I feel a little minced this week. 🙂  I’m told that around week 5, 6, or 7 many culinary students feel this way.  It’s a rigorous schedule, you are in the hot kitchen A LOT (is the A/C broken again?. . .maybe?), you don’t get to leave it behind when you go home like you would with a job in a restaurant because you still need to do your homework and readings.  And in my case try to spend some time with Mr. and Little Plate.  It is a challenging balancing act.   You have practicums.  Oh, those dreaded/enlightening learning experiences. . . I still have a bit of that childhood performance anxiety it turns out.

On the flip side it is so great to be doing something that I am passionate about.  I can’t help but be inspired by the other students and those I get to be acquainted with at NEACA.  It is wonderful to watch Mr. Plate and Little Plate to get even closer.  I know this is the place we are supposed to be right now as a family.  It is so fun being here in Austin, TX and seeing the sites. I am trying to enjoy this sometimes bumpy, but always delicious journey.

I am going to think of myself as Garlic because when you crush and chop your garlic and let it sit a little some pretty amazing things happen.  That is when you start to see the most anti-cancer nutrition benefits.

Check this out

Crush me up and let me sit in it until graduation 🙂

So all that aside, here are some of the highlights/challenges for this week:

In our Egg and Dairy lab we were excited to try some Souffle and Quiche Recipes.  I was maybe a bit too enthusiastic about the Chocolate Souffle because I was assigned to take that one on.  I have NEVER done this in my life.  They can be a bit temperamental.  Chef Alain helped me with each step along the way and it was a success!  Yummy too.

We had a fun plating lecture and demo and turns out day old Souffle is pretty tasty too ;).

Pasta Day!  We were able to make our own Raviolis.  Oh man, as a team we decided it would be fun to dye our pasta dough with pureed beets and make cute little heart shaped raviolis.  A combination of things made this cute idea turn comical quickly.  The shape came out a bit wrong, the color looked a bit like a tongue, the beet puree looked like blood. . .I don’t want to gross you out too much (they were actually quite tasty) but not so pretty!

In Pasta lab we made pierogis and wontons.  Stuffed Dumplings- yummy.

One really fun day was our CSA challenge day.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.   Each team received a box from Johnson’s Backyard farm and we were challenged to use every item in the box in making a meal.  My team decided to plan a meal that would be light and summery.  We based what we made on the linked recipes (although we played with the recipes a bit).  Here’s how it turned out:

I’ll end on that sweet note.  It was fun to focus on that recipe and see it pay off and to work on being really efficient in making it in such a short amount of time.  Go Blue Team!  CSA Challenge accepted.

Look forward to the next three weeks!  We will be baking! I’m so excited to learn about health-supportive baking and pastry!

Love,

Ashes