Culinary School: Week 1

After the first week of culinary school I can honestly say that I'm in the right place. The first few days were filled mostly with lecture and course overview. Which was as boring as it sounds, but yesterday, my last day for the week, was my first day in the kitchen. It was like a dream. The Chef (aka Professor) explained rules for the kitchen equipment for about an hour and then asked us to prepare our stations and retrieve two carrots from the walk in (aka fridge). As I entered the cool storage room I felt myself begin to get excited at the thought of cooking. I was actually doing it. Actually handling food in a formal education setting. It was about to happen. My leap into the culinary arts. Most of my class mates were not grinning from ear to ear for the four hours that we worked on different knife skills. But I was. We chopped onions and julienned carrots and tourned potatoes (which is the most absurd cut ever, and so wasteful and stupid, but also in a strange way wonderful.) The smile only left my face for intense concentration. A furrowed brown and pursed lips, occasionally crept onto my face, as I was constantly reminding myself the proper way to hold my blade. Trying suppress the desire to allow my old habits to cause my fingers to straighten out. Or not to over chop my onion. After I would get something right, the smile quickly found its way home on my lips. Anytime the Chef demonstrated a technique I felt my head bobbing quickly up and down in agreeance to his method, at times I would even let out a soft "oooh" or an "awww". No one else did that. I'm sure I looked like an idiot. But I couldn't help it. It's the first time I've ever been in a class where I actually cared about what the professor had to say. The 4 hour class flew by and I couldn't believe the most mundane part of cooking known as "prep work" could make me as giddy as I was. That's how I knew I was in the right place.