I don’t have much to say today. Sorry I haven’t blogged in a bit. At first there was nothing to blog about and then finals week happened and I got too busy with studying. I’ve also been trying to keep a good sleep schedule going. So let me catch you up. This past week was the last week of two of my classes and I’m now onto the next one. Finals week started with a Safety and Sanitation final which was pretty easy, that was the only final for that class and I passed it. Culinary Foundations 1 had three finals. First was a kitchen product ID test in which Chef set out a bunch of different items on the tables and asked us to label them properly. I passed this test but I got a few wrong because I wasn’t specific enough when labeling them. We had a knife cut test. He asked us to cut red and green peppers into Julienne sticks, a cucumber had to be cut into Julienne and Batonnet sticks, an onion was to be cut into Macedone cubes and 3 tomatoes were cut into Brunoise cubes. At the end of this final our whole class combined all of our cuts and made some Gazpacho, a cold vegetarian soup. It tastes good with tortilla chips, mostly because it tastes like salsa. All you do is get together a bunch of fresh vegetables, a bit of tomato paste, some cayenne pepper a little bit of bread with red wine vinegar and then some cayenne pepper and salt, then you puree to finish. Put it in a nice bowl, throw a garnish on top, and drip some olive oil around to make it look nice. We also had to make mayonnaise without using a recipe for our final. There are two things I feel you need to remember when making mayonnaise, pour small amounts of oil (or fat) and mix FAST when doing so, and never forget the water. This final was kind of intimidating at first, mostly for me because I never got to see the demo in class; I was sent to go cut potatoes for our dish we were making that day. I got it though, and it turned out to be easier than I thought, your arm just gets tired. This test had two girls in my class crying (that I knew of). We also had a really big, stressful test to do this week. It was part of my Safety and Sanitation class, but it had nothing to do with my grade for the class. This test was to get our ServSafe Foodhandlers card. There are two versions of this test, one is just the basic foodhandler version and the other is for restaurant managers. We took the manager version. Chef has told us about students in the past that have failed this test. He said that he would have classes of about 30 students in which only maybe 7 passed. Since we were one of the last of his classes to take this test he also told us about all the other students failing it earlier in the week. To retake the basic version of this test is over $30, to retake the version we took, the manager version, is over $110. So we all sat in the LRC at the computers and took our test for what I think was 2 hours. I took my time, went through all the questions and went over them again. While doing this I was noticing all the people in my class around me getting up and walking out, I got to overhear each one of them telling the Chef they failed and need to schedule to retake it. So the more this happened the more I lost confidence. Then the Chef walked up and told me 20 minutes left, this is when I realized it was a timed test. So I quickly went over all my answers again and re-read all the confusing ones and hit the submit button. As soon as you hit that button it tells you whether or not you passed and I passed! Another thing that happened this week was that I finally got a pin for my lanyard. It’s from the Red Cross Blood Drive for helping out so much. So this week was a good one. Next blog is going to be about my new class, Introduction to Patisserie and Baking Techniques.