treducks

Milkshake

It's been a while since I've posted - excuse me for stating the obvious. A lot of stuff has happened since my last post and I guess I haven't written for a number of reasons. There is a lot to write about and it's a very daunting task to weed through the detritus in my brain and decide what should be kept. One of the other reasons is fear. Fear of criticism. Fear of telling people of my failure. Fear of what people will think. I've been trying to write for the last couple of weeks but the fear has been hindering my efforts. But tonight, I stood up and shouted, "Fuck it!", and with a bottle of Ketel One as a muse I'm going to put to paper the last couple of months.

I'm no longer in Las Vegas.
Currently, I'm living in San Diego with my mother. I've been here since the 3rd of September and I've been filling my time by cooking meals for my mother and starting my own business as a computer consultant. Why did I move to San Diego? Why am I living with my mother? Why didn't I go back to my superfantastic job I had previously? Read on and see.

Hell
Vegas is a terrible place. I'll be more specific; Vegas is a great place to visit but a horrible place to live. First of all; the heat. People aren't supposed to live in that kind of climate. That's not the only thing though. The gaming industry breeds such a level of mediocrity that it infects the ....Note: I had a whole paragraph written about what I thought of Las Vegas and its inhabitants, but after reading it, I came off sounding like an elitist asshole so I decided to leave my feelings for another post when I'm less inhibited by my muse. Let's just say that I dislike Las Vegas with extreme prejudice. I am an elitist asshole though. I'm just trying to be less up front about it.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad. I met some really good people at Como's (some real shitheads as well) and made some really good friends that I'll keep in touch with in the future. It's just that I didn't feel at home in Vegas. Something about it made me feel like a stranger in a strange land and I was waiting for the opportunity, or excuse to get the fuck out of dodge. That and I couldn't find a decent deli.

Como's
I loved working at Como's. The camaraderie, the competition and the constant taking the piss out of each other. Also there's nothing funnier than an El Salvadoran dancing around the kitchen in his whites singing at the top of his lungs, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and their life is better than yours". Especially because his grasp of the English language was slight and he couldn't pronounce all the words correctly. I laughed so hard that I cut myself.

I learned a lot at Como's. How to truly love and respect food. How to be passionate about what I'm doing. How to really work on a team, to be able to criticize and take criticism myself. Most importantly, I learned how to cook....a little bit anyway. I'm by no means a Robuchon or Ducasse but if Rachael Ray is the indication of the level of "Chef" that the Food Network is willing to hire then ostensibly, I could have my own show. Someone needs to euthanise that goblin of a woman.

One of the things that I didn't like there was the pay. $10/hour. It sucked. I could barely make my monthly expenses and I was busting my ass. It's not that I felt that I deserved more money. I didn't. I was at the beginning of my culinary career and I knew next to nothing. It's just hard when your previous job paid substantially more and you still have the trappings of a previous lifestyle to pay for. You can tell yourself that you're "doing it for the love" for a while, but it usually ends right about the time that your finance company calls you to let you know that your car is about to be repossessed.

Moving
The end of August was looming and the more I looked at my situation, the more I realized that I was in a world of shit. Broke, unhappy with where I lived (my housing situation is a whole post in itself), depressed by the sham that is Le Cordon Bleu (yet another post) and with the imminent threat of being rogered by the IRS (I'll explain later) I decided that it was time to retreat to familiar territory and regroup. I rented a Uhaul, packed up my stuff and made my way to the sunny beaches of southern California.

I could've gone back to the Bay Area and taken my old job but that's not what I wanted. It's a great company and a fantastic place to work but I was frustrated there before and now that I'm no longer drinking the Kool Aid I can no longer overlook the things that bothered me in the past. Besides, the team I worked with deserves someone that wants to work there, not someone whose only motivation is direct deposit.

