Day 1: Welcome to Culinary School

Today was my first day of culinary school. I woke up before the crack of dawn (literally, the sun rose 40 minutes after my alarm went off) and headed into the city for class. Once I arrived at the school I changed into my uniform, which somehow fit even though I guesstimated on the sizing. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of myself in my uniform, but hopefully I can ask someone to snap one for me tomorrow. The first couple hours of class consisted of typical first day logistical information, except it involved more of "this is where we move the giant flour and sugar bins during class" and less of "you will write three scientific research papers each of which will be 25% of your final grade." 

We then dove into knife skills. I diced two carrots into a fine dice, one into a medium dice, and one into a large dice. I thought I diced things all the time in my life thus far...apparently I was wrong (or lazy). We had to dice everything so that every piece was a perfect cube, or at least we tried. I will be honest and say that I have to practice dicing at home. I also cut two carrots batonnet, which is like a larger to a julienne. We then each blanched and shocked our carrots batonnet and used them in a carrot salad as part of our lunch. 

This picture is just for reference. I felt strange taking a photo of just carrots.
Image credit: http://thejuniorchef.wordpress.com/category/knife-skills/

After lunch each student made a different type of granola. I chose Orange Cranberry Granola. The recipe was simple to follow and didn't require any techniques that I wasn't familiar with. The recipe called for dried cranberries and golden raisins, but the pantry was out of both. I ended up using dried blueberries and normal raisins. I didn't get to try mine before I left, because it cooled just in time for the end of class. The purpose of having everyone do a different recipe is that we are going to create a signature granola for our pastry class. Tomorrow morning we will taste test all of the different kinds and decide what we like and dislike in order to create our own signature recipe. My fellow students made Salty Kick Granola, Black Sesame Almond Granola, Chocolate Granola, Maple Granola, Multi-Gran Flake Granola, Coconut Granola, and Olive Oil Granola.

My Orange Blueberry Granola

There are only six students in the pastry program, which I'm extremely excited about because each of us will get a lot of individual attention. I'll practically be getting a private lesson everyday! All of my peers are women which I didn't notice until another student brought it up--Mount Holyoke habits die hard.

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Disclaimer: The purpose of this blog is not for me to show my literary genius. I want to be able to share what I am up to each day of culinary school with people who want to read about it. Culinary school is tiring, so somedays my brain may be mush which might to lead to *gasp* grammatical errors. This is my place to debrief, not write the next great American memoir. Thanks for being here and going on this journey with me!