Jubilation!

"It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys."
~Antione De Saint-Exupery

Who likes exciting news? Everybody?!

Exciting news everybody! They emailed me back last weekend! I got to stage again for the place I worked at two weeks ago and they offered me a job! I'm so excited I can't stop smiling! Or dancing! I'm so happy that I get to go back and play and learn in that kitchen for a while! WOO HOO!
My weekend wasn't shaping up quite like I had hoped it would. My plans to go to Indiana and see the Magnificent Ms. Fox didn't work out because the train schedule and my school schedule just wouldn't pan out, at least not for this weekend. I was starting to feel a little bummed as a result of this unfortunate information and then BAM! awesomeness! The way the events unfolded was really amusing too. After I wrote a thank you email to the Executive Chef for the opportunity to work in his kitchen I realized that I really should thank the man who put my name in the Chef's hat in the first place, so I wrote him an email as well. The result was a back and forth correspondence of what staging was and the such. This friend of the family asked me if a stage was all I was looking for out of it so I wrote back that I would have loved to work there but I hadn't heard back and maybe I wasn't at the right level, or just right for, or all the hundreds of 'nice' ways to say that they didn't want me while trying to not be a disappointed baby about the whole thing. As soon as I hit the 'send' button I look at my inbox and BAM email from the Executive Chef telling me that they'd like me back and if I could come back Tuesday (yesterday). I just about combusted with joy. There was ridiculous dance moves nonstop smiles. I start today which means this gets to be a short post but I'll post more when I can on the matter!

Tulips With Which to Taste

Apparently there is just something about tulips, or maybe just flowers in general, that make it impossible to escape them in the world of the arts. This, to my great surprise, includes the culinary arts as well. Now, when I say tulip I don't actually mean the flower, just the flower motif. In class yesterday I learned that a tulip is a kind of cut of poultry (it may apply to other meats, too, but right now it is just poultry). It is essentially a drumstick but with the bone cleaned. It looks like this:

  

Neat, huh. Not quite the sophisticated style of the impressionists, but they had paint brushes and we have knives. All in all, I think we've done pretty well with the tools given us. I also learned how serious the French are about their chicken. According to my new professor, there is a whole town in France that takes chicken and raising chickens for food so seriously that the whole place is a no fly zone lest the planes make too much noise and stress out the poor birds. The town is named Brest (which if you ask me is just a little too much on the nose) and I now have this sick goal to go there just to go chicken tipping. I realize you can't tip chickens like you would cows, but I can scare them a little bit and see if anyone notices the difference in the consistency of the protein on their plate. I'm a little evil, I know.

My new class has officially started and we hit the ground running. So far our lecture days are mostly filled with making a time table for the series of dishes for the next day in the kitchen and our kitchen days are just filled. Pretty much as soon as I get to school I put my head down and start processing dishes. Its really interesting and I, of course, love it. Work is still good. We're going into the holiday season which means we have seen a lot more parties as of late which is a fun wrench in the works to hopscotch around. 

I have officially gone to a four day work week. Its a little odd. I definitely needed the extra day and once the homework gets going in this class I'm pretty sure I'll be back to a much more hectic schedule but right now I feel so weird. I'm rested, organized, heck, I'm even bored on occasion! I'm not sure I entirely like it. I'm thinking of maybe throwing some volunteer work into the mix. My two ideas would be a local soup kitchen or the Chicago equivalent to the Dumb Friends League. My other option is to take up a hobby like writing again, but that feels almost selfish. I will have to mull it over for a bit and let you know what I come up with. 

In the mean time, I am emailing a chef at my school for his input on a long shot. I'm going to try to get an externship at the French Laundry. I really doubt I'll get it but like the Lotto says, you gotta play to win. Maybe all my luck that I haven't used betting at lotto will help me land this externship. Haha. We will just have to see.....

Out of the Frying Pan and back into the Blogspot

Hello! Long time no post, I know. Life has been a little loaded lately, but I am going to start asking to work four days a week now instead of five so, hopefully, all of you lovely people won't have to go a month and then some without some news from me. So much has happened in all that time, too. For starters, I finished my first term (I earned A's in both my classes), I got two new classes and a brand new Chef Instructor who I really like. Now, as of Wednesday, I'm done with her classes (I Aced both of them as well) too and I start a brand new term on Monday. So, essentially, I made you all miss a term of my school. I'll try not to let that happen again. My last Chef instructor was pretty cool too. We both have a gluten intolerance so she and I both really bonded over that as well as the fact that I work in one of her favorite restaurants in the city. She liked to pick my brain about the kitchen there and my Executive Chef. She even asked me to have him come in and talk in front of my classmates, which he was sweet enough to do. It was really amazing, actually, to here him talk about the industry from his perspective.
Like I said, I start a new set of classes on Monday with a focus on Meats and Fish so I'm going to the big girl stuff now. I think I'm going to try to take lots of pictures of all the food I make so I'll be sure to pass those pictures along here. Anyway, I'll post more soon, I promise. I hope everyone had a fun and crazy Halloween!