Coffee, forced socialization, orientation, quails' eggs.

Without any reasonable excuse, I've already fallen behind on my project of documenting my culinary school experience. Yeah! that's what I'm doing here.

Last Tuesday (the first day of school) started in a very diarrhea-inducing way. Everyone was e-mailed about a mandatory orientation that started at 8.00am. There was a meet'n'greet sort of deal with coffee & pastries, during which I spoke to no one. I'm not my most effervescent with strangers if alcohol isn't available. I largely spent the first half hour glancing around, sipping coffee (which I didn't have much of because more than six ounces will give me the shits) & getting out of the way of people who were clumping together near me. I unsuccessfully avoided one chick who kept swishing her hair around, telling everyone about her ten days in France. People who act braggart-y about travel sicken me because they like to make their audience think they're more well-rounded then them, ignoring the fact that most people can't afford to travel.

An assembly followed, & all of the instructors said a little something along the lines of being passionate culinarians, sustainability, yeah yeah. One woman in particular stood out. I'm not sure of her association with the school, being that she is a restaurant critic. I'm sure it was mentioned, but I didn't start paying attention until she had the mike. (I'd prefer not to say who she is as she struck me as they type who gets Google alerts on themselves, & for the obvious reason that I'd rather not burn bridges before my career begins.) She started out by telling us what she had made her child for breakfast, which she called "Mommy's Muffin" (sounded pornographic to me, but to a woman wearing a banana clip in her hair...obviously not). "What I do," she said, "is take a cwah-sont [note: I don't mind that she pronounced this correctly, but her emphasis was absolutely ridiculous, like she was trying to remind us 'this is how it's said'], slice it in half, fry quails' eggs, QUAILS' EGGS. Yes, my child eats QUAILS' EGGS." She went on about how well her child eats, & how she hopes he/she becomes a chef.

I'm not sure if this struck anyone else in the theater the way it did me, but it seems awfully assinine for her to want her child to do anything in particular, & more so that she thinks cooking her offspring specialty items will encourage it. (For the record, as a child, I was lucky if my mom could afford Kraft Cheese & Macaroni, which was infinitely superior to the Western Family three-boxes-for-a-dollar kind. Of course, WF was better than having to rely on whatever ancient Hamburger Helper some suburban fam donated half-heartedly to the food bank we sometimes relied on. If anything, this make me appreciate that I am now lucky enough to eat as well if not better than mommy's muffin muncher.)

She then went on to give us her life story (which illustrated how well some Americans luck into shit, yet act as though they worked their way there, ha. I'll be nothing if not candid, my friends. I wouldn't even be in culinary school if my husband didn't do so well, though the rest is up to my ass). At one point, she discussed her writer's block on a Valentine's Day article, which then led to her singing lyrics she made up about wanting nothing but a good meal, sung to the tune of "My Romance". You know when you get the feeling someone's going to sing, & do so in a sincere manner? & it makes you feel extremely tense & uncomfortable? That was how that was for me.

After the show, we shuffled off to our classes, where we read many syllabuses.

(Week one, to be continued...)