A day in the life

Now that I'm back in class, I feel like I should give a little overview about my school day!

A normal Baking Skills class goes a bit like this:

5:00 or 5:30 am, depending: I wake up, curse that I did not get enough sleep the night before, and vow to go to bed early more.

6am: It takes me quite a long time to wake up at that hour. I usually watch Kids in the Hall clips and eat breakfast. I have to have all my things ready for me in the morning, to make it as painless as possible. I set up my coffee pot with coffee and I have everything in my backpack ready to go before I go to sleep the night before.

6:15: At this point, I realize that I should probably get going, and I head out the door. I walk to school, which takes about half an hour. It's quite the journey at this hour, as it's usually quite dark. I'll have to remember to take my camera along one morning!

6:45: I arrive at school, and change into my uniform.

Our uniform consists of a chef jacket, chef pants, chef hat, necktie, apron and side towels. I also have to wear steel toed, non-slip black shoes. We are not allowed to wear any type of jewelery or nail polish. I only say that because I love nail polish and I have 15 ear piercings, which I have to remove.

7:00: Class starts! I like to show up a bit early, which gives me time to measure out ingredients and get my mise en place ready. A mise en place is a tidy collection of all the tools and ingredients that will be used that day. It's really important to keep everything together, and clean as you go.

Class typically starts with the Chef doing a demonstration of what we are going to make that day. I love the demonstration part of class! We all gather around the Chef and take notes on what we're about to make. I learn a lot from the demonstrations. It's really helpful to use what we're learning in Theory class in the kitchen. Then we get started.

We spend the rest of the morning organizing our time and ingredients. We work with a partner which makes it a bit easier. We make three or four different products each class. What we bake is most often determined by what we are learning in Theory class, but not always. Days of stress level can range from "what a lovely class, I'm so calm!" to "OH MY GOODNESS HOW ARE WE GOING TO BE ABLE TO FINISH IN TIME?!"

As stressful as that sounds, I love it. A friend once asked me why I was so darn happy in class, and I responded with: "I just love being in a kitchen. It makes me happy." At the time, I didn't realize how close that statement was to the truth!