Okay! New term, new group of people to spend 11 weeks with, six hours a day. This term I’m taking a 7am-1pm class (so early! waking at 5:45am) for lab classes and then two afternoon academic classes, sanitation and menu planning and cost control—so it’s kind of a long day. Our first class was Principles of Beverage Service, it was a really cool class. You know how cool the bartender is, we got to be that cool! :0 Anyway, I’m a total wino so I really enjoyed all of the information on wine, the different varieties and vineyards. Really handy information for a restaurant and just for wine drinkers in general, it has broadened my choices when choosing a wine at restaurants and in grocery stores. I really enjoyed this teacher too, she was inspiring, the kind of teacher that makes you want to fulfill your lifelong dream and trek around Europe for a year. She was also a chef, so she made really great connections between drink choices and food, as well as cooking with alcohol—great ideas for cooking with gran marnier. First impression of the class is pretty good, there are two older people, a man and a woman, and the rest of us are pretty much 20 to 27 years old, much older than my last class whose average age was 18.5. We’re not cooking in this class so we really don’t know how each other will be once we finally get in a kitchen. Felt pretty good about throwin’ the bottles around in this class, finally learned what a Manhattan and a Rob Roy and a Cosmo had in them—I’m such a loser all I ever drink is captain and tequila. Also, really liked learning about making beer (one of the guys from class brought in homemade beer), fortification of spirits, and food and wine pairings. We even had port and really expensive bleu cheese on Christmas Eve, and made bleu cheese stuffed green olives. For our practical we had to memorize and serve drinks, four of us went at a time, and our chef would call out a drink and you would make it and just hope that you remembered on the spot. It really wasn’t that bad, either way, you just had to make it look like you knew what you were doing.
Our next class was Purchasing and Product Identification; this was a really cool class, even though it was down in the dungeon of the school. We got to work in the storeroom that fills requisition forms for all of the culinary classes cooking upstairs. We got to learn what all these crazy spices, produce, and grains, just everything down there—it was great! I saw uncooked whole Japanese eggplant for the first time, and totally didn’t know what the names of all those nuts and seeds and lentils were. Another fabulous teacher, I keep telling my parents that each gets better than the next, but I think what it really is is that they are all great, its just that I keep expecting one of them to be like this one professor I had in undergrad that was literally the bane of my existence for two years. Even the rigid and tough teachers at JWU have redeeming qualities, and I’m not talking about tough on uniform teachers—they are just following the guidelines (and all this little kids that complain about it all the time are the same annoying little kids that are never going to make it because not only do they not respect authority and the principles of the school, but they
are unable to uncomplainingly follow it. Its right there, its all written out, they knew that this was the way it would be, why complain?). Excuse my tangent…Anyway, great teacher, we weren’t cooking in this class, but our teacher was a chef (the teachers trade around classes a lot-god it would be so cool to work here!) who used to have a restaurant that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen, it was out on the beach here in NC and my mom’s brother has a house in the same little town—so it was a great connection. We did a group project on Habaneros, and I was in a group with the two 18 year olds of the class, so I wrote the whole thing, blah! I was like 13 pages! Johnson & Wales is a writing intensive school, were we have a writing project for each class. I, of course, love this because not only is it building my culinary portfolio, but also it keeps me up on writing. For our practical there were about 6 tables, each with like 8-10 products on them and a number and you had to identify each of them. Now this included liquids, and it was a pleasure smelling fish oil at 8am. I actually did better on this than I thought! She gave me a B+ though, and I’m not totally sure yet (because I’m waiting for final grades, but I’m pretty sure she’s the only one out of 22.5 hours worth of class this term that gave me a B L Either way, I learned so much in this class and have a lot of great resources left from it to look back on later.We finally get to cook! We’re taking Nutrition and Sensory Analysis, which is kind of intimidating if you’re not totally up on nutritious substitutes for butter and cream! I’m in a group with a guy I’m dating now, and I don’t know what wayward demon possessed or convinced me this would be a good idea. He’s got so much more training and experience than me we shouldn’t even be in the same school; and he’s so used to working in a restaurant that he’s not really nice when working together in class. I keep trying to ‘get hard’ and I’m pretty hard most of the time, I can sling ‘em back or suck it up depending on the circumstance, but sometimes I just have to cry (which I’ve only done that once so far!), it’s a little harder to take when you’re sleeping with that person. Moving away from my personal life to the class, my teacher was great, she was very creative and inspiring. I found it difficult to cook nutritiously with what we were given, not the recipes, but the type of recipes. Positives, I wasn’t totally up on my poaching and this class has sparked my interest—you can poach anything in anything kind of, and I’m having a lot of fun at home trying crazy combinations (although poaching in a compound butter is not nutritious in any sense, it tastes amazing). I also wasn’t used to making healthy sauces, I mean I’ve made light sauces before, but this class was more like demi-glace sauce or a sausage gravy with no butter (oh my! Secret-I did use a little butter:) We had to poach an egg for our practical and turn in two plated dishes that our group made on two days of production.
Check back soon for Part 2 of the Winter Term!
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