Happy Monday!

I stayed home from school today because poor Julianne was freaking out. I guess her scabs are coming loose and bleeding a little. She seems to feel a lot worse than she did over the weekend. Heck, she ate pizza yesterday (with very soft crust and bland white sauce)! Today a Slurpee hurts her too much. Her discharge papers said this would happen but that isn't making her feel better. She's been sleeping for awhile. When she gets up I'll overcook some noodles for her. Yuck!

Wordle from this blog. Cool!

Make one here.

I'll stop procrastinating tomorrow...

I have homework to do. I put it off all weekend and am almost out of time! It's due tomorrow. We didn't have school on Wednesday and this assignment counts as our attendance for that day. Why do we need credit for a day that there is no class? It's not rocket science. It's a five-paragraph essay on a famous culinarian and their contributions to our industry. I should just whip it out real quick. I have an Escoffier biography that I borrowed from Le Cordon Bleu and haven't been back to return (but I will). Easy! Composition is just not my thing. Never was. I love to read more than almost anything else but I don't write! I've done the research and now I am doing anything except writing! So.........how 'bout some Thanksgiving pictures?

My brother, Jim, made from scratch a pecan pie, two pumpkin pies, a very thick apple pie, a cheesecake, and a sugar-free cheesecake. Two of the kids are badly diabetic including his daughter, Sarah. He did a great job! It was all YUMMY! It was also the only leftovers I brought home (big pice of each). I'm kicking myself, too, because a turkey sandwich just sounds sooooooo goooooood!

Julianne goes to church camp every summer with my old church with the kids of the kids I was in youth group with and she meets a lot of kids from that neck of the woods. Every time she is at Granny's someone comes to visit her. This is Matt. He's a good kid. He stopped and got extra green beans on his way because I was left unattended to make green bean casserole and somehow cayenne ended up in it. Weird. C'mon, I'm a culinary student--you didn't really expect just salt and pepper?! Poor Julianne--that was the one dish she looked forward to most and it hurt her throat thanks to me.

Sarah & Dan:

Joshy-Poo:

My girls, Aubrey, Julianne, & Abby:

Julianne is doing pretty well. She can even eat if she takes her medicine (hydrocodone?). It's liquid and tastes pretty awful. She can choke it down in red cream soda, though. She still doesn't like to take it because she's pretty worthless under its influence. She is starting to form scabs in her throat and freaked just a little this morning when she saw them. I understand that she will get worse again when they come off. Oh, joy.

Going to make a pot of tea now and think about Escoffier...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

I am so thankful for my family and friends and for the opportunity to go back to school and for wonderful classmates! I'm thankful that JT is bored stiff in Iraq. He complains all the time but the rest of us are glad! I am thankful to be so close to my extended family and for the chance to get together with all of them this afternoon and for all of that good food we will eat! I hope everyone is happy and safe and has plenty to be grateful for.

I am also thankful that Julianne is feeling better than I expected her to feel today. She had tonsils and adnoids removed Tuesday. I'm thankful for insurance and for family that helped me with copays when I couldn't pay all of them. I didn't know that I had to pay the parts that insurance doesn't cover up front until Monday afternoon. I thought they would be billed. I panicked! Her dad refused to help with even half (and, yes, it is in the court order that he has to) so I am very grateful that I have a couple of family members who love her and didn't care about their legal obligations. He said that he doesn't have to pay for anything except the insurance. He does. I just have never asked him to before. This is not the place to vent about that so I'll drop it now. Julianne isn't as puny as I thought she would be. She ate some chicken yesterday and mashed potatoes. She is eating a lot of yogurt. Her medicines are liquid and taste pretty awful but they help a lot. This morning everything from the neck up is hurting and her ear and jaws ache but she'll be okay. From now on sinus infections won't turn as severe as they have. For THAT I am very, very thankful!

7:00 is just too early to fabricate chickens! We are making chicken stock. More knife cuts, too. I will update this post with recipes in the next few days. Promise!

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Yesterday we started actually cooking at school! We made vegetable stock. We practiced knife cuts, too, (and mine were very good this time!) but we're gonna be actually cooking now. and we can't cook without stock As I said before stock is the base of all soups and a lot of sauces and we go through a ton of it. Next week we'll make more kinds. Cool! I think I should share some recipes.

Vegetable Stock

1 oz. vegetable oil, mild-tasting (at home I use grapeseed oil for almost everything)
16 oz. onion, rough small dice
8 oz. carrots, rough small dice
8 oz. celery, rough small dice
4 oz. mushrooms, stems and peelings, rough small dice
4 oz. leeks, finely diced
4 oz. shallots, minced
4 oz. fennel bulbs, rough small dice
2 oz. garlic, minced
2 oz. turnip, rough small dice
1/2 oz. parsley stems
4 bay leaves
1/2 tablespoon cracked black pepper
2 teaspoons dry thyme leaves
8 oz. dry white wine
8 oz. tomato, rough chopped
water as needed (to cover)

In a suitable pot, heat the oil over low heat.