My new life
So now I'm running my own computer consulting business. I do Macintosh support for small design firms and agencies (a few house calls here and there) in the San Diego area. It's not my favorite thing in the world to do but it's relatively easy and the money's good. I can work on my own terms and time frame which gives me plenty of opportunity to do something that I really enjoy: cooking.

I've been cooking a lot over the last month and I'm really enjoying myself. I'm not under any pressure and I can cook at my own pace. I've hosted a couple of dinner parties and all of them have been a success and currently I'm talking to an old friend about doing some catering in the near future. I may even look for a part time job cooking on the line at a restaurant down here.

So that's the readers digest version of the last few months. I've skipped over a bunch of stuff which I will include in later posts. I just wanted to get something down to get the writing process started. Many apologies for not updating sooner.

Rush

I've been at Como's for almost a month now and I'm finally at the point where I'm comfortable. I can handle my station during rush without too much difficulty and I'm rarely asking for help from the Sous Chef or people working the other stations. At first I was completely overwhelmed with the constant barrage of orders that my printer spat out and I thought it was something that I could never handle on my own, but after the second week, what once seemed impossible now has become second nature. Out of all the things that I have done in my life, there's nothing more satisfying than getting a ticket for fifteen appetizers, then getting them ready for service before the runners are ready to take them out.

The kitchen staff usually get to the restaurant at around 3pm (2pm on Fridays and Saturdays) and we work on prepping the line until about 5:30 which is when the restaurant opens. It starts by changing into chefs whites, then grabbing a soda and wandering out to the hostess podium where one of us checks the reservation list for the evening. We also check the local weather, because when it gets really hot (like it has been lately) it's usually a slower evening. We then check our prep lists, grab the cart and head upstairs to the walk-in refrigerator. Depending on whether we have a banquet scheduled or it's going to be a particularly busy night, we grab various things from the walk-in, head back downstairs and grab our knives. Prep time is usually pretty relaxed; making heirloom tomato relish, pre-slicing Maytag for the cheese plate, topping up stock pots and basically talking shit to one another. Usually after work, we go out and have a few drinks and invariably, one of us gets a little too hammered, providing the rest of us with ammo to give them a hard time about the next day.

About ten minutes before service, the mood changes. It goes all quiet and the cooks on the line start readying themselves for the oncoming onslaught of orders. Knuckles are cracked and muscles are stretched to try and prepare for the inevitable neck or back pain that comes from working the line in a kitchen. Nervous eyes twitch over ones station to make sure their mise en place is fully ready, saute pans are already hot for the first order, favorite tongs are where no one else can steal them and that you have plenty of side towels.

The chatter of the printer announces the first order of the evening and everyone jumps into action. Because I'm working the Garde Manger station, I'm always hit first, but that doesn't mean that the others in the line stand there with their thumbs up their asses. If there's steak on the order, the grill has to get that going. Maybe there's a fish special that takes an inordinate amount of time to prepare. There's chicken on the ticket? That takes over 15 minutes to to cook in the oven, so get that on a pan and get it hot. It doesn't matter, we all hit the ground running and get to work.

In between 5:30 and 7:00 we get orders, but it's nothing that can't be handled without too much difficulty. This is the time i like the best. It's not exactly relaxed but I can still bang out orders while I taunt the El Salvadorian prep cook by calling him a Mexican, all while he whips me with a wet side towel*.

*Note: In a heated situation like working in a kitchen, you become very close to the other members of your team. I've only been there for a little under a month but I've become extremely comfortable with them and they seem to have with me. Because we work closely together in battle like conditions, all formalities are stripped from the situation and things like sexuality, religion, race and what your mother does in her free time with men that aren't your father are openly discussed, almost always in derogatory terms.

