Pressure Cooker!

I apologize for not reporting about my first day as soon as i came back, but since i started at 11:30 am and finished at 11:00pm i was tired, hungry, and too wipeed out to blog or really do anything besides shower, eat, and sleep. To be honest, i had a terrible first day. It began with my santiation class taught by a cheery Austrailian Chef. This is an academic class and fairly boring since all we do is learn about food safety, diseases, and such. Its in a class room so obviously, its not a cooking course at all. Then my actual cooking class began at 6:00pm and although taught in a kitchen, we haven't actually cooked anything yet. My class is taught be two chefs. I wont say their real names (incase they google themselves and find my ratting about them) so I'll call one Chef Woodstock (cause he told us he used to have a serious drug problem and was a Woodstock regular) and Chef France (hes a french/algerian chef with a VERY thick accent). Chef Woodstack certainly did a good job of scaring the crap out of me. He spent like an hour explaining how he doesn't tolerate sexual harassment. We were given lots of papers and handouts. There is so much work involved! we have to have a 3 inch binder with all our recipes in plastic holders (talk about expensive!) and TYPE all of our notes and re-write all the recipes on cards and put those in the notebook as well. We have lots of reading and math assignments, mostly about measuring things. For example, we had about an hour lecture of stock and to make stock it must be 100% water, 50% bones, and 10% mirepoix (which is celery, onions, and carrots). You have to be able to convert gallons into lbs, and then into cups, pint, teaspoons, etc...its rather mindblowing and i was never good at math. Anyhow, i came home the first day in tears. I felt so stressed and i dont want to be a wimp and on the first day!? i cant just give up but i am so afraid i will fail at this. There are so many things that i can do wrong, so many ways to mess this up. A single day missed puts a big damper on your grade, and more than two days, forget it, your gone. I know i wanted a serious program, but its stressing me out. The second day was a little better. We didnt cook, but we learned the knife cuts (Julienne, Battonet, Brunosie, parmenteir etc...) and we got a demo of rice pilaf, chicken stock, risotto, balnched spinach, green beans, and broccoli, and sauted mushrooms. This is an Intro of Culinary Arts class, so obviously the things we learn are very basic. We were all starving so we tated the demos. The sauted mushrooms were very simply made with some butter, olive oil, and salt, but i found they WAY to salty. Chef France made them and he's a smoker, and people who smoke have a hard time tasting salt, so this may have been why. Chef Woodstock made the pilaf which was slighly overdone (he admitted to it too) and the risotto was alright, but i am not a big cheese person and he added to it some at the end. Some of the students asked the chefs if they cook at home, and both said never. Actually, Chef Woodstock said that he loves McDonalds. Alright, i can a appreicate a good burger as well but McDonalds? seriously have you seen their burgers!? i prefer old fashion burger joints, hell even fat burger is a step up from McDonalds! the fries i admit are tempting, but good lord i hope his taste buds are more refined. Anyhow, i'll try to post daily but dont count on it cause i am SO stressed right now. It might calm down as i get the hang of how it works and learn to managae my time better. Today i think i actually get to cook, probably rice pilaf and some blanched veggies. I'll let you know how they turned out, i just hope the I wont wilt like the spinach by the end of the week for my birthday.