The first day I make zip for tips from my tables of college staff who regularly eat in the dining room, while the other waiter makes $22 from a group occupying his tables. The second day, the people at my tables are more generous and I make $6.50. This gives me insight into the other side of tipping.

Thanksgiving

The Seattle traffic on I-5 is lighter than usual midday Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We are able to share an early afternoon pizza meal, at a restaurant in Marysville, with our friends from Arlington, Julie and Tom.

Turkey day with my brother Tom and his family in Everett is fun and we are filled to the brim with all the excellent food they make for us. My nephew teaches me virtual bowling on an electronic Wii game hooked to the tv. (I get lucky the first time and beat him)!

Friday, on the way back through Seattle, everybody and their cars are either at the Macy's parade or in the malls for black Friday, so we are able to sail through town on cruise control.

tenth week

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, so the school is closed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Five of us, over one portable propane stove, make several dessert sauces such as lemon, cinnamon and custard, for theory practice. We learn to make a slurry out of cornstarch and water to thicken our sauce, since the cornstarch added alone to the hot liquid leaves small lumps.
I am in the "cooked to order" station the two days we are in school. CTO as it is called, has a hired chef in charge who plans the menus and directs the students. Usually people order off a menu in the restaurant. Monday we prepare and organize all the food that will be served buffet style in the restaurant on Tuesday, for a Thanksgiving meal. The price is $7.50 for all you can eat. The buffet is turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas and carrots, pumpkin soup, fruit salad, green salad, rolls and butter, cranberry sauce, and various kinds of pies with whipped cream.
Tuesday I change out the half empty buffet pans for the first part of the restaurant lunch and carve the ham for the rest of the time. We students eat lunch in the cafeteria, as usual, where the food is not as fancy (or as good).
This is toward the last of the term, and I have not mentioned our uniform requirements as yet. Our jackets are to be white, black and white checked pants, a hat that covers our hair, a white chef's apron, and black shoes. I have pockets in my apron that hold my paring and chef's knife, in plastic holders, so they are available to me at all times. Most people have knife cases that they put on the station where they are working.
Not everyone is 100% uniform compliant, but George is pretty strict on the white jacket and checked pants part. He wants everyone to look the same, although some of the white jackets are looking pretty gray and there are many white tennis shoes.

Ninth Week

In the kitchen I have returned to the pantry station for preparing the dressings and vegetables for the salad bar. We put out a large bowl of cut lettuce and a dozen different vegetables to put on it, plus three or four other salad types, such as fruit and potato salad. It seems that many of the bakery students and a few of the cooking students are vegetarian, so the salad bar is popular and needs to be refilled often. We steam, peel, and devil thirty eggs at a time to add to the choices.
George shows us how to debone a raw turkey breast in theory class. For theory practice, two of us debone, season, and wrap a turkey breast to be roasted for the Thanksgiving meal next Tuesday. We will prepare the stuffing in a separate pan. The problem with stuffing is that it cooks faster than the turkey meat, so it is safer to cook it separately. When feeding the public, the rules are very strict, to avoid causing food borne illness.
We continue to practice making sauces over portable propane stoves in the kitchen. Currently we are working on the basic tomato and the additions which change it to spanish and bar-b-que sauce. All of our sauces are combined and saved, to serve on food we are preparing for the line. Personally, I have some favorite bottled bar-b-que sauces that I prefer to use at home.
One of the young dishwashers said to me, "Hi grandma...you are the oldest one here". I replied, "I think George is a couple years older than I am". I wonder if I am the oldest student he has ever had in class?

