Week 5 of school & miderm

This week was midterm week in my cooking class. This was my first timed event in culinary school. Although everything you do in a restaurant is a timed event, so it didn't seem like that big of a deal to be timed. I did well, everything was pass/fail. As long as we did the process correctly and the taste was close we passed. Fundamentals is more about process and techniques than taste and appearance. I made all of the hollandaise sauce last week for our family dinner, about 70 people, and was over confident in my ability to make hollandaise for the midterm. This, of course, resulted in me messing up the hollandaise during the midterm, luckily I had plenty of time to make another and do it correctly. Another lesson learned. It seems that half of my lessons learned in school aren't culinary, but character. I guess that means I am getting my money's worth.

On the good side, tuesday I made ratatouille and the chef told me how great my ratatouille was a few times. He's not the kind of guy that tells you things like that to be nice. It's good to complements from people like that. I told Megan about that and I have somehow become volunteered to make ratatouille for church on monday night. hmm.... I wonder how that happened?

On the running and outdoor side of life, I won't be able to do the 8k trail race I had planned for saturday since I couldn't find a babysitter saturday morning. big bummer, back to training. on the plus side, I may be going on a trip to the grand canyon the first week of april with my bro eugene. we are discussing doing a R2R2R (south rim to north rim and back to south rim) in a day. I think that's about 42 miles and would probably take anywhere from 16-20 hours for me to do. We may split it up into a few days so that we can enjoy more scenery, but either way should be a lot of fun. I am really looking forward to this one. I think its back to training time for me, just as the weather gets cold. and on the cold weather note, i am looking for some lightweight running pants, been eyeing the patagonia cool weather tights.

I think that's about it for now, Nova wants to watch some Dora the Explorer. which, by the way, does NOT rhyme.