Last week of second block and finals

This week has been almost easy and fun. First day, it was breakfast day and I had a lot of fun doing that one. Before, I was not comfortable to cook eggs since I seen it as challenging, but now I am really comfortable and look forward to cook breakfast for my family on christmas break. Funny story that after we left the kitchen, I had my fried egg and it had pink dots everywhere. I did not bother to try it because nobody knows what is it and Google has no answer. Next day, it was pasta and that was fun too, not as much as fun as breakfast day. It was sort of challenging with pasta station like three people are using it and it is time consuming. It seems strange that a lot of classmates prefer pasta day over breakfast because they did not get a lot of stuff. I disagree and prefer breakfast day because I got a lot of stuff done. I was sous Chef for Tuesday and Wednesday when my partner Iris and I had to prep stocks, get the station ready, collect all of the ingredients for Chef's demo. It was little stressful when Iris had two fingers bleeding and we had no time to cut all of mire poix and hurry up with finishing his demo. With stocks, we had to cut mire poix, cleaning the kettle, put liquids in walk in fridge to cool. It was hard when we had all of the bones in oven, ready to get out, but we did not have mire poix to put them in oven and make veal stock. It was stressful and overwhelming, but we got it done in class after we came back from classroom. The presentation was great, I guess. I did not have fun talking in front of class. Iris and I had our own parts like she did the powerpoints and I write the answers to key points from the book on word document. We worked well together as teams and we did pretty good job.
Two events were good and fun. First event was buffet and it was American Authors concert. It was okay because it was a lot of standing and pass/refill the sandwich wraps. It was interesting with people who are allergens and others are just in general picky. One of them asked the soup Tomato Bisque was gluten free with biscuits on top. We said no, but that person grab the soup anyways. Aimee and I had so much fun putting stuff away and I put the bows on her hat. She had to say that her friend "Maddie" who did it to people told her that they like her hat. Our classmates were surprised how we got along so well and be nice to each other. We were surprised ourselves too. Although, that was not much as fun as other event on Friday. It was a total mess at first with salad plates that already went on table like three hours before the event which it seems strange. During the service, our two leaders were total mess and lost when they couldn't point a table which we need to go and they made our catering leader Cody yelling in front of guests. It was frustrating and annoying, plus sort of awkward for the guests watching us running and look like idiots. After we got all of that taken care of we got to take a break and watch Alex Boye playing. It was awesome concert and he was very kind, letting us know that our food was very good and delicious. Alissa, Colleen, and I got a picture with him. We had to do it even we were hoping that we wouldn't get in trouble. It was worth it. After the event, few of us went to iHop as our treat and get together one more time with Charyln as we are sad to see her go.

Here are my journals for this week:
Day 1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDWU0wUVdmSkJQLWM/view?usp=sharing
Day 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDT3FMYlRwN0pxNzA/view?usp=sharing
Day 3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDb0kyZC1IdWxDUlk/view?usp=sharing
Day 4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDQlJQb1gxMHZNS0k/view?usp=sharing

Personal Mission Statement

I had to create personal mission statement in culinary field for book report and I never had one, but now it is almost like I think about this every day. I'm glad that I got to use this opportunity to create personal mission statement.

Personal Mission Statement:

Learn something new every day in the kitchen

Find something positive in a day when everything is a chaos or not follow in order as I want

Accomplish a small goal that matters to me, an example that I get all of my knife cuts today or put right amount of celery

Respect my Chef and be kind to my classmates even if we don’t get along or argue over something small

Take care of my health and happiness first before I do other things that I need to do

Be satisfied with what I did or had at the end of the day even it might not be good enough to satisfies my grade

Listen and accept comments, advice, lectures about my food or plate even I don’t always agree with them

Face my fears about making a mistakes and know that it is best way to learn from my mistakes

Put my life problems related to friends, family, roommates, or depression behind at the door and focus on my culinary problems in the kitchen

Try to put a smile, fake or real every day even I do not want to or forget to do it

Be honest with my Chef and classmates in kind way

Take advantage of what I have such as culinary education, wonderful classmates, and good Chef to teach me

Always do my homework, read books, study for test and quizzes and turn them on time

Practice my weakness such as culinary math and knife cuts and improve on them

Week 7 December day 1-4

This week was busy, holy cow, I was helping with few of my classmates with braised Tri Tips beef. I got so hot that my face was really red and I took a lot of 30 seconds break, but I did not let the heat bother and prevent me from doing what I love to do is cooking. It was for lunch next day on Wednesday for a big group. It was suppose to be easy day for everyone, but it was hard day for me because I was struggling with the heat with high heat cooking and I didn't stand around and chat with my classmates about thanksgiving break. Our lunch ended up to be omelet and it was delicious. We roasted the potatoes for the lunch too, but we had some with our omelet. Next day, we plate it and I learned how to cut sole fish and make fish stock. We taught to cook fish in different methods such as broil, grill, deep fry, pan-fried trout. We did not do sole fish, only butcher the fish. After few days, we used fish stock in our risotto and I HATE it. It was absolute gross, the cheese helped so much with flavor. It is better with chicken stock than fish stock, I will taste it again, but if I had risotto, I would like to make sure it is used with chicken stock. For my risotto with fish stock, I had celery instead carrots. It was really pretty with chopped parsley leaves. It had light green of celery and dark green of celery.
This Saturday, I had to go to catering a event and it was fun with few classmates. Brianna and I plate the salad plates and it was lot of them. I took pictures of the event such as two tables, the table, salad plates, desserts, me and Brianna stuck in the freezer for 30 seconds. It was a lot of fun, but my back was hurting and I had to sit down when I was getting really hot which it was strange because I was not near the heat. It was long hours of catering event, but it was a lot of fun with classmates. Also, I talked to some culinary students who are in Chef Peter and Stein's class and talk about their experience and the homework. It was useful to get all of information and how to prepare myself or next semester.
 Here are my journal for this week:
Day 1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDcVFKa1RpclBhQVE/view?usp=sharing
Day 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDZFVxeTkwZDVfaHc/view?usp=sharing
Day 3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDU3VCY3BJN0NPUFU/view?usp=sharing
Day 4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDeUlnRGEyUDZzajQ/view?usp=sharing