Eighth Week Daily Log

Monday...
Sometimes George assigns us to the station that is short of people. So, now I'm not sure that I will make it to all the stations this quarter, as I find myself back in the vegetable/starch area.
Our open book quiz covers lamb and the various cuts and preparation methods.
Tuesday is Veteran's Day Holiday, and the school is closed.
Wednesday...
Part of theory time is spent filling out an evaluation on George's teaching methods, and what we feel he could do to inhance our learning experience. I wish he would spend a little more time going over the material in our book, and am able to make all my comments anonymously. Apparently someone types our comments so he can't recognize the handwriting.
We are making various flavors of Hollandaise sauce in the kitchen for theory practice. The double boiler I brought from home makes it easier to whip up the sauces than in the warped pans from the school kitchen supply.
I hear that one of the ex cons in our class was swearing at the assistant dean of the college and was kicked out of the program. He had been a student for a short time at an exclusive culinary arts program before coming to Clark, and was always commenting on how they did things there, so he won't be missed by many people.
We have a deaf young man in our class, and the school has an interpreter that follows him around to class and in the kitchen. I asked her if she was learning to cook as well, and she said "a little". She had also learned to weld "a little" from following a deaf student welder.
At my lunch table, a cooking student who is an ex sheriff, tells us he is having GI bleeding problems and no health insurance or $ to get it diagnosed. If I ever write a book, I'll have plenty of material.
Thursday...
The management students are presenting their end of quarter food project dishes, to be judged by the instructors. The underlings are invited to taste the array. My favorite is the crab and avacado crab cakes with papaya and red pepper garnish. Yum!
In theory practice we make herbed butter that we roll, and butter sauces that we melt on the propane burners in the kitchen.
At the end of every Thursday is "deep cleaning", where we move everything off the shelves and scrub everything with more effort than usual. We are alway mindful that the health inspector can show up at any time.
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This is my fifth day in the kitchen this week. The time counts toward the required banquet hours. Unless I am assigned to help with the banquet on December 3rd, I am finished working extra. I say "working" because there are very few of us here today and we are doing the cafeteria line food and service as usual. I have heard that until recently, the culinary arts department had a full time banquet manager who booked outside banquets for the department. Now, with very few banquets to serve, we must do extra hours in the department.
Someone mentions that there is a waiting list to get into the baking program here at the school. Some students take the first quarter of the cooking class to wait for a space in the bakery. I have observed many more females than males in that program...just the opposite culinary arts demographics.

Seventh Week

Each week, this quarter, we orient to procedures on a different station. Daily, the vegetable/starch station provides 8 to 10 half pans each of vegetables and starches to serve on the cafeteria line. Some of us are chopping a large bucket of red potatoes, some are peeling and slicing russet potatoes, some are preparing cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, squash, and bell peppers.
Our student manager is a heavy, bald American Indian, with a tatooed feather on the top of his head. He wears sun glasses in the kitchen and any free moment he has head phones on his ears for his tunes. In spite of his looks, he is very pleasant and easy to be around. We are encouraged to bring recipe ideas from home, to make and try on the cafeteria line.
Class discussion is food cost control, and class practice is making more sauces, in small groups, over portable propane gas stoves in the kitchen. This time the sauces are veloute, (meaning smooth or velvety), butter and tomato. Part of the lesson is "mise en place", or in English, gather everything we need in one place, before we start to cook.
Every other week we have a home work assignment to complete, covering one of the chapters in our book. Then the next week, we have an open book quiz on a couple more chapters. This assures we will at least scan the material.

Sixth Week

My assignment is in the scatter area, which includes the serving line and the accoutrements for food service. We provide the hot and cold drinking cups, the napkins and plastic wrapped "silverware", bread rolls and butter, bottled and machine drinks, and condiments for the burgers. Keeping the area clean by wiping up the spills is part of the job as well.
The food service area is shared by a separate short order cooking area.
As with any public institution, we have our share of sticky fingered individuals and those who want more food for less money.
A young blind woman complains to me that the students are ignoring her as she stands in front of the short order station and is unable to fill out the usual paper order form.
The class practices making six sauces that were demonstrated to us last week. I am happy to learn more about these sauces and have the recipes to make them at home. Needless to say, the ingredients we use at home are of much better quality. For instance, I use real milk to make a cream sauce, while the school uses powdered milk.
We are carving pumpkins in class to take home for Halloween. Now all our knives need to be sharpened!

End of the Fifth Week

Peeling and decorating mushrooms, making crepes, and flipping fried eggs in the pan, are the techniques we practice during the last day of skills development. I must say, I'm glad we don't normally start at 6:30 am. That little bit of extra sleep makes a big difference. Some of my classmates have jobs outside of school that keep them up until late, and they walk around with half lidded eyes.
In theory exercises, George demonstrates the main and small sauces. The main brown, (or mother sauce), is called Espagnole. The cook uses this as a base, and adds to it to make various smaller sauces.
Another of the mother sauces is called cream, white, or Bechamel sauce. The cook can perk up the flavor of a white sauce by adding a half of a peeled onion with attached bay leaves, skewered by cloves. From this base come the cheese and sour cream sauces.
The third mother sauce is Chicken Veloute. From this base come the poullet and curry sauces.
This is probably more than you wanted to know. :>)

Etc.