Then rush hits. As a line cook, the first rush you ever experience seems like the end of the world. Your printer ejects ticket after ticket and the onslaught of orders seems never ending. The first rush I encountered, I did what most sane humans would've; I panicked. "Backup! I'm in the fucking weeds here!" would be the cry as I saw myself falling further and further behind. It was hard at first, the feeling of fucking up and not knowing what I was doing, but after a made a few hundred appetizers, the amount of time it took me to plate decreased and my ability to coordinate multiple dishes increased. What seemed like an impossible task now has become a reality and now I'm really starting to enjoy myself.

I work with some really talented people but one of them is exceptional. She's a scrawny little Chicana from New Mexico who moved out here with her girlfriend of seven years to go to culinary school. She has tattoos on her face and hands (she won't tell me their meaning which leads me to believe they're gang related) and she looks like she would shank your ass with a boning knife for taking her tongs but she's such a little sweetheart. But the thing that endears me most to her is her ability to work the grill. I can cook a steak. I can even handle three or four in a relaxed situation like a Sunday afternoon BBQ and I could probably come close to getting the temperatures right on most of them. She's another story altogether. We got hit really hard this last Monday and at one point, she had over twenty steaks on the grill at one time. Twenty fucking steaks. 8oz filets, 12oz filets, porterhouses, strips and to top it off, lamb chops which had to be finished in the oven. She probably grilled in excess of 140 steaks and not one of them came back for refire. All of them were cooked perfectly. It was simply an amazing feat and I hope to be able to accomplish it one day.

Well, it's 3am and I have a bunch of shows on the TIVO I have to catch up on. Time to open a bottle of wine and relax. 

New Car

Once again, I've made some changes to the site. I've signed up with Google Adsense to see if I can generate some revenue to cover the costs of hosting treducks. You'll also see that I've added a Cafepress banner on the right. That's right, I now have treducks.com shirts. I wore one of these bad boys out the other night and I got laid within fifteen minutes of arriving at the bar. By a woman too, so that was a plus. Ladies, I guarantee that if you wear one of these shirts, guys will stare at your boobs. So there you go. Buy one of these shirts. Hell, buy some for your friends as well. Once you get it in the mail, wear it with pride while you repeatedly click the ad links on the left hand side of my site. Was that subliminal enough?

Well, I've been at the new job for a week now and I'm really enjoying it. Everyone there is really cool and I'm learning a lot of stuff really quickly. I had to handle my station alone for the first time on Tuesday night and though I got a little behind a couple of times I was able to get through the night without looking too stupid. I really enjoy working with the other cooks, especially when I get into a groove and I'm able to pound out a bunch of plates in rapid succession. On Monday, Joseph Keller actually stepped behind the line to take over the saute station for about half an hour. It was cool to cook with him and watch how he did things.

As I've mentioned before, I've been looking at getting rid of the Magnum. I really don't want to as I love my car, but being on a cook's wages, I can't afford to keep it. So it's on the market in case any of you are interested and as soon as it sells, my mother will be giving me her car as she wants a new one. I'm happy that I'll be able to substantially lower my monthly cost of living but I'm a little apprehensive about my future mode of transportation.

Hairdresser-mobile

I'll be driving around a 1996 pearl white, Audi Cabriolet and I'll be fabulous. I'll probably drive it around for a couple of months and then trade it in for something a little more manly.

So I've been trying to interact with Catholic Girl over the last week or so to try and get another good story out of her. Note: for those of you unfamiliar with Catholic Girl, read this. Unfortunately, Catholic Girl (CG from now on) has found love and her new love forbids her from communicating with me. CG's new love is another member of my class at school who manages the produce department of a local Albertson's. Because of this, I'll refer to him as Mr. Rhubarb. Well, Mr. Rhubarb thinks that I want a piece of CG and he's been playing the part of jealous boyfriend quite well. Personally, I couldn't give a shit about either one of them, but she's that right mixture of dumb and naive that if you stand near her long enough, something funny's gonna come out. These two spend most of the class making eyes at each other and more than once, a lecture has been interrupted by Mr. Rhubarb's heavy breathing. On breaks, they rush out to his bright orange (Safety vest orange. It burns your retinas when you look at it.) pickup and drive to the far side of the parking lot for a session of dry humping. They think they're being discreet, but I guess they haven't taken into consideration that his pickup can be seen from orbit and it's plainly obvious to everyone outside smoking as to what's going on. It's become a common joke amongst other students in my class and we all have a good laugh about it. Anyway, tomorrow will be my last chance to get another story out of her as next week, I'll be switching to the morning sessions and I'll no longer be seeing her or Mr. Rhubarb. It's a shame really, but I'm sure there'll be people in the AM session that'll provide amusing content.