Midterm week 6

We had short week. We had Thursday and Friday days off, I am so happy because it means I can leave on Wednesday night to go home and it was perfect timing. Although it was nerve wrecking with midterm. I did not get any sleep on Monday night because I want to take and get over with my exam. I did pretty good and better than bakeshop midterm so I left the kitchen with little proud. I had few issues with my exam like my puree potatoes soup was little grainy and my Espagnole sauce could have been thicken little more. I misunderstood with boiling broccoli, I did not mean to blanch them. I made few mistakes which I learn and I would not let it happen again. I did not take a lot of pictures of stuff I made for my midterm. I think I forgot and few people took my stuff to mix with others before it was too late during cleaning up, but I described the taste, plating, and impressions of recipes on my journal day 1. On Tuesday, we learned to stir fry and it was really good. Especially with rice pilaf and it gave nice flavor. and Wednesday, we practiced some knife cuts, we made beurre blanc which it turned really good. I made risotto and funny thing that I did not make any risotto on my exam, I was so afraid to make it so I could not focus on it. On Wednesday, I was like wait, I can do this for real and why did I freak out on midterm. We made french fries and deep them which they were very good, but sadly, I only had few pieces. My favorite part of this week would be stir fry and it was very good. It surprised me because I am not fan of spicy stir fry, but it was not spicy at all. I quite enjoyed it. Here are my journals for this week:
. 

Day 1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDYkFfdlBGX1VNU2s/view?usp=sharing
Day 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDa3BKdmtOc0g1UVk/view?usp=sharing
Day 3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDZ3ptTEFQT2dscUU/view?usp=sharing

November 10-13 week 5

For this past week, we have been learning how to make some soups, some lie chicken pot pie. I learned how to use Mandoline slicer to cut potatoes to make graufrette and it is fun to do it. They are pretty tasty after deep fry. My favorite part about this week is smashed potatoes and it was awesome because I actually did something by myself and it was really tasty. It was funny that my partner Alissa and I forgot to add truffle oil for a minute and we were trying to figure it out why it is missing something. As I walk by the table and I saw that I did not get truffle oil. It was great after we added, we were like holy cow that is so much better and did not realize how much difference it makes. We practiced our knife cuts this week too. I went to Nicholas show and it was ACF meeting on Monday with few of classmates. It was interesting and cool. We got to see a guy fillet cut a fish like huge fish, I believe he did five or six of different kind of fish (There is a picture below two photos). It was amazing that he would cut them in two seconds. I'm glad that I went and missed one of my classes and it was totally worth it. Here are my jounrals for this week:
Day 1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDYUptaGJ1eFpZOFU/view?usp=sharing
Day 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDZWxyREMxaEc3Q0U/view?usp=sharing
Day 3:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDZTJqWGtLN2FzcjA/view?usp=sharing
Day 4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDcGtQWXctRkFUdjA/view?usp=sharing

November 2-6 week 4

We learned how to make mother sauces this week. Top five mother sauces are Bechamel top,  hollandaise on right side, tomato is the red looking color, Espagnole is next to Tomato and has different colors, Veolute is on far left side. One on left side below Bechamel is roux that is basically equal parts of flour and butter. We practiced butcher our chicken in ten pieces and we did some knife cuts. I still need to practice on my knife cuts to keep them consistency and some were really thick or large. We learned how to make different type of soups which I described in my journal
Day 1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDeUR3ZS1jQ05YTXc/view?usp=sharing
Day 2:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDQkN2azVITjllZDQ/view?usp=sharing

Day 3:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDdFc0UnZDTkNlYU0/view?usp=sharing

Day 4:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDaUpHUHlaMGI0XzA/view?usp=sharing

Week 3 October 23-31st

We learned how to cook chicken in different methods such as roast whole, grill thighs, poaching whole, deep fry thighs, and pan fried in class. Also, we made some risotto and rice pilaf this week. I did okay with everything. We learned how to en papillons and poaching a chicken with a paper cover with little hole in the middle. We had a event on Saturday 24 for presidential scholarship ball and it was big fancy event with everyone else dressing up. I was nervous and stressing out about spilling food over someone's fancy dress, but luckily I didn't. Few pictures of my classmates and my Chef and decoration of the table at the event. Here are my journals:
Day 1:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDalptSTR6OTBsaEE/view?usp=sharing

Day 2:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDQXRSVUFyb0VTclE/view?usp=sharing

Day 3:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDTjJFZ1pjajNVcDQ/view?usp=sharing

Day 4:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByfPxj9CLYFDdjNzYzhQdGM5S00/view?usp=sharing