Add onion, celery, mushrooms, leeks, shallots, fennel, garlic, turnip, parsley stems, bay leaves, pepper, and thyme.

Sweat the vegetables until they are well-softened. Do not brown.

Add the wine, tomatoes, and water.

Bring to a simmer.

Carefully skim the impurities from the surface of the stock.

Simmer for 45 minutes.

Strain carefully through a china cap and then through a chinois.

Cool, wrap, label, and store properly.

When completely chilled, carefully remove congealed fat from the surface.

I have almost two weeks down. Only 88 to go! I found out that the Culinary Management degree takes 70 more weeks so I'm not sure if I will do that or not. I'll wait until then and see what is going on in my life. I heard, though, that we are actively working on offering a bachelor's degree at L'Ecole Culinaire and I will definately do that if we do. It will surely be a done deal before I graduate with an associates degree in 2011 (a month or so after I move Julianne into her dorm). We were told this week to expect guests next week. I can't remember details (or didn't hear them well) but I know that it is related to becoming accredited for something new and that we will have the first level of certification, Certified Culinarian, automatically when we graduate. COOL!

This week has been all about knife cuts in lab. I still need practice with dices! My tournes aren't real horrible but aren't the proper size, either, and not consistent sizes. I haven't cut myself yet! Lectures have been sanitation/food safety, spices and seasonings, equipment, that kind of stuff and I remember most of it. We have a quiz tomorrow and I will study all evening.

I am enjoying school more than I did at Le Cordon Bleu. Maybe it's less stressful because it's easier to get there or maybe I'm just less intimidated by the whole process and more committed to the industry in general. When I started LCB I wanted to be called a chef and I wanted to do something exciting somewhere else after Julianne left home and I thought this was a good job for that and I wanted to have a personal chef business of my own. I did not want to work in a restaurant. Now I kinda do--a smallish one still. This time I want the highest certification I can earn and I want to do very well in school and not just pass everything. I'm excited about every part of the whole thing and not just little pieces. KWIM?

I liked my classmates at LCB a lot but my new ones are just awesome people. There is a big range of ages in there! There are some kids in their early 20s and there is one dude who just retired from Chrysler after 42 years. I like being in the middle. I'm just more relaxed and enjoying the people at school more this time. I'm glad that I am at L'Ecole Culinaire and I wish that I had considered it when I started in the first place. It was a good decision!

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Just a test!

YES!!! Apparently I can blog from my phone. You're gonna get sick of me now!

School is cool. I'm really enjoying it. I guess I'm better-rested today because I didn't feel like whining once! We started knife cuts so I got to play with my new, pretty chef's knife. We chopped some carrots and celery and then pasted garlic and minced parsley. Chef called it "competition parsley" which I hadn't heard before.

After our lab there was an ice cream social for the new students. It was horrible, I tell ya! ;) They are really mistreating us. The pastry chef ("Chef Santa") made four kinds of homemade ice cream. I grabbed pumpkin. I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven! I love pumpkin anyway but this had candied ginger mixed in. YUM!!! I mean, dang it! I hate school!

We also had our first quiz. I don't know what to think about it. I felt that I knew the material but I wasn't sure how to answer a couple of things. I hope I did well. How embarrassing it would be not to!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARINES!!! Semper Fi!

We are not going to talk about the football game last night. Let's just say that I won't have to sit in the snow this year for playoffs and leave it at that. The weather was very nice for sitting outside. I worked in the concession stand for the first half but only wore my coat for maybe half of the second. I sat with some other parents (the funnest, noisiest ones!) and had a blast. Looking forward to basketball!

I slept better last night. I started a little too late to feel great today but at least I slept! This morning I walked to 711 for coffee before my carpool got here. About halfway there I tripped in my clumsy chef shoes. I threw one hip and shoulder out of whack and they are sooooooo sore! I skinned a hand and an elbow and scraped the heck out of one knee! The knee and elbow are turning darker and darker. When was the last time I skinned my knee? I'm going to be black and blue tomorrow! And stiff! Today I am very thankful for Tylenol!

School was cool. I don't want to say that I'm bored because that's so negative and I don't want to have a negative attitude toward school. I like it. I really do. We went over all of the small equipment in the kitchen and through each piece of our knife kits. Lecture time was mostly the history of our industry--Careme, Escoffier, and so on. It is very interesting and I took thorough notes the first time! I had a hard time hearing today (battery might be dead) and might have been less bored if I could have followed better. Standing around achy and too tired didn't help. More than anything, I don't want to come across to my instructors or my classmates as a know-it-all. That's annoying! I obviously do not know everything or think I do. I'm just saying that I very recently covered the materials that we are going over right now and I still remember them. We start knife cuts Thursday. I never did master that so it will do me a lot of good! I sure need practice! I tourned a potato to show Julianne Sunday. It was horrible but not even close to my first few in class.