Well, Iron Chef is on and I'm tired. I'm signing off for the night. Go buy a shirt,

Pee in this please

I made a few more changes to the site today. If you look to the right, you'll see a new email subscription widget and if you look at the bottom of this post, you'll see more linky things. If you're not already on the mailing list, go ahead and sign up. No really. Do it now.

For my new job, I had to go get a drug test which was kinda weird. I've never worked anywhere before where this was required and actually, if there were drug testing at some of my previous places of employment, half the people would've been shown the door. Anyway. alot of people at school were distressed with the fact that I submitted to this test willingly. They called it an invasion of privacy. Needless to say, the protests were coming from the pot smoking, slacker demographic so I ignored them and went and peed in a cup. As the days of going on weekend long drug binges are over, I don't care about piss tests. What I do care about though is urinating on demand.

The day before the drug test was the day that I got my new job and as I wrote in my previous post, I was on the turps. I didn't go that hard though (only a few glasses of scotch) but I was still feeling a little seedy the next morning. Nothing that a good hot dog couldn't fix and fortunately for me, there was a Chicago style stand on the way to the drug test. I get to the place and it's 105 degrees. Add in being a little hung over and the general dehydration that comes with living in Vegas and peeing wasn't something I was wanting to do. I wasn't real worried though because I figured that it would be a hair or saliva sample test. I was greeted by a very small and very angry Vietnamese nurse who would spring random questions regarding my identification on me like she was trying to trick me. I guess they get alot of people trying to take drug tests for other people that know they won't pass them. After she was satisfied that I was me, she handed me a cup and shoved me down the hallway and into a bathroom. Crap. A cup can only mean that they want urine. I assumed the position and tried. And tried. And tried. After a few minutes came an impatient rapping at the door. There was a time limit and apparently I had passed it. I shouted back that I wasn't ready and the knocking stopped. Thirty seconds later it began again but this time it was pounding instead of knocking. I decided to ignore it and concentrate on evacuating into the tiny container. Finally I got the flow started, carefully I might add as I was wearing my good slacks and I didn't want any dribble, and I filled the cup to halfway. I looked in the cup and felt immediately embarrassed. Due to my current state of hydration, the sample resembled something akin to apple cider vinegar to both the eyes and the nose. Angry Vietnamese nurse took the cup, inspected it and seeing the color, shot me a disapproving look. Sheepishly, I left the room. As she escorted me back to the waiting area, she held the cup aloft, at about shoulder height for all to see that I probably need to drink more water.

Well, that's enough about peeing. I'm starting my new job this week so I'll have lots of things to update about in the next few days.

Hash House a No No

Today was a good day.

As you may or may not know, I've been working at Hash House a Go Go, working on the line cooking pancakes, French toast and burgers amongst other things. I decided after a week of working there that it wasn't really for me. Sure, trying to keep up with the lunch rush was a challenge, but what I really wanted was to work under a good chef that would have me doing things that I'd be learning about in school. There's no Pancake - 110 at Le Cordon Bleu, so I decided to search for employment elsewhere. I told Hash House last Wednesday that I wouldn't be coming in any more and proceeded with the job search.

Once again, I visited the lovely ladies at Career Services to see if they had any more leads for me. They gave me five of them and off I went on the arduous task of trying to get an executive chef on the phone. I played phone tag with a number of chefs until I got the Chef de Cuisine of one of the places on the line and I booked an appointment. Today I went in for an interview, and I can happily say that I'm once again, gainfully employed.

