The Week Where The Uniform Came on And Milk Almost Came Up

Interesting Fact: If you need to ripen an avocado or a tomato quickly, place it in a brown paper bag with an apple. Apples emit ethanol which promotes ripening (and overripening, i.e. spoiling so pay attention to it)

Not that I knew what to expect from my first week of culinary school, but we didn't jump right into the cooking. In fact, the first unit has very little cooking in it at all. The first two lessons have been comprised of food identification which while slightly strange makes sense - you need to know what things are before you cook them.

We went through all nine categories of vegetables, tasting as we went. We went through all the herbs, I know have the cutest little herb chart in my notebook and can explain the difference between an herb and a spice. I know that I pretty much don't like the flavor of marjoram, what I need to make a good herbs de Provence and what the hell a sachet d'epices and fines herbs are, how to make them and what they are used for. Then came the rough part - dairy.

To give some background, I haven't drank a glass of milk probably since I was 8. I don't like the taste of it and when I do use any milk its always skim. After learning about cultures and fermentation, homogenization, and pasteurization, we then did our dairy tasting. I succession I tasted skim milk, 2% milk, whole milk, half and half, light cream, heavy cream, creme fraiche, sour cream, and whole milk yogurt with cream on top. By the 2% I began to turn green. I could feel the fat just coating my tongue. It was here that our chef-instructor informed us that the average culinary student gains 20 pounds during their training. Being an overacheiver Im now worried I'll gain at least 35 lbs. I mean seriously, who just wants to be average. We then went on to butters (yes we had the perfect crusty french bread to go along). I will tell you this butter users - switch immediately to european butter (screw this land o lakes garbage). Its so much creamier and sweeter that the regular stuff almost tastes like margarine in comparison.

Next week - Cheese ID, Fruit ID, Culinary Math (this one has me a little worried), purchasing and storage procedures, and oil and vinegar ID (man, this one has me a lot worried hopefully my stomach will have healed from all of this dairy.