my classes rawk

Oh my god. I just had my first cooking class - basic food preparation skills. Or something. Anyway, what matters is that it's 1.5 hours of lecture, followed by 4 hours of lab/kitchen. Though we didn't actually get to cook anything today, we talked about the class content and the different skills we'd be learning. Squee!

Basically, for $600, I will learn about and then demonstrate my abilities in: knife skills, poultry, seafood, meats (we break down a whole spring lamb and a rack of pig!), sauces, soups, stocks, dairy, eggs, quickbreads, yeast breads, cakes, salads, sandwiches, and appetizers (which we get to invite friends and family to!). Each of us in the class is also in charge of managing one section, meaning we'll order all the food in advance for lab and then supervise and grade our classmates.

My midterm (and how cool is this) will be a written exam followed by a lab practical: the trussing, roasting, carving, and serving of a fucking chicken!

I get to do a final project on whatever the hell I want, having to do with food. (Any suggestions? I'm thinking of going hunting for wild mushrooms...or writing about a certain local distillery.)

My other classes are menu planning and intro to the hospitality industry. I might actually end up dropping menu planning, because I think it's aimed at students who are further into the program...and I'm going to be exhausted by the twice-a-week 5-hour food prep anyway (this doesn't bode well for my career as as chef). The hospitality industry class is taught by an adorably awkward Asian man, and it looks really interesting - it covers a lot of the non-culinary aspects of the service industry (hotels, casinos, cruise ships, event planning).

THIS IS GOING TO BE AWWWEESOME