I've been offered a cook position at a place called Como's in Lake Las Vegas under executive chef, Joseph Keller. That's right, the Joseph Keller. Brother of Thomas Keller and founder of the famous French Laundry with said brother. I'll be working the Garde Manger station which means I'll be making things like beef tartare, salad dishes and some desserts.

I cannot begin to explain how excited I am about this. I actually got to meet Joseph today and I had to make a concerted effort to remain calm. I'm not sure I was that successful in hiding my excitement because right after the introduction, Joseph shot the Chef de Cuisine (Chef Stephan Romeo) a weird look. I mustn't have embarrassed myself too bad though, because they offered me the position and welcomed me aboard.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to post about this as I felt it was very exciting news. I'm off to celebrate with a glass of scotch.

Sanitation

My site is still up and that means one thing; people donated money. I'm now able to keep writing and I just wanted to thank everyone that made it possible. Everyone that donated will be getting bread mailed to them as soon as I get into Baking class.

Yesterday I started sanitation at school and about five minutes into the class, I came to the sad realization that this would be going on for the next three weeks. Three weeks where I won't be cooking at school. Three weeks of lecture classes about bacteria, pathogens, fungus and food that has inadvertently been laced with feces. That's right. Feces. I get to hear the word about 400 times per lecture as just about all food borne illnesses are carried in the feces of the infected person/animal and also cause uncontrollable diarrhea. Poop, poop and more poop. Lovely stuff. Being a male with adolescent tendencies, I enjoy the usual potty humor, farting and jokes about crapping ones pants. I even farted when I typed that last sentence just to make it somehow more meaningful. But when poop is mentioned a couple of times a minute for three hours straight, it kinda loses its meaning. I'm afraid that after three weeks of this, poop may just not be funny any more. As a male with adolescent tendencies, I find this disturbing. Seriously though, Sanitation is an integral part of the course but it just plain sucks. It's boring, somewhat disgusting and the pace of the class is slow. I'll need lots of caffeine in the upcoming weeks just to stay awake.

As I've been driving around, I've been noticing an inordinate amount of personalized license plates. I counted 15 in the parking lot at school alone. Some are pretty normal, but some are just plain strange, such as the one below:

Shaved

Now I'm not sure whether this one is referring to the car having no door handles or the fact that the owners bathing suit area may be as bald as a badger. Not sure I wanna find out either.

Well, I'm out of material for tonight. I'm sure the Catholic Girl will ask me another question tomorrow which I'll find amusing, giving me more stuff to write about.

Powdered Wine

First things first. I gotta do some begging. I've gotta pay the monthly fee to the nice people at TypePad but there's a small issue; I'm flat broke. Flipping pancakes doesn't pay that much. I've got a couple of days grace and then my site is gonna go bye bye unless I round up some cash. I don't need that much, a dollar a person would suffice. I promise to up the frequency of the updates and I'll even finish off my appendectomy story. To donate via PayPal, click here. Any donations are greatly appreciated.

Note: Donation link is now working correctly.

Ok, so enough with the panhandling. School is going well. On Friday, we did our final test for the first course (Skills I). The courses are broken up into three week sections and the first one covered the basics, such as stocks, sauces and knife technique. Next is sanitation and computers. I tested out of the computer class so I don't have to take it, but I still have to take sanitation (insert joke about my showering habits here). Basically this means I learn about what happens to hollandaise sauce when it's been sitting for too long at my favorite diner. I'm learning alot of stuff about my favorite foods and how disgusting they really are. Because of this, my diet has changed considerably in the last few weeks and I'm noticing a difference in my health, not to mention I'm much more svelte now. Man boobies be gone!

