week 1, Day 2

Baking started off the day well this morning, as we took our first pastry class. There is a lot of science, and a lot more behind a loaf of bread than you could probably imagine unless you have looked into it.  However, it seems like this will be a fun class to look forward to every week, not to mention I'll never have to buy a loaf of bread while I'm here in Stratford, as between my two housemates and I, we brought home 7 loaves of bread in the past two days. This class then lead to our lunch, where I got to try one of the amazing sandwiches at the york street kitchen, a catfish, tartar sandwich. It was absolutely amazing, and definitely the best sandwich I have ever eaten, which is saying a lot because I do not like tartar at all normally. Gastronomy class followed lunch, which is basically the way that food has developed in history, not the recipes, but how people eat, how cultures and food are combined, and how food is associated with these cultures. It looks to be an interesting class, but a fairly high workload seems to be included with it. Already a group assignment, but the group I'm in isn't presenting for a few weeks.  After gastronomy class, we had communication class, which will basically be a series of public speaking lessons. The workload is very tiny relative to the other classes, so that will be a nice break in between these other classes that have been just hammering on work for the past couple days. After communication, our practical cookery class ended the day, where I learned to make a mushroom risotto. Conveniently, this recipe is also the recipe on our SPEC assignment, so I have learned a lot from it, and hopefully this knowledge will give me somewhat of an advantage to writing the dreaded spec. Now, I'm here writing, quite exhausted as I have been up since 6:45 this morning, classes didn't finish until 8:00 which was actually a half hour early than scheduled, and I have been studying with my housemates over our practical cookery recipes for tomorrow morning, in hopes that we will be able to understand them well enough not to have to ask the chef too many 'stupid' questions. The internet has been an excellent source of knowledge however, especially videos on how to perform certain chopping techniques, so I am feeling at least a little more confident each day. I now need to get some clean towels packed for tomorrow, and pack my uniform, and switch all the binders in my backpack for tomorrow's lessons, so I'll have to leave it at that for today. Tomorrow looks pretty good as I only have 3 classes; Practical cookery, followed by nutrition, and then culinary management.