I really have to start eating before school! We won't be cooking anything to actually eat for a few weeks and the smells from the other classes are soooooo gooooood!

Our knife kits don't have nearly as many things as the ones from Le Cordon Bleu but I think the knives are even better! This chef's knife is awesome!

To nap or not to nap?

That is the question. I don't know what was wrong with me last night (maybe I was just excited or nervous about today) but I never did even doze off! I hate that! I finally just got up at 4:00 and made myself poached eggs and toast and a pot of tea. By the time the alarm went off I had consumed all of that, showered, ironed, dressed, and played on the computer. All day I've been so sleepy that I've been nauseous and when I get no sleep I feel like I have a cold--runny nose, achy eyes, scratchy throat. So now I'm home and miserable and I just want to sleep. I'm not sick--just overtired. I'll be fine after I sleep. I have six hours until I have to be in the concession stand. If I sleep now and sleep for too long will I be able to sleep tonight? I really wish football was a different night. I would just suffer until about 6:00 and then crash! Obviously, missing the game is not an option. Whining isn't helping anything so I guess I'll stop now!

School was great. I felt like crap but it was an easy day. We waited around a lot early because we had to wait in line to get our stuff and so did some other classes and they went first. When we finally got to our kitchen and met our instructors, they introduced themselves and then divided us in half. One (Chef Smith--I guess it's last names here) took one half on a pretty extensive tour of school while the other (Chef Dewes) gave the other half a tour of the kitchen and all of the equipment. Then they switched. We took a little break and then had lecture, which was basically going over every minute detail of our class syllabus. That wasn't good. We sat still for that and I had a very hard time keeping my eyes open! Our new books are awesome and the knife kit is great! I'll have more to report tomorrow.

Well, tomorrow is my first day at L'Ecole Culinaire and I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited! We had Orientation last Thursday.  It was three hours of pep talks--what a great decision we've made, what a wonderful industry, etc.--and rules and that stuff and I thought I would pull my friggin' hair out. We didn't get our loot. We get it all tomorrow except uniforms. We get some utility shirts and aprons and maybe hats but the rest will take a couple of weeks. I don't know what the hold up is--maybe that our names are embroidered on the jackets (cool). We wear jeans or our own chef pants if we have some (of course I do from LCB) and a plain white shirt with the utility shirts that they will provide in the meantime. I was disappointed to not have my new knife kit and new books to play with over the weekend. We are encouraged to personalize the cases of our kits so we can tell them apart easily (and will be able to engrave our names on the blades of the knives in class). I assigned Julianne with that task. She's very excited and even wants to pay for puff paint herself to do it. Actually, she's thinking about getting a Bedazzler! There is no telling what I will end up with but I can't wait to see! I'll bet nobody grabs mine on accident! My plans are to finish the degree program in Culinary Arts and then to go back and get a degree in Culinary Management. I can't remember how long that takes but not nearly as long as Culinary Arts but it will help a lot with the job prospects. I get more excited all the time about the career possibilities. I need to dig out my class notes from LCB and study them.

Our Blue Devils are in playoffs AGAIN this year! They won their District game against The Principia last week and play Brentwood in the Regionals game tomorrow night. It's a home game for us and I am working in the concession stand for the first half of the game. I hope the weather is as gorgeous as it has been for the last few days! I have short sleeves and open windows today. It's incredible! The sun is shining. At the last couple of football games I shivered until my back ached! Maybe it won't be as bad for this one. The Principia section of the stands was packed and their fans were on fire! That's cool. There was a bunch, though, that thought it was real clever to come sit in the middle of us. Then they seemed a little put out by our cowbells and very enthusiastic fans! Whatever! At least they are a very polite and civilized group and nobody waited around to "shank" anyone after the game!

Andrew was home for Halloween weekend. He & Julianne bought new fish and a new frog for her aquarium. One of the black fish is dead already! Since she set up the tank last January she has lost two frogs (keeps replacing them), a couple of big snails, and a couple of suck-uppers. The angel fish and a pink fish are the only two original residents. She started with two angels and several pink ones. We both like the angel fish. He (she?) will follow your finger against the side of the glass. It makes us imagine he likes us and wants petted. We're goofy.

This dude has been at every game that I've been to for three years now. He's great! He yells instructions and encouragement with his autographed megaphone. The players probably can't hear him but he makes me feel better!

I love this kid's spirit (and his hair)!

Did I mention that we won our Trans-Siberian Orchestra tickets this year? My friend, Linda, entered an essay contest and she & I won. It's so cool! I didn't know how I was going to be able to afford to go this year and I so badly want to! Thank you, Linda!!!  Thank you to all of our Facebook friends who voted for us!