So some of the people in my class aren't real swift and I get asked some pretty strange questions from time to time. One of the girls in my class has lead a particularly sheltered life (Catholic upbringing, and not the saucy, promiscuous type either. Proper Catholic) and at the ripe old age of 22, she's never had a drink, partaken of illegal drugs or enjoyed the carnal side of things. She was a nutrition major at Oklahoma U, which I find rather amusing because now she's attending a school where the main ingredient in everything is butter. She's uneducated in the ways of the world and sometimes she comes out with gems like the following. We were studying sauces in class and the one we were concentrating on that day was Beurre Blanc - white butter sauce, which calls for some 'dry white wine'.

Catholic Girl is reading the recipe

CG: So there's dry white wine in this?

Me: Yep.

CG: So dry white wine? Is that like, powdered or something?

Me: Blank stare.

CG: What?

Me: Glance at my knife roll to see if I can find my boning knife to jam in my temple.

CG: So is it, or isn't it?

I spent the next few minutes explaining to CG the differences between various wines and how much I like to drink all of them. Needless to say, she was rather embarrassed after this interchange. She's not an adventurous eater either and I relish the days that we're handed oysters so I can suck down four at a time and watch her dry heave as I chew on them. Speaking of oysters and the mentality of my classmates, we were having dinner one night, and one of the dishes was this huge platter of oysters. No one seemed to want any so I grabbed a half dozen and started eating. One of the younger, cocky guys was very disgusted with the idea of eating oysters and had to let everyone else know how he felt. He kept babbling about how gross these things were until I mentioned that if you eat enough of them, you can 'fuck like crazy'. Before the word, 'crazy' was out of my mouth, he had the platter in one arm and was using the other to shovel oyster after oyster into his gaping maw.

Alright. I've had enough writing for one night. I'm halfway through a second bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and that fine line between drunk enough to write and too drunk to write has been passed. It's kinda like when you're playing pool drunk. First game sucks, second and third game you're unstoppable. Fourth game and it's, 'I hit the white ball with this stick?'. I'm gonna finish the rest of this bottle and watch the qualifying round from this weekends F1 race at Silverstone.

On the Line

Today was my first day at Hash House a Go Go. I didn't really think about it, but today probably wasn't the best day to begin working the griddle at a popular breakfast restaurant. Apparently yesterday was worse, but this morning was no cakewalk. Don't get me wrong, this is not a complaint. I'm actually happy that it worked out this way. I was able to hold my own with assistance from the guy who was training me and I kinda like the 'trial by fire' aspect of my first day as a professional cook.

At my station, I'm responsible for pancakes, waffles, hamburgers, French toast, meatloaf and strangely enough, fruit bowls. I wasn't a big fan of pancakes or waffles before this, and it's pretty safe to say, I'm less of a fan now. I must've cooked 50 of those fuckers today and I'll probably never eat one again. Cooking them on the other hand, I'm rather enjoying. They're rather large so you have to employ two spatulas and when the flattop is full you need to do a sort of aerobatic flip to make sure the pancake goes back to the correct part of the griddle in one piece.

One of the things that I kinda knew about, but I still am getting used to is how food is handled in the kitchen. Basically, unless it's hot enough to blister your skin, you use your hands. At several points during my shift, I was basically elbow deep in either French toast batter, bacon,  sausage or home fried potatoes. Needless to say, I now have the faint odor of French toast and grease. It's a lovely combination which is sure to get me laid repeatedly in the future.

Anyhoo, No Reservations is on TV and I gotta be up early. I thought I had a bunch of stuff to write, but once I fired up the laptop, I kinda got a bit of a block, so I'm gonna pack it in.

Rare Opportunity

Ah, the Las Vegas Weekly. Part Left Wing rant rag. Part restaurant reviews. Part listing for upcoming events. I usually skip the articles and go straight to the restaurant reviews and check to see what bands are gonna be playing (Scorpions, Poison and Cinderella! Fucking Sweet!) The thing I enjoy the most though is the classifieds in the back. Usually it's the same drivel; Oriental Massage, Psychics, mobile homes for sale, but every now and then I find a gem. This was posted in the 'Help Wanted' section.