This morning, the skills development class consists of peeling grapefruit and oranges with our knives, and sectioning them, both the fancy way and the utilitarian way. We also discuss the technique for hard boiling eggs, with a bath of ice water for cooling.
In class, we make 3 different soups with a base we cooked yesterday. It is a thickened mixture of onions, carrots, and celery, called mire poix. Two of the soups go in a pot to be served for lunch, and we share the third soup called "black box". The name comes from a test given to cooks, where they are required to use all the ingredients in a black box to make a soup. We are able to use any ingredients available to us in the kitchen.
There is an interesting thing happening through the student union of Clark
College. Several times a month they give away free pizza or free hamburgers to the students. This food is apparently ordered and served from an outside source. Because the event is held in the auditorium next to the dining room, it slows the food purchases in the cafeteria, of everything but desserts. We scramble to keep desserts on the line. Today they go through three trays of carrot cake, three trays of banana cake, three trays of zuccini cake, one tray of cheese cake with strawberry sauce, and a tray of hastily prepared vanilla pudding.

Fifth Week

Each week, some of us "newbys" are given a class on skills development. We are in the department at 6:30 am, before the day begins in the kitchen. A management student demonstrates various skills. So far we are practicing using a sharpening stone, a steel to hone the knife blade, cutting the various vegetables and piping techniques. Today we are piping mashed potatoes into pretty rosettes. All of these things are very interesting to me, and will be useful in my home kitchen. Stay tuned for more skills I will be practicing as the week of these classes progresses.
In the kitchen, I am helping the dessert station, which is a dangerous place for a sugar addict. Gingerbread, cheesecake with raspberry sauce, chocolate chip cookies, pineapple upside down cake, oh my!

Fourth Week

The pantry is my work station this week. We provide the lettuce, cut vegetables, fruit, and dressings for the salads on the cafeteria line. All of the salad ingredients are placed in metal pans, resting on ice, to keep the contents cool enough so bacteria doesn't grow. We refill the pans during lunch, which starts at 10am.
I am working with several men who have lost their jobs at the Camas paper mill, due to downsizing, and are being retrained. They are all interested in learning a new skill, and participate with enthusiasm. Then there are several young people who are on a free ride from the government, and they do as little as possible. Many days they only show up for the free lunch. This is my first exposure to people getting away with that type of behavior. Guess I have been cloistered away from reality for 48 years of working in the medical profession.
Today, the culinary students at my lunch table are a young Hispanic man, a young Black man, and a woman in her 50's from Hong Kong. We are an ethnically diverse group as well.

Thickeners

Today we are learning methods of thickening liquid. George demonstrates in the class room, with a propane burner, how to make a roux, which consists of flour and butter. He goes on to teach us other thickening agents such as cornstarch and arrowroot.

Woo Hoo! I get a chance to cook carmelized onions for the first time. It should be easy to make French Onion soup at home, now that I have mastered that part. The soups I am helping to make are very popular in the cafeteria. We make four gallons at a time in two huge steam pots in the kitchen. Most days they sell about 8 gallons, and what is left over is quick cooled and served another time.

Third week

I am learning to chop vegetables the chef's way, (safe and fast), on the soup station this week. I'm lucky that the many onions I peel and chop don't make my eyes water.
In class George tells us about measures, such as three teaspoons equal 1 tablespoon, and a pint is a pound the world around. We must also practice converting quantities of recipes.

There is a 3 term baking class running simultaneously with the cooking program. The students learn to bake all the things found in a retail bakery, including bread, cakes, pies, cookies, and Danish pastries. I think it would be interesting to take that class after I finish the 3 terms of cooking. However, I don't believe I could resist the temtation to buy and eat everything I made. I don't need to make my knees carry any more weight for my hour a day walk. As it is, a couple times a week I buy the $1.25 loaf of artisan bread for Alex, and avoid looking at the 50 cent pastry display.

Equipment and tools

In class, George is showing us the various small equipment and hand tools used in the commercial kitchen. Working on the chef's station, spoons, spatulas, whisks, ladles and oil skimmers are the tools I am most familiar with this week. I have not done much knife work so far. Apparently the vegetable station is where most of the chopping is done. We have seen a demonstration of a whetstone for sharpening knives, and it surprises me to learn that a steel does not sharpen a knife, it only hones or straightens the blade after or between sharpening. I plan to do some research on electric knife sharpeners for my Wusthof knives that I will use in my home kitchen when I'm finished with them in school. I have an electric sharpener now, but am afraid it is not the quality stone I need.

