Block One: Complete!

Well well well, Sunday, September 13, 2009 has arrived rather too quickly for my liking, but what can you do? It's a cool 63 degrees here today, and a perfect cloudy day that simply reaffirms my choice to lay in bed all day and watch movies. I feel so productive and efficient..

Time for a recap of events! This past Friday, the 11th, was the end of my FIRST block of Culinary classes! Hurrah! A happy and sad day it was; I'm happy to be done with Culinary math, not because it was difficult, but just because it's Culinary Math. Truly am bummed that Gastronomy is over though- It really is such an interesting class and I luckily still have my textbooks to read, thank god. What a nerd right? Anyways, I had such an amazing opportunity this past week to participate in the Flavor Quality and American Menu's conference held at CIA. The conference revolves around farmers and chefs working together to create relationships to ensure a joint future together. They go to classes, and tastings, and even do their own little iron chef thing. ANYWAYS, I got to work with some amazing chefs and meet even more. Chefs from all over California attended this year and were assigned to teams. Each team worked with certain sponsor products like peanuts, Barilla Pasta, Watermelon, Olive oil, pistachios, cranberries, etc. etc. The team I was assigned to worked with Chef Alexander Ong, of Betelnut --> all I can say is he is a friggen genius.

I even got to meet a recent James Beard Award winner; Craig Stoll of Delfina, and Chef Duskie of Zazu, a farm-to-table restaurant in San Francisco!

Here are some of the pictures of the displays from the featured products:

Pretty cool!

Next up: Product Knowledge with the ACCLAIMED Chef Tom Wong and a Servsafe class so I don't kill anyone.

More to come soon!
xoxo