A year of Gastronomy: She said

Oh yah babe!

*Sorry for the Emeril reference, but it popped into me head first*

Brian and I started Culinary School today. Sure, we had met some of the people during our uniform fitting and then maybe again at orientation, but this was our first chance to all 'show each other' who we were.

We joked that we have two, potentially three, ringers in our class who are professionals masquerading as amateurs. There was a former pastry chef who made profiteroles today with great panache and a drizzled dark chocolate glaze and shaved white chocolate on top. Another who has spent some time in kitchens who made glorious swans on a lake of dark chocolate with beautiful pulled white chocolate lines through it. We all thought that it was just like the swan boats on the common.
Then there was the girl who has spent three years working for the quintessential cranky French chef who throws pans at the staff when he's unhappy. She too made a bevy (herd) of pate a choux swans all chatting together with a gorgeous plating presentation. We all looked like amateurs next to them.

We spent the first 3 hours or so in a lecture. As this was day one it was a lot of the basics of the school along with the lesson itself. Then after a demo of pate a choux we chose our recipes and we were off to the kitchen to ~~screw them up~~ make them ourselves. I have to say though that everyone did a great job. Even the mise en place in a strange kitchen went pretty well with only a few excuse me, bump, ooops, sorry, where did you find that(?), amongst ourselves.
Since mine went into the oven pretty early and it was a one stage dish with no pastry cream or chocolate glaze I hit the sinks. I can seriously say I have never washed so many bloody dishes in my life. My hands need to sit in a vat of shea butter right now, my back aches; I ate not a thing today until I sampled the class booty at around 3:30. No food meant no medicine for me, coupled with carrying 20 - 30 pounds of gear on my back, and about 10 - 20 loads in and out of the sanitizer means that my body aches in ways I didn't know was possible. But lordy, lordy lordy. I feel good. It's an honest day's work instead of a days aggravation at a boring desk job. I came home with some goodies for hubby to try and immediately sought ways to lighten my daily carrying load by about 15 - 20 pounds. That binder with a semesters worth of recipes shall be pared down to only the essentials for each class, the bottle of water will come with me empty and be filled at work, the apple I brought for breakfast that remained uneaten - left at home. And I can't tell you how happy I am that husband made chili yesterday to have for dinner tonight. Mmmmm, dinner without cooking.

I'm exhausted and happy and ready to do it all again at 8:00 tomorrow.