Pasta Special

Pasta Special
Originally uploaded by mzones.

I'm in the AM Grill class now. In this class, we prepare the family meal (that's the meal for restaurant staff, students, and office personnel) breakfast, and we prepare all of the lunch items for the customers of the Main Street Grill in Montpelier.

I started out on the saute station. One of the dishes I make on this station is the pasta special. Each day, we receive pasta that is made by the prep kitchen and I have to come up with the sauce and the presentation. Today, I received a potato stuffed ravioli with thyme pasta dough. I prepared a meat ragout which I served 5 of the ravioli with. It was a very popular item! :-)

Go Seahawks! :-)

I've been a Seahawks (or Seachickens, as I affectionately call them) fan since I lived in the Seattle area many years ago...back when Steve Largent was playing. Finally, they are going to the Super Bowl and you can bet I'll be watching and cheering them on. :-)

Of course, their web site is throwing errors from all of the traffic it's getting. What can you expect, its built on .NET. Paul Allen, what were you thinking?!?!

Meat Trivia

• Did you know that Prime Rib is just a name for a cut of beef and the "Prime" in the name has nothing to do with the grade of the beef? That's right folks, it's not prime grade beef rib unless it is also stamped with the prime grade.
• Grass fed beef has a more beefy flavor than corn fed beef. Grazing on grass is a cow's natural diet, so it stands to reason that the meat produced by cows fed in this manner would receive the highest grading. But no. We in the US prize marbling, which requires fattening the cows by feeding them corn, which we grow way too much of. If you can find grass fed beef in your local megamart, give it a try.

Meat Fabrication

Ah, it's almost over. Time flies! Tomorrow is my last day in the meat fabrication kitchen at NECI. I've learned a lot, and have forgotten a lot that I was supposed to have learned during lecture. My brain doesn't absorb information like it used to. (insert old age jokes here)

When I have a few minutes this weekend, I'll write down some useful tidbits of information to share with you on this blog. Something less obvious than, "you need a sharp knife." :-)

Certified

Yep. You all knew I was certifiable, but now it's official. ;-) I took a ServSafe exam on November 29th. It's a national certification for food handlers to show that you know proper sanitation practices, safe food handling, etc. I passed! Yay!

'Tis The Season

Wishing you and yours a very merry Christmas!

A little break

I had a 3 day break as a new class is coming in and I'll be starting my second quarter here today, Wednesday. Yesterday, I had to attend a training session for residential advisors (RA). I'm going to be the RA here at my dorm. That mostly means I unlock doors when someone locks themselves, but I also represent NECI and make sure that their rules are enforced and that the apartment remains a safe and quiet place for students to live and study.

Today I'm starting Meat Fabrication class. YES!

PM Cafeteria

This was probably my favorite class. We returned to the cafeteria at Vermont College to prepare dinner. There is a new Chef instructor there who is fantastic. Each night, she told us what the protein was and either the theme or the main dish that would be made from it, then asked us what we wanted to do for the rest of the meal (starch, veg, vegetarian option, bread, special salad, special desert, etc.) Having the opportunity to participate in the menu was so inspiring to all of us. The last night of class, it was up to us to decide the entire menu. :-)

Inventory Management

I spent two weeks at NECI's Central Purchasing location to learn about ordering, receiving, and inventory management. This is an important part of running a food business because you don't want to order so much that you have stuff sitting on shelves...it costs money to store things.

We also learned about sustainable agriculture and did a report on a local producer. I visited Doe's Leap, a local farm that makes yummy organic goat milk cheeses. They also raise organic pork, chicken, and cows. It is a small company now with about 25 goats run by a very nice young couple. They were kind enough to take time out of their Saturday afternoon to show me around the farm and take me through their cheese house. I purchased some of their cheeses at the local coop and had a tasting along with my presentation.

AM Cafeteria

The last two weeks I've been getting up at 2 AM and in class by 3:30 AM. This class was held at the Vermont College cafeteria where we prepared breakfast and lunch for college students, NECI students and faculty, and guests. This has been the highest volume production class that I've had so far. After 4 weeks in baking classes, it was good to get out the knives again. :-)

I learned how to make decent food in high volumes with very little waste. We even had a partial power outage after a snow on our second day in class. I say partial outage, meaning a brown out. The kitchen was for the most part out of power, the dining room and service had partial power, the small bake shop was lit. We weren't sent home for the day as would have been the most likely response in any other culinary school. Instead, our chef instructor taught us how to prepare meals, practicing safety and cleanliness, with limited resources. Today we all received recognition from NECI's board of directors for our response to this event. We each received a nice plaque and a NECI hoodie.

Fall Leaves

Fall Leaves
Originally uploaded by mzones.

The fall leaf season has not been as spectacular this year as it usually is. The weather just hasn't cooperated in the production. I capture this image of the leaves in a neighbor's yard on my walk to class one morning. Enjoy!