Week two

Our first quiz is today, covering the first two chapters of our 20 lb book. It is open book but helpful to have read and studied the chapters, (which I had). The chapters cover the history of French cooking and food safety.

I am on the chef's station again this week. One of the students with me is a skinny kid who looks about 18 years old. Some of our jobs are chopping vegetables for stir fry tomorrow, frying the garden burgers on the flat grill, transferring leftovers into clean pans, and thawing the frozen fish in plastic bags under cold running water. Learning to clean the hot flat grill when we are finished using it is tricky, to avoid burning your hands. We spread vegetable oil on the grill and use some sort of a pumice stone to scrape off the burned bits while it is hot.

One of the fellas sitting at the lunch table today mentions the cooking jobs he had in prison. It is an interesting group!

Banquets

I worked for 6 hours yesterday in the school culinary department. What they don't tell you is the requirement for 28 "banquet" hours. Usually the school puts on several banquets and the students manage them and serve. This year they are short on banquets, so we need to pick up the extra hours on Fridays.

One benefit is that the food is better since there are no left overs and everything is cooked fresh on Friday. Since we get to eat lunch from the menu as part of our lab fees, we enjoy it more on Friday.

Today is a warm fall day and a good time to take a picture of the uniform we wear.

Kitchen duty

This week I am on the chef's station. People working here make gravy and stock as well as preparing and cooking the raw meat. There are ovens, a large flat griddle, deep well frying oil, and a couple of multi burner gas stoves. The stocks and gravies stay warm on these stoves in double boiler type water baths. It's pretty warm in the area, even with overhead exhaust, and faces are pink most of the time. It's interesting to watch the various people present around the kitchen and their participation. Not everyone functions with the same level of interest. The second year students are taking management classes, so they are usually pretty efficient.

Apparently we do not wash the pots and pans or run the dishwasher. There are carts for dirty whisks, ladles, and pans, and a room where several non students are busy cleaning. We only wash(and sharpen) our own knives.

Class is from 8-9am, and today George is going over jobs to be had after one finishes culinary arts classes. As he describes them, he reinforces my hunch that all of them are tough and very few people make a fortune. It's like the lottery...if one has an idea that takes off and sells, there is a chance for the big bucks. He tells us about a friend of his who is a success at making and selling soup. He pays his son $2,000 a week and the kid refuses to take over the business. (I wonder why)!

First Day of Culinary Arts at Clark College

What an interesting and informative day! The instructor and I are about the same vintage, no one else comes close. As expected, there are more males wanting to be chefs. One of the females has orange hair, pierced lip, pierced nose, and paper clips in her pierced ears. We are told that more people are applying to the program because unemployment is up in this area.

Today, we are in class from 7AM to 1PM, with many breaks and lunch at 10:30AM. We have a daily"free" lunch, paid by our lab fees, and must be chosen from the hot foods and salad bar before the cafeteria opens for lunch to the general college population.

The instructor tells us that magazines and newspapers are a good way to learn about food trends and recipes. He reads an article telling about "dump cake", which he has never heard of before, and all of us home cooks recognize instantly.

George, the instructor, gives us a list of the things we will be covering during this 11 week quarter. They are: making sauces, making entrees,

learning to clean as we go, washing pots, making salads and salad dressings, running the dish washing machine, setting up the food line, running the snack bar grill, running the cash register, serving customers, end of day clean up, preparing vegetables, making sandwiches and beverages for the snack bar, setting up and waiting on tables.

We will be rotating through 10 stations and each station has an instructor, a manager, an advanced first year student, and a new student.

We all must wear the same uniform and once in a while we have a banquet to serve on a Friday or after hours.

Tomorrow is more orientation in the class room, and then Wednesday we go to the kitchen. The normal day is one hour of class and 5 hours of hands on learning. We have home work and quizzes from our fat, 20 pound book, every other week.

amendment to previous blog

I forgot to add Alex to the beginning blog story. She was the 5th person in our traveling group!

The Beginning...

Labor Day weekend, Merlin, Anders, Karen, and I took Continental Airlines from Seattle to Anchorage. Annika and her family picked us up at the airport and hosted us until Monday evening. We all hiked over Matanuska Glacier, watched fireworks from the State fair, visited the fair, talked with Annika's cousin and family from Fairbanks, hiked to an alpine lake, ate the world's best ice cream and joined all of Wasilla in watching their former Mayor become the Vice Presidential candidate. Sarah Palin's parents live three doors down from Annika, and her youngest son goes to school with Sarah's daughter Piper.