Day 1 of Week 7 focused entirely on starches. Some of us made grits, others made pilaf and Chef made risotto. All of it was good. I ate all of it. My new team and I were assigned the pilaf, which is basically just herb-infused boiled rice. We did an okay job, but it would have been better if we had used more herbs since it was a little bland. I believe that pilaf is supposed to have a sort of earthy taste. If not then we did it entirely wrong. But it was fun to cook as it normally is. We have to learn the basics before we can begin the complexities of cooking.

Day 2 of Week 7 entitled the breaking down of the chickens. We definitely made our headless chicken dance to the the chicken song. It was disgusting, and I’ll never break one down again if I can help it. As one person in my group said, “You [Jim] scare me with a knife”. In theory I understand how to break a chicken down, but in practice I have no idea. It would take a lot of practice for me to be able to accomplish this quickly and well.

The process includes removing the wishbone, hyper-extending joints and saving the oyster muscle. There’s definitely more to it than that, but I don’t feel like typing up every step. So there it is. Not only is removing the guts from a chicken disgusting, but the whole process of breaking down a chicken is just fairly difficult overall. I suck at it as I have already stated, so if any future students of Chef’s class read this, just be ready to struggle.

AHA Moment

There are a lot of things that I am either ignorant of, or am unwilling to learn. It’s important to be aware of one’s weaknesses, and it’s important to be okay with not knowing everything. But that doesn’t mean that you should become complacent with knowing what you know, and refusing to expand your knowledge and challenge yourself. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling backwards, and this is essentially the definition of complacency. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s just thinking of yourself less.

Day 1 of Week 6 was a relief from the previous week’s hectic and stressful planning. We presented our strengths and weaknesses from the previous week’s event and Chef demonstrated the importance of using salt and pepper to season food. He largely used the inartistic, yet helpful, picture found above to illustrate his points.

There are pores that rest on the surface of your tongue. Your taste buds reside within those porous holes on your tongue. When you eat something, particles, oils and juices flow into the pores, and your taste buds do their job. Salt widens those pores, allowing for more food to seep into them. This allows your taste buds to send signals to your brain communicating flavor at a higher capacity and at a faster rate, therefore amplifying your sensations when you eat.

Pepper, on the other hand, is pain. Your taste buds perceive black pepper, or spicy things in general, as a physical danger to your body, and your brain understands this as being literally on fire. But this is not the case of course. My question is why do people like pain? Most people seem to like some sort of spice on their main entree. It’s probably the subtle feeling of adventure that draws people to things that create a visceral reaction like black pepper does.

Day 2 of Week 6 had us experimenting with tastes. There are five major tastes that your tongue can perceive: Bitter, sour, sweet, umami and salty. Right off the bat people were spitting and choking on their first spoonful of salty water. I love watching people sputter (and I think chef does as well). So funny. But other than the constant complaining that made up this class period, I found the taste testing to be extremely informative. It makes a lot of sense to me now why most junk food exaggerates these flavors to make them more marketable.

AHA Moment

My AHA moment of this week came at the end of Day 2 when Chef asked for volunteers to help out at the Neverland Festival that helps feed 500 homeless children a year. Prioritizing how we spend our time outside of work and school is very important. And it seems to me that a lot of people prioritize things that are generally arbitrary. I’m not saying that you have to volunteer whenever they have a spare moment, but do you really need to update your Instagram so badly that you can’t hep feed some kids that wouldn’t eat otherwise? Putting life into perspective is very important to me, and it saddens me to see so many people who lack perspective.

It’s so easy to sit in this little protected bubble that we call the United States and say you’re a “good person” (whatever that means). But you’re not. And until you come to terms with that reality and start incorporating the inner beast that you are, you will never be able to be genuine in your empathy with other people. We should try our best to be our best every day, and volunteering is a great opportunity to demonstrate your effort as long as you go into it with the right attitude and mindset. As Professor Cauvin would say, “Perception is reality”.

Day 1 of Week 5 was Prep Day for Cream of Broccoli! How stressful! We got her done even though I personally made many mistakes along the way. Jasmine was certainly the rock of the team. She was cranking out peeled and sliced vegetables like a well-oiled machine. Steve seemed like he was doing a decent job making the potato puffs. My job was to focus on getting the velouté ready as soon as possible, and I didn’t. My bad. The velouté didn’t get on the move until there was about 25 minutes left of class, and it takes 45 minutes to an hour to prepare properly. I stayed after class to finish cooking, pureeing and cooling however, and it looks and tastes decent enough to serve. I hope.

Day 2 of Week 5 was Event day. Long story short, things didn’t go entirely to plan. But when do things ever go entirely to plan? Our teams’ level of success certainly increased as the event progressed, which I believe was the whole purpose. The idea behind taking a class on cooking is that you grow your knowledge base, and I personally learned a lot.

The weakest link in any chain indicates the true strength of said chain. While I will not name names, I do feel that there was an imbalance in the amount of work and passion put into this project by a member of our team. This imbalance resulted in a lack of clearly communicated expectations. I take responsibility for the areas in which I failed my team, but I will not take responsibility for that which we, as a team, had decided to divide upon the other two members.

AHA Moment

So, in an analysis of this previous paragraph, my AHA moment for this week is that 1. I can be a little bit of a control freak, and 2. I can only be in control of myself, my actions and my behavior and attitude about my surroundings, not other peoples’. Sometimes I find myself pushing other people aside and taking over their work because I feel that I can do the job that they are doing better and faster than they can. That’s just an ineffective and immature way of leading other people. I need to be willing to let other people fail so that they an learn instead of taking over and doing things for them, not only for their benefit, but also for my own. I cannot do everything by myself. It is impossible.