Culinary School: Day 2

Saturday was my first real day of class.

First we had a lecture about sanitation. This may sound boring, but it was actually pretty interesting. I learned, for example, that you can catch Hepatitis from raw shellfish, and that rice and beans are the buffet items most likely to make you sick. Who knew? Well, Chef Barbara, my instructor, who has many tattoos, is hilarious and frequently yelled at me for holding my Japanese knife improperly, did, but I didn't.

We practiced Japanese knife skills, and I learned that I have many bad knife habits that will need to be broken, especially the one where I rest my pointer finger on top of the knife. The class next store was making ice cream, which was kind of annoying because they were using our freezer and kept coming in to get things, disrupting our lectures, but in the end, we got to eat all their ice cream, which was delicious. The French vanilla had rosemary in it, which I thought would be disgusting, but it was actually quite good.

I'm always pretty bad when I'm put on the spot, and when the teacher said, "Jessica, why shouldn't you peel vegetables over a garbage can?" I nervously said, "Because you'll cut yourself! Wait, no! Because you could drop everything into the garbage!" And she said, "And then what would happen?" And I said, "It would get dirty! And um, then you wouldn't be able to use it!" I am so smooth.

Last night, I got to practice my knife skills when I whipped up a bacon and leek risotto for AZ and Suzanne. AZ made a chicken, mango and coconut salad, which was both healthy and delicious and I would like to eat it for lunch every day. Suzanne brought cupcakes from Sugar Sweet Sunshine, which were heavenly as always. We watched Alpha Dog, which, despite the overwhelming hotness of Justin Timberlake, was not good. Also, I read that JT didn't study acting prior to the film because he felt he learned everything he needed to know about acting while on the Mickey Mouse Club. That assumption was wrong. Also, they dressed him like a grandpa in Boca Raton.