come anticipate culinary school with me!

in january i'm starting a culinary arts degree at a local trade school (much much MUCH cheaper than cordon bleu, and that trumps prestige at the moment). i already know a lot about ingredients and techniques but i want to learn more about high-volume cooking and how to navigate the business side.

this is the program:

http://wellness.lattc.edu/culinary/culinary.html

come anticipate, etc.

nice!

the whole program costs about $1300 ($26 per credit for in-state students). i *love* not being in debt!

good on you.

student loan and cc debt has been facefucking me for two years with many more to come. the icing is i'm not doing what i wanna do and since i sort of floated through my program i don't have skillz/experience to start. :/

so yay for inexpensive ed where yr doing, not talking about doing, or worse, bullshitting about doing.

i'm happy i did my master's program -- and thanks to a generous scholarship and some "education" money that my family had put away for me long ago, i escaped without creditors breathing down my neck. but there are no jobs in urban planning right now, since departments are laying people off and real estate development is stagnant. the second i graduated, things turned to shit.

well, i didn't start school until this year, and now i'm just finishing up my second class there (i took another class over the winter semester). i'm working on my final menu for the semester -- i have to do one meal consisting of three salads (inc. a crudite plate, to show off our knife cuts), something grilled, something sauteed, a soup, three sauces (a mayo, a veloute or bechamel, and something else), a handmade pasta (i.e., by machine), and something with a dough (pate brisee or biscuit). the cooking itself isn't too hard, i just have a limited time to put everything together, and in a pretty cramped/crowded school kitchen.

the menu i'm putting together looks good, though. broccoli gruyere soup, chopped vegetable salad, pasta salad with some sort of italian vinaigrette, a chicken thing, grilled summer fruit with maple cumin glaze, a strawberry shortcake biscuit, etc.

one more semester after this? what are your plans for after?

i went another route into the industry: dishwasher -> let them know i wanted a chance to work on the line -> trading up to a decent place. i found there were lots of opportunties since the grind of the job (coming in at 10ish or earlier is pretty necessary for the first while until you are absolutely dialed in as far as prepping a menu goes and leaving at 1 am is normal if you're the newboy + afterwork drinks + extra stuff ["we're breaking down a side of beef and boning out suckling pigs this weekend if you're free"]) weeds out most people. i think the culinary school basics are fairly easy to pick up on the job and chefs, i find, are always down to educate + demonstrate shit. when i was holding back tears, tickets stacking up, hands blistered from when i tried to lift a lid off a pan of spaghetti vongole with fennel sausage, i was always heartened by the fact that i didn't go to culinary school and THEN discover how horrifying actual work in the industry is (that's kind of missing the point but it made me feel slightly better at the time).

one more semester after this?

many more semesters, probably. i've been taking one class at a time since they're so hard to get into. when my registration appointment rolls around this week, i'm gonna try for two classes.

i've been working through a catering/corporate dining staffing agency, doing prep and plating for events -- like one last night that giada dilaurentiis was at. totally nerve-wracking stuff, being the clueless newbie around folks who have been doing this for years.