When days off are bad
I don't know about anyone else in my class, but I'm feeling like crap today. After six days of getting to school at 2:30am for Breakfast Cookery, I was finally get used to a schedule involving going to bed around 8pm and waking up around 1am. Last night I stayed up until a normal time, 11pm, and got up this morning around 9:30. Of course, that's about eight hours later than I'm used to getting my coffee these days, so I've had a pounding headache all day which coffee couldn't fix. I'm also tired, but figure I shouldn't nap because I won't be able to get to sleep tonight. So instead, I did my homework and am now blogging. Really, this whole thing would have been easier if we'd be able to do seven straight days of breakfast.
Tomorrow is the last day of breakfast. We have a final exam, which should be no problem, and I'm on the baking station. Yesterday I made dough for doughnuts, which I've never done before, so I'll let you know how they turn out. Tuesday we start the second half of this block, Lunch Cookery, for which I won't have to be at school until 8am (we also don't get out until 3:30, so it's a tradeoff), and we have our lecture before service instead of after.
One of the benefits of being a student is that we're allowed to order food from the storeroom at very good prices. With a few days of notice, you can get the same quality ingredients we use in our kitchens with all the benefit of the CIA's buying power. The one catch is that you have to order rare or hard-to-find items and spend a minimum of $20 -- so no putting in a order for a pound of onions, for example. Yesterday I placed my order: two ducks, one beef tenderloin, one bottle of white truffle oil, and one bottle of yuzu juice. To give you an idea how much we can save, the tenderloin runs $9.24 a pound. If you buy tenderloin steaks at the grocery store, they'll probably run you at least twice that. I'll pick these things up on Tuesday.
Yuzu tastes like a very tart cross between orange and lime, and I think it will go very well in a gin and tonic.
In other news, it looks like I'll be able to get Thomas Keller's autograph after all. In anticipation of his visit, I bought The French Laundry Cookbook on the off chance I'd be able to slip away from class and attend his book signing. When I went to return the book last week (we're poor, remember), the woman at the bookstore said she had five other books to send to him to be signed and asked if I'd like to add mine to the shipment. You bet!
Tomorrow is the last day of breakfast. We have a final exam, which should be no problem, and I'm on the baking station. Yesterday I made dough for doughnuts, which I've never done before, so I'll let you know how they turn out. Tuesday we start the second half of this block, Lunch Cookery, for which I won't have to be at school until 8am (we also don't get out until 3:30, so it's a tradeoff), and we have our lecture before service instead of after.
One of the benefits of being a student is that we're allowed to order food from the storeroom at very good prices. With a few days of notice, you can get the same quality ingredients we use in our kitchens with all the benefit of the CIA's buying power. The one catch is that you have to order rare or hard-to-find items and spend a minimum of $20 -- so no putting in a order for a pound of onions, for example. Yesterday I placed my order: two ducks, one beef tenderloin, one bottle of white truffle oil, and one bottle of yuzu juice. To give you an idea how much we can save, the tenderloin runs $9.24 a pound. If you buy tenderloin steaks at the grocery store, they'll probably run you at least twice that. I'll pick these things up on Tuesday.
Yuzu tastes like a very tart cross between orange and lime, and I think it will go very well in a gin and tonic.
In other news, it looks like I'll be able to get Thomas Keller's autograph after all. In anticipation of his visit, I bought The French Laundry Cookbook on the off chance I'd be able to slip away from class and attend his book signing. When I went to return the book last week (we're poor, remember), the woman at the bookstore said she had five other books to send to him to be signed and asked if I'd like to add mine to the shipment. You bet!
posted by JMB at
12:09 PM
2 Comments:
Cool on the Keller autograph! I got Chef Morimoto's autograph in a similar fashion when he did a demo at Uwajimaya a couple of years ago.
By
Terrence O'Leary, at 1:12 PM
Good to hear you made it through breakfast, I can only imagine what that must have been like getting up at 1! Now on to a more normal sleep schedule!
By
Anonymous, at 10:14 PM
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