Day 1: Knife Skills

I'm exhausted. Not only did the sun wait until after my alarm rang to rise, but my body and mind toed the line between conscious and unconscious for a few hours this morning. And to tell the honest truth, I am not 100% sure that I'm awake yet. But it feels good. You know...in that sick way that achy muscles feel good after an exhaustive workout. Why you ask am I relishing utter exhausation? Its because I started culinary school last night (okay amatuer culinary school but with the option to test into the professional program at course end so until I decide NOT to test in I am calling this culinary school b/c it may very well be). And honest truth, I have wanted to do this since childhood when I helped my mom mix up a box of betty crocker brownies for the first time and tasted them when they came out of that magical applicance the oven. I go to restaurants, I watch top chef, I am constantly cooking and thinking about food. So going and studying food and cooking is a no brainer.
Okay, so the first class. I arrived and was photo'd for the very close up id picture and then whisked down to the ladies locker room to change into the very unflattering chef's uniform. I have to remember for the next time I purchase a chef uniform that chefs eat a lot and therefore are different sizes then normal people (a medium is a XXL in regular people's clothes). Once I went back upstairs I was paired with Jodi my kitchen station partner for the rest of the course. The class consisted of 4 people that were slightly older and then mostly 20-35 year olds. I think theres about 30 or more of us. There were a few people who were taking the class to determine if a career change might be something they want to do and then there were a lot that were just doing this for fun. Either way, my first impression is that we have a good group of people.
Lesson 1 was all about basic knife skills. The hitch in going to a French culinary school and learning basic french technique is that it looks like I am going to have to learn A LOT of french words. We have about 15 vocabulary words from night 1 that the chef instructors (there are 2 both men who are very nice and helpful) expect us to know. So that when they ask us to for example jadiniere the carrots and cook alanglaise we're supposed to know to cut the carrots in long thick sticks and boil them in salted water and shocking them in ice water. Chef demonstrated about 8 different cuts and then we had to peel and cut a carrot, turnip, and onion in the different cuts. All while keeping our stations very clean. After break, we came back and the chef demonstrated 2 methods for cooking veggies: Alanglaise and alaveter. Alaveter (I think that’s what it was called!) was putting the veggies in a little bit of water with butter and salt and then making a parchment lid and cooking them until soft. Then he demonstrated the chiffonade of herbs and tournade of potato. I was fine in class until we had to do the potato (okay and the tidy station wasn't easy for me either but the cutting I had down okay). The potato was peeled and quartered and then we had to carve it in little football shapes and well I couldn't picture how to do it in my mind and his demo wasn't helping at all. We were given the potato carving as homework and we're going to be working with them in class #2. As luck would have it, I am getting potatoes in my CSA share tonight. Maybe I can figure it out then b/c otherwise Wed's class is going to be tough!