jitters and knives, oh my!

I was full of excitement yesterday.  It's not often that I allow myself to step out of my comfort zone and for this suburban mom going to back to school is way out of that sweet, safe zone.  But I was super stoked about doing something totally new and different.  However, I was equally nervous.  I had the "first day at a new school-I don't know anyone-is anyone going to like me-what if I don't know the right answer-gosh, I hope the instructors aren't mean-sweaty palms" kind of jitters...and it's been a long time since I've had that feeling.  But instead of allowing my nervousness to get the best of me, I decided to welcome it.  It's part of this experience and I'm here to take it all in. The first day jitters have passed, but I've accepted that this experience is going to be uncomfortable at times... I'm already not looking forward to my final exam.

Despite the jitters, last night's class was amazing.  It was jam-packed with information - a bit of lecture, some demonstration and lots of hands-on time getting to know my new, beautiful knives.

The big topics for the night were knife skills and food safety.  The knife skills portion was rockin' cool and the food safety lecture was sort of gross!  (Tip: If you use a crockpot, take the temperature of your food the next time you use it...it may not be heating up to a safe temperature.)

We learned how to properly wear our uniform - neckerchief and all.  We learned the rules of the kitchen - always answer "yes, chef" when given a direction, call out "hot" when carrying something hot, call out "sharp" when walking around with knives.  We learned the landscape of the kitchen - where all of the cool kitchen tools are located,  a brief tour of the equipment, along with an explanation of how the walk-in coolers and freezers are so perfectly organized.  We learned that the kitchen has no air conditioning because it is a traditional french kitchen.  We learned that although the school hires a person to wash dishes, we still have a lot of clean up responsibilities at the end of the night (labeling and storing food, sanitizing surfaces, sweeping, mopping, putting away the clean dishes) - culinary school isn't always sexy.

And we learned all sorts of beautiful, french words and how to execute them:

Batonnet - foods cut into small, squared stick shapes 1/4 x 1/4 x 2
Julienne - foods cut into squared matchstick shapes 1/8 x 1/8 x 2
Brunoise - foods cut into tiny cubes 1/8 x 1/8 x 1/8
Concasse - peel, seed and dice tomato

We practiced our new knife skills on a variety of produce and I must say that potatoes are my friend and onions make me cry.  Apparently, if I cut the onion properly the whole teary-eye thing will be less of an issue...I've got aways to go on that one.  And although I was diligently focused on learning and perfecting proper knife technique, I was also holding my breath hoping I didn't slice myself.  My Wustof beauties are seriously sharp.

I went to bed completely delighted and exhausted after five hours of learning, cutting and cleaning.  And I dreamt very sweet dreams...batonnet, julienne, brunoise, concasse...batonnet, julienne, brunoise, concasse...batonnet, julienne, brunoise, concasse.