First Snow 2005

First Snow 2005
Originally uploaded by mzones.

It snowed early this morning! I snapped this picture of my car with a very light blanket of snow on it. There is still a little snow on the ground, but none on the roads.

Baking 1b

I've spent the past two weeks in the bakery at the National Life office building in Montpelier. In this class we prepared breakfast pastries and muffins in the morning and lunch items such as breads (rolls, French bread, ciabatta, etc.) , and cookies for the cafeteria. We also filled orders for in-house catering (i.e. cookies for a meeting) and NECI catering for external events. We were able to reinforce what we learned in Baking 1a as well as add to that knowledge.

A fun time was had by all.

Baking 1a

I've completed the first of two baking classes that I am required to take while here at NECI. It was all about producing mass quantities of baked goods (cookies, scones, quiche, dinner rolls, sandwich rolls, foccacia, etc.) in a bakery. It was a fun class and I really learned a lot!

I am trying to think of some good tips to pass along to you and think that I will share what I learned about cookie spread. If you've spent much time making cookies, you've probably had a batch that spread more than it should have. I learned 7 causes of cookie spread, here are some of them:

1. When creaming the fats and sugars, don't over cream. The idea here is just to incorporate these ingredients, not to incorporate air. Over-mixing will incorporate air, which is the leading cause for cookie spread.
2. Too much leavening. If you add too much baking soda and/or baking powder to your cookies, they will generate too much air and cause cookie spread. (Also, there will be a chemical taste to the cookies.)
3. Greasing (or over greasing) the baking sheet. The slick surface provides no resistance to spreading of the dough as it heats.
4. Low oven temperature. Fats melt before starches and proteins set...you get the picture.

Fall leaves

It's fall leaf season here in Vermont. There is still quite a lot of green, but the change has definitely begun. The air is crisp and cool in the mornings, the temp usually drops down into the upper thirties at night. I will try to get out this weekend to get some photos of the fall leaves to share.

Food Science

My first class came to a close last Friday. It was a quick two weeks that was jam packed full of the science of cooking, theory, and lots of experiments. It was a great foundation class to begin my studies.

Cooking tips: 1.) when blanching vegetables, salt the shocking liquid instead of the cooking liquid. The result is more salt stays with the vegetable and no further salting is required.; 2.) when making stock, roast the mirepoix (veg mixture of 1/2 onion, 1/4 carrot and 1/4 celery) before adding to the pot, there is a much richer flavor derived when first roasting the vegetables. A note on roasting vegetables...don't roast the celery, it just turns into a dry nasty bit of bark with no further flavor to release into the stock.

Today was my first day in Baking 1a. Its a lot of fun so far and am looking forward to learning a ton of information and sharing some tips here.

Disoriented

I have officially completed orientation! Today was the final session. Yay!

Monday morning at 7AM I begin a class in Cooking Theory and Food Science. Seems like the perfect place to begin this journey of learning with some fundamentals that will create a good foundation.

Montpelier

I'm here! I'm actually staying near Burlington until I can move into the dorm next Wednesday. I am getting more excited about starting school with each passing day! I know I've done the right thing. It will be interesting to see if I still feel that way when the temperature drops below zero and I'm trudging through snow to get to class. ;-) Stay tuned!

Planty is safely returned home

I delivered Planty to it's home. If plants could talk, I'm sure it would have shouted for joy that it would not have to spend any more time in the car. It did pretty well considering. It's now back home with its family where it belongs and I'm in Rutland, Vermont, where I decided to stop for the night. Will go on to Montpelier tomorrow.

Philadelphia

It's been too longs since I last updated this blog! I drove from Fargo to Brainerd and then on to Minneapolis on August 19th. It was pretty much as oppressive an area as it looked on the movie. The Paul Bunyan statue from the movie was made for the movie...the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statue that really is in Brainerd is smaller than I thought, and is surrounded by a fence. Darnit! I really wanted to use it as a photo opp for Planty, but it didn't work out.

I drove on to Milwaukee on the 20th and stayed there until the 28th for the KCM conference. The conference was really good. I'm uplifted by the Word that was preached at the conference. I volunteered to help in the tape duplication area, so spent several hours during the week with that. It was good to have the opportunity to give of my time.

On the 28th I left Milwaukee and drove to Bowling Green, OH, where I visited a friend I had not seen in 10 years. That is way too much time to let go by between visits! On the afternoon of the 29th, I drove down to Pickerington to visit more friends. I got there just in time for dinner. :-) What a treat to have a home cooked meal after being on the road for two plus weeks! I ate and ran and stayed in Wheeler, West Virginia, last night. Now, I'm in a suburb of Philadelphia. Getting settled in for the night. Tomorrow morning I will be headed to NJ, where Planty lives, and then on to Vermont! :-)

This has been such a great experience! I've lost track of what day of the week it is, which I think means I'm well rested!