So much has happened since I last wrote on here!

Friday, I had a huge test. Took the entire class time. It started out with 6 pages of writing and recreating each of the recipes from last week. Step-by-step, all ingredients, amounts, cooking times, everything. It was very tedious. I'm not one of those people that takes tests "down to the wire", either. I ALWAYS have extra time, but this time... no. I finished that portion with 1 minute left. I don't like that kind of stress. So, the second part of the test was knife skills. Ehhh... I did ok. Then, we had the remainder of the class to recreate 3 dishes from the week, and present them to Chef Carpenter for our grade. Overall, I made an 88. I'm not pleased with it, but it'll do.

Saturday, a friend from school and I decided to go in for "Skills Enhancement" class. It's 4 hours, in a much smaller group, and you can work on whatever you're currently doing in class for practice. We went to work on our knife skills. Yep - that's right. Four hours of peeling and cutting potatoes. Well... I can do a pretty quick tourne' now :) And, it's got 6-9 sides! I'm getting better ;) While I was there, the chef that was in the room started talking to us and giving us some pointers. He stopped me and asked me where I was from. Then he wanted to guess... He said, "You're either from South Carolina, North Carolina, or Georgia." (eyes rolling).... "Nope." I said, "I'm from the state with the BEST food." Then he said, "Follow me." So, we walked into his office and he had Louisiana posters all over his wall, and a bumper sticker from Prejean's in Lafayette stuck to his laptop. He said, "I should have guessed Louisiana." He apparently goes every year for Jazz Fest.
So, later on, he asked me to follow him again. We walked down the hall into a huge walk-in refrigerator. This is where they keep ALL the food for the school. He pointed to a couple of cases of clams and oysters and told me to take all I wanted. We had just discussed seafood, and he said that these needed to be cooked before Monday or they would go bad, and the school would just throw them out. I gladly took the clams, but I'm not a big oyster fan. I know Daddy would have had a field day, though :)

I took them over to Beth & Chris' on Sunday, and we fried some, baked some, and made pasta with the rest. It all turned out really well, but my favorite, of course, were the fried ones. I've posted a pic of all the clams. They're in a huge roasting pan. There were A LOT.

I've got a few pics up here... One is rice pilaf, which apparently I'm pretty good at. And one is Risotto Parmasean - that, as of today, I ROCK at!!! Wonderful complements today on that. :) Pretty good, for only my 2nd time making it.
Another picture is of us all gathered around a table trying to identify many different kinds of grains/rices. That was on the test Friday, too. Pretty difficult.

OH!!! Tofurkey! It's real! I saw it in the grocery store, and had to take a picture. Hilarious.

Yesterday, several of us from class went to a special gathering with celebrity chef, Eric Ripert. If anyone watches "Top Chef," he's been a guest judge on the show. He's got a great new book that just came out that goes through all the ins and outs of the kitchen. Not so much a cookbook, but a book for real "foodies." I ordered it online last night on half.com :)

This week, we started sauces. It's pretty strenuous. So much going on, and each one has to be perfect. Several of them start out with a roux, though, and I've got that down pat!! :) So, all my roux-making is going well. Chef told us though, that this will be the week that the majority of the class will want to drop out.

All I know is... I'm not going anywhere.