Its Sunday morning so don't expect much!

Ok, I’m getting it from all sides! “Todd, you haven’t updated your Blog”, “Todd, I want to know more about what you’re doing in school and less about how much of a miserable bastard you are”, “Todd, if you were to die and come back as a Spice Girl which one would you be”?


Listen people, I’m in school, not on vacation! You think I’m just sitting around all day coming up with witty things to say for your amusement. It’s true that my world revolves around you (you know who you are) and I live to have you hang on my every word, but for 7 hours a day I have an angry Frenchman shouting and pointing an 18” blade at me! The rest of my time is divided between consuming beverages at Onieal’s with my classmates and studying for what have become bi-weekly tests! In addition, apparently one of you bastards has to come to NYC F’ing every week!

Anyway, I have a break tonight between my test today and my final on Thursday so I’m going to give the people what they want and update the blog. As all that’s been going on is school, that’s what this post will be about. I’ll try and make it as interesting as possible but I can only do so much talking about “Supreme de caneton saute’ et cuisse braise a l’orange”.


As most of you know I’m going to the “French Culinary Institute”. They have a 6 month intensive Culinary Arts program (along with Pastry and other shorter programs). I also considered the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) but that program is designed for people that take 4 times as long to learn how to boil water and ride the “short” bus. I’m just joking of course, CIA is a very good school and if any CIA chefs are reading this right now, I’m a hard worker and looking for an internship.


Classes are 5 days a week, 9am – 3pm, even though you better be in the kitchen by 8:30 setting up your station. Everything is done in the kitchen, usually short demos of the recipes, then the rest of the day is spent making the dishes. Level 1 started out with kitchen safety, knife shills and food safety then moved quickly into making full meals. Each day we make anywhere from 2 to 5 dishes depending on complexity. In upcoming posts I will publish some of the recipes we make so you can try them if you like.

What makes this course great so far is the people I’m working with everyday. From Chef Pascal and Lisa (our Chef Instructors) to all of the other students I get to team up with everyday ( well except for the ones from Long Island and New Jersey...and the ones from Brooklyn, and California, and Oregon, the Poconos, Puerto Rico, Australia , D.C., etc..), now that I think about it, the hell with them!!! They’re just oppressing me!!! Forcing me to go out 2 – 3 – 4 times a week drinking their intoxicating, devil juice! All I wanted was one!! But no, they won’t let me leave after just one. It’s not until I break a glass and join in with the “Sex and the city” tour that I can stumble home!


It’s not all fun and games though. We’re working all day long in a hot kitchen and Chef expects us to perform as if we were in a restaurant. Most of the time we’re working on two or more dishes at once, with a deadline to finish them all at the appropriate time while Chef shouts obscenities at us in broken English (usually used in the wrong context) for being too slow. In addition to cooking, we have 1 – 2 written tests per week and a shit load of Tournage (an ancient form of punishment invented by the French, where you have to cut potatoes into little 7 sided, torpedo shapes, 5cm long. So far I can only assume they are to be used as little starchy suppositories) homework to do.


I could keep going but I have reading to do and potatoes to turn. I promise I will try and keep you more updated in the future and hopefully I will have something more exciting to write about.