Can anyone explain this to me? Please post in the comments section possible scenarios for this ad. Best scenario gets a prize. Bonus points for anyone who calls the number.

Pancakes

Big changes have happened over the last week or so. I've gone and completely changed my plan of attack for the next year and I'm much happier about where I'm going now.

My original plan was to get a job to make some money and then start school at Le Cordon Bleu in October. I found myself a job at Spago inside the forum shops in Caesars Palace. When I interviewed there, I told the managers that I really wanted to work in the kitchen. They said that I could start off as a busser and work my way up in about six months or so. I signed the paperwork, got my uniform and went to work. It was simply the shittiest thing I've ever had to do. Being a busser is degrading work and you're basically looked down upon by the rest of the staff. Add in long hours and crap pay and you have an experience I wouldn't want to wish upon anyone. I worked there for two nights and on the third night, halfway through my shift, I pulled my manager aside and told him that I would be leaving and not coming back. The managers were cool about it and I think there was a pool going somewhere on how long I would last. I was an idiot for even taking a job in the first place. Anyhoo, I left and that basically took me back to square one; looking for a job.

I was feeling depressed for a few reasons. I really wanted to start school, I felt like I was treading water and I felt like my life had no direction anymore. I decided to do something about my plight, so I booked an appointment with my admissions rep from school. I wanted to get my education rolling as soon as possible. I wanted to do this because I was not only eager to get the ball rolling, but Le Cordon Bleu has a job placement program that's supposed to be pretty good. I went and talked to the office and now things are completely different.

I started school on Tuesday and they got me a job that I start on Monday. Not some shitty job either but one that will help me with my education. I'll be working at a popular breakfast place (the serve lunch and dinner too) called 'Hash House a Go Go'. I interviewed yesterday and the chef called me this morning to offer me a position on the line. I'll go through a couple of days of training and then I'll be in charge of the pancake station. Sweet!

I'll be cooking stuff like this

How happy am I now? I don't remember being this happy for quite some time. I've got alot of work ahead of me, and I'm going to be working alot of hours over the next year - 7:00am - 2:00pm at work and then 3:00pm - 9:00pm for school, Monday through Friday - but that doesn't bother me at all. I'm very excited about school and I'm very excited about cooking for a living.

School is alot of fun. Our instructor, Chef Salvati, is a great teacher who uses humor to get his message to the students. He's a small Italian man that's always singing; either opera, or Elvis songs in Italian, both of which I find extremely entertaining. We're doing mostly lectures right now so there's a fair amount of note taking (which I haven't done in over 10 years) but Chef has already got us making food. Actually, it's not exactly food. We're making stock for the other, more advanced classes. We've been simmering various chicken carcasses, vegetables and spices to make both white and brown stocks and even though this is one of the simplest tasks a cook has to do, I'm finding it thoroughly enjoyable. One of the other things chef has been teaching us is knife technique, which is my favorite thing right now. I guess I find the thought of playing with new toys rather exciting (a kit with nine knives and various other utensils was given to me on the first day). We also get fed every night with the stuff the other students are making. For the next week or so I'm assigned to the American cuisine class so I get to eat stuff like clam chowder and fried chicken.

Dinner: mashed potatoes, fried chicken, roasted chicken, smoked sausage and inside the bun is spicy deep fried oysters.

Another thing we had to do was memorize all the spices used in the kitchen. This was a rather daunting task. Most of the spices I knew, but there were a few that were similar in look and smell so I basically ate/smelled/looked at a bunch of spices until I had them down.

So many to remember

So that's the new plan. I feel so much better about myself now that I've made these changes and started my new career in the culinary industry. Come Monday, I'll be flippin' pancakes for a living. Stop by if you're in Vegas.