First full week of school

Oh boy! Lots of work got handed to me this week. It is like a never ending list. Talk about me being overwhelmed. You would think I was studying to be a doctor. But it is all good and it is important to my education. I just need to buckle down and get my self organized. The tough thing about school these days is that just about every class has a different source (program) on the computer where you get assignments, turn in homework, download articles to read, and take quizzes on. I like the old paper method. That way I don't have to get on the computer 50,000 times a week to check and make sure I didn't miss anything. Technology today is driving me insane. Yes, it has its good points, but please give me a break by just giving me one location/platform on the web to find all my school information.

I start in the kitchen on Monday, September 12. I can't wait! The only thing that bothers me is that we work in teams. Right now I am only in the kitchen one time a week for roughly 4 1/2 hours. So the first day in the kitchen we are making stocks. Well, what it boils down to is that each team is assigned one stock to make, and then next week we are assigned one mother sauce. So, for example, I will have made chicken stock and Hollandaise sauce in school and never make the other ones. Now, I do realize the school budget and class time are both small, and what we pay for the class is a lot smaller than the bigger schools. But ....., this seems a little weak to me. So hopefully somewhere I will gain the knowledge from observing what the other teams are doing or I'll be able to fit it in at home. But in my opinion it is not the same learning by yourself.

The one thing we also do in this class is make lunch for the culinary students to eat. The same principle applies to making lunch as the things we make in class. Not all students get a chance to make all the items (in fact, a very small percentage will we even get hands on with). I believe the first week my team gets to make a caesar salad. It should be really interesting to see how this all works out. I'm hoping for the best.

We also got to take a tour of the kitchen and boy is it the cleanest kitchen you have seen. For as many years as this kitchen has been used at Gwinnett Tech, the kitchen looks bran spanking new. They are very strict on keeping it clean. As the Chef said, for the most part, they always get 100's on their heath inspections.