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.....