Meat! Meat! Meat!

Well 1 trimester down, 2 to go!  I just finished up with New World Cuisine, Essentials of Dining Room, Traditional European Cuisine, Intro to Baking, and Stock, Sauces and Soups.   I started my other session today and if you can’t tell by the overzealous title of this post, I’m now taking Skills of Meat Cutting.  I believe the correct colloquialism used here to give this class justice would have to be the ever so polite Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor grunt… Orgh Orgh Orgh!  We get to slaughter our own meat! Beef, Veal, Chicken and Lamb.  We also get to make out own sausages and bangers and a few other processed meats.  The only thing that sucks is that the room is kept at 40 degrees for sanitation purposes.  But the class should be pretty “cool” haha (sorry had to throw that in).

I’m doing a complete switch this round, I am now taking AM labs.  Traditionally I would be in class only from 7 AM to 1 PM.  Since the school is a little overcrowded this year I was unable to take a class that I needed to take last semester.  So I have to double up on the only 2 core classes I have to take; Food Safety and Sanitation and Introduction to Menu Planning and Cost Control.  The other classes I am taking this semester are Principles of Beverage Service, Nutrition and Sensory Analysis, Fundamentals of Food Service Production and Purchasing & Product Identification.

The teacher I have for Meat Cutting is pretty awesome actually.  We spent half of today listening to him talk about kitchen horror stories (which by the way only got the class motivated) wierd huh?  I look forward to another succesful semester. 

Wish me luck because for my Co-op I am trying to study abroad, either in the UK or Australia.  I’ve been doing some research and because of the “times” its pretty difficult to try and get a slot open to be able to do so.  My instructors told me only a handful of people studied abroad last year so its pretty competitive.  They tell me you have to already have a pretty well connected network established with people in those countries to be able to pursue it further.  So you all know me.. I went right to the Dean of the University and asked him for a letter of recommendation.  He looked at me like I was crazy and in his foreign language said “but I dant iven know-ya”! haha I shrugged my shoulders and told him I really wanted it.  So he’s going to write me one in January.

Sorry about being away for the past month.  My last class was Stocks, Sauces, and Soups and it was hard to post recipes because we were predominantly making yields on a larger scale.  Below is a chart of the different cuts of meat I have to produce just from a cow.  Next post I am bringing you all on a journey into the day in the life of a culinarian.  I call it “My Symphony.” Until then to all you foodies out there who love to eat and drink but can’t afford it or cook.  Butter makes it better.  And the best secret I’ve learned is that I cook with wine, and sometimes I even add it to the food ; )