No Cooking, Some Learning

I haven’t been doing much blogging about culinary school because the first two weeks have been, uh, pretty unblogworthy. As you would expect, they don’t just hand you a knife and demand a perfect hollandaise – there is much to be learned before you even set foot in the kitchen. We learned vegetable and fruit identification (I can spot a horned melon a mile away), basic nutrition, equipment identification, and food safety. Tomorrow is our first quiz – herb identification (we’re allowed to nibble) and restaurant food safety practices (terrifying how much can go wrong).

Our Chef/Instructor has a STRONG preference for organic foods, grass-fed free range meats, and natural ingredients (no high fructose corn syrup). Part of each day is spent discussing how eating industrially produced meats and artificial ingredients will rot us on the inside. He supports his positions with newspaper and magazine articles, and the facts are actually pretty terrifying. Soooo, JF and I are going to be trying a little harder to eat locally, avoid scary meat laced with antibiotics, and stick to products with ingredients we recognize. The only drawback is the cost, so I guess we’ll be eating a lot of organic rice and beans.

I’m off to Whole Foods to review my fresh herbs for tomorrow’s quiz. After the quiz we begin meat fabrication (butchering) – hopefully they let us take some for homework!