Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Culinary arts, day one. Fall semester, 2010.

Enrolling is easy. Actually getting into classes is not.

Nonetheless, I persevered and finally managed to enroll in Knife Skills, Becoming a Chef and Professional Cooking.

I arrived early, to find my knife skills instructor sitting on a bench outside the classroom. After exchanging ritual insults, we chatted a bit, went into the classroom, took care of formalities and left. Class dismissed.

But... I thought we'd put knife to potato, maybe chop a pile of onions. No. You must be in uniform. A white T-shirt, black and white checkered chef pants, a chef's jacket, a black skull cap and a white apron. The jacket must have the school logo (so you can't actually use it to work somewhere), your name embroidered under the logo, and fancy cloth buttons. Since the one place on Planet Earth that supplies these clothes was backed up, none of this had arrived by the first day of class. The potatoes were spared for another three weeks. We would listen, take notes and watch while the potatoes and onions sat safely in their cartons. Their day would come soon enough.

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