Leaning to the Left

Today I woke up at 4:40 am in order to get into the production kitchen by 6 am to volunteer. The production kitchen is almost like the prep kitchen in the basement, but it's the heart of the place, where all the demos trays are made (so the chefs can make our dishes for us to see how it's done during demos periods) and where all the boxes are put together for us to then replicate those demos. It's also where they bake the bread, and treats for everyone in the morning (students included) and where they make staff meals (for the teachers/chefs and other employees) and then they make stock, and rotate the food in and out with deliveries....truly the heart and brain of the whole place.

So I got to julienne oh, 10 giant yellow turnips first thing this morning, and when I woke up I had no balance, I kept falling to the left. It's like I was having inner ear problems....and I was dizzy all day. So to julienne a hard veggie like that was a real treat. I managed to not lose any fingers and my julienne is getting better, so all in all a successful morning. I also put together some demo trays and rearranged food in the walk-in.

Then in the afternoon we had a pastry practical so we made lady fingers and genoise (sponge cake) and we had the opportunity to make one of them twice if it didn't work out exactly the first time, which is awesome, because that opportunity is rare. I didn't heat my genoise enough the first time (it was a little flat) so I remade it after my almost-perfectly piped lady fingers. Naturally everything worked out well (after the second cake) when we aren't being marked for our efforts!

I brought home both of my cakes and my lady fingers. When I buy batteries tomorrow for my camera I'll take a picture and add it to this post. I'm going to practice my piping on the cakes this weekend. They taste kinda blah on their own (they're a great base for cream, liquor and fruit, but are very unexciting alone) so they'll be a great canvas to practice piping techniques and chocolate piping (different bag, different world). I plan to just wipe the icing or whatever I make off with a knife and keep doing it until the top layer of the cake sogs off.

So tired, must go to bed and sleep off my dizziness.