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.