First Day of Cooking School

I know y'all are so excited to hear about my first day of school.  Well, I worked a little later than expected so got to class around 11:30 ish.  Yes, I know I said I resigned, but that doesn't mean I'm crazy.  I'm still working, just part time.  Anyway, thought that might be important information sometime down the road.

So, reported for my first day of cooking class and since the first few chapters aren't in the kitchen, teacher (meaning me) let us have class out by the pool today.  I think I might be teachers pet. She is super nice and cute and so smart.

Today, the class learned about Safety and Sanitation. I now know what the "danger zone" regarding temperature is, what the difference between biological chemical and physical contamination is, what HACCP (hazard analysis critical control points) are AND that you should wash your hands well and often when working in the kitchen.  WEW!! Glad I got that outta the way.  All that talk about fungi and unhygienic workers did not sit well with my nutella and banana waffle.

The next chapter is on nutrition.  However, I spoke to the school board (meaning me) and they said since I've had that class and many levels of it and passed with flying colors, I'd probably be ok to test out. HOLLAA!!

The most serendipitous part of class today was that I had some cubed steak set out for dinner tonight....but not thawing at room temperature because that's bad! Cubed Steak is the other red meat,  for those of us that are "for all practical purposes, unemployed".  But I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it.  So I flip to page 30 and right in front of me is a recipe typed out with exact critical control points where you'd check temperature, wash hands (thank you for that) etc.  And the recipe was for beef stroganoff.  Yeah yeah, i know it's not a typically a cube steak dinner but we in the food business (meaning me) can improvise like that. It worked out perfectly delicious.  Served with a side of warm caprese: roast cherry tomatoes and EVOO at 375 degrees until they start popping, about 20 min.  Then pull them out and sprinkle fresh pearl mozzarella balls on top. They'll slightly melt.  Then drizzle with balsamic glaze and fresh torn basil.

Thank you school textbook for my dinner idea.  I think this will be one of many. After all the damn book is 1500 pages.

School makes me tired..all that learning. So I'll be done here for the night.  Oh!, Hey, do you like how I bolded my textbook definition words?  Looks all legit!!

G'nite!