Sous pressure.

My group this week was in sous chef rotation. Oy to the vey, you guys. It was all of the work- if not more- without out any of the fun stuff. I did occasionally delight in transforming leftovers into palatable food for student lunch (or 's'lunch' as I like to call it). What I did not enjoy was the sass I received when I had to ride people. Or when I told them they screwed up & needed to fix it. At least the following day it was all history.

Weirdly, the thing that bothered me the most today was when I sauteed some garlic in butter & olive oil for a ton of leftover fettucini. Chef said it needed cream (it had a sufficient amount of parmesan, fercrissake- gross pre-shedded American, anyway). I take issue with people who expect creamy, viscous sauces all of the time. Fuck, my favorite noodles are with butter & mushrooms. The older I get, the less I like those goopy, blobtacular foods. You just can't taste the food as well with all of that rich dairy coating your tongue. I'll save it for dessert, fanks.

I was so pained at the end of school today, I stopped for a couple of mimosas & a marzipan peach on my way home. I'm all better now.

Dumb gorillas in the midst.

The past few weeks of school have been kind of boring. Two weeks ago, my group was on starch/soup/veg. Basically, we cooked what the first quarter students had prepped for us. That week was so dull I don't even feel like giving those days any distinction from each other here. I did learn that while grilling polenta cakes, one must use tons of oil or the cakes will stick to the grill like crazy glue. (Did you think I was going to say '...stick like crazy [period]'? Well, I wasn't.) Cleaning the grill isn't a big deal, but the grill marks that are supposed to be on the cakes won't come with them when they're removed from the grill. Good thing they have two sides to choose from for presentation!

Last week, we were in the bake shop. I was sort of annoyed at first because all we get to do is bake cookies & simple cakes. Never you mind that I forgot about three trays of cookies in the oven one day. I don't get it. I like cookies a lot, so I don't understand why I burn them half of the time. I never burn anything else I put in the oven. JUST COOKIES. I didn't learn anything new last week, but it was relaxing & the ambient temperature was very comfortable.

(Aside: [Pardon the Seinfeld Ovaltine/Roundtine tinge to this, please.] Cookies- they aren't cooked. Shouldn't they be called 'bakies'? Bakies even sounds better, besides relieving my minor irritation with that dumb other name. If I call them 'biscuits', everyone will just accuse me of being a Madonna because my husband's English. By the way, I still haven't heard her speak since her divorce, & I'm extremely curious to know if her adopted accent stuck.)

This is stupid for me to even mention because it's just so damned silly, but to flesh this post out, I'm gonna! Allow me preface what I'm going to say with something I learned during one of those ' The Making Of...'-type shows that featured Planet of the Apes. During their lunches, the actors wearing the gorilla costumes sat with those wearing the gorilla costumes, & the same for the orangutans & chimps. Silly! but there it is. It's ridiculous, but people tend to people like them. Anyway. There can sometimes be this...unease between the culinary students & the bakery students. I don't want to take sides because it's beyond moronic. My best guess is that it's mostly perpetuated by mean jokes about the pastry students that somehow make it back to them. Then again, there are a few who are plain weird (who I think a lot of these jokes are based on). During an assignment in our purchasing class, I was attempting to explain in very bare, simple terms an assignment to a pastry student. She looked at me with this blank expression, her mouth slightly hanging open, in the kind of way my cat does sometimes. The part I was attempting to get across to her was so doy, I instantly thought, 'No wonder you're in pastry.' Then there was the time I laughed at a truly cruel & stupid joke about them before feeling badly about it. I shan't repeat it! Well, e-mail me if you really want to know. I just don't need everyone who reads this to know how truly base my funny bone can be.

I know it's dumb to malign them all when it's really just a couple who are truly bizarre &/or dim-witted. Pastry is very exacting & requires a lot of precision. I suppose we dis them as much as we do because I've yet to see them work they asses off the way we (chose) to. That being said, they have plenty of joke material to mine off of us considering the dumb-dumbs in our midsts. There's actually a not very young man in first quarter for the fourth time. !!! I mean, don't you think it's greedy that the program keeps accepting his tuition money? I had to remind him three times in fifteen minutes to wear gloves when handling ready-to-eat foods. It went from a gentle reminder to a something very jarring. I heard what he called me, but it's not nearly as funny as what we call him. That's not so surprising considering his name for me was pretty humorless. Still, how many times will it be before all of this takes in his walnut-brain?

Besides that guy, there are the jerks & h8rz in culinary. Some of them are even pretty rude the the newer quarter students. Like me! But naturally, after a minute or two of shit talking, I don't care about the condescending students. I figure that if someone is taking that long to make me feel like I'm not doing it right, they're probably burning something. It's just unprofessional to try to lord over someone in such a pronounced way- I mean, you're still a student too, shit slice. At least I a. stab you in the front & b. wait to do on my free time in the bar. Like a lady!