First Day of Classes

My alarm went off at 8:15 this morning and I miserably rolled over, shut it off and went back to sleep for 15 minutes in my true, natural college fashion. Finally I managed to get up, shower and get ready for class at 9:15. Red bull in hand I made my way to my first class at CIA ever... Product Knowledge. I knew or recognized most of the kids in my class which made it pretty ok to sit there while we waited for our professor.

Product Knowledge is basically an identification course. By the end of these 6 weeks we will know how to properly identify 235 different types of produce as well as knowing how to determine if they are ripe/usable and what they are used primarily for in cookery. After the tedious explanation and introduction of the class we went down to tour the storeroom where all the produce and such is kept. The place is extremely cool and has more types of food then you could ever know (we are expected to go down there at least once a week just to poke around and look at things).

After 2 hours of intro for a class that will clearly be awesome, I went to lunch at 11:30 with a few people from class at the Banquet Dining Room (the place we eat 3-course meals) and had a nice lunch. An appetizer of Tomato and Roasted Pepper Gazpacho which was ok, there was no heat which I would have liked and I also am not a huge fan of the raw tomato taste. The Entree was a Veal, Pork and Beef Old Fashioned Meatloaf with a sauce I can't recall the name of, Creamed Corn, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans wrapped in Bacon. The meatloaf was very good as was the corn and green beans, unfortunately the mashed potatoes were a bit dry. Finally dessert was a Strawberry and Rhubarb Cobbler with Creme which was fantastic (so far all the desserts have been delicious).

After lunch, about 12:30, I took a walk back to the dorm and relaxed until around 3:45 when I made my way to my 4pm class, Culinary Math. The professor for this class was upbeat and funny. The class is all about food costing and yields and such. It will easily turn out to be the easiest class I'm taking and if I don't get an A I'll probably throw myself into the Hudson. The class ran till around 5:30 and then 2 of my new found friends and I decided to skip out on dining hall food, take a ride to the mall, grab some dinner and walk around.

We made our way back and now I'm headed to the gym (yes, again) to start the first set of 3 weeks (5 sets of those) of conditioning and practice for basketball before I head back to meet up with some people to watch Top Chef. Everyone here is a food nerd so its kinda cheesy that we all talk about Food Network and Top Chef every 5 minutes but it makes for a fun place.

Tomorrow Gastronomy and Food Safety.

Chef Werblin

ps. My Wednesday/Friday bball workout consists of 10 Suicides, 5 17s (run the court 17 times, hopefully in under 60 seconds), 5 60 second Line Jumps, Wall Passing 20 times, Full Court Dribbling 50 times and ending with 50 made Freethrows.
pps. These 3 ducks live outside my dorm near the mini-lake on campus and eat all day... until you accidentally walk to close and they start hissing at you uncontrollably... don't do that.
ppps. If you've ever seen I Love You, Man, this school is just like that movie because all the new students aren't housed together so making friends requires starting conversations with random people and then attempting to attain their phone numbers (kinda awkward between dudes) so you can stay in touch outside of class.