Water-proof Mascara Anyone?

Week 1, Day 4- Finally got some new shoes last night. The shoes from the school still hadn't come in and I was tired of wearing my tennies. I had a gift certificate from Dillard's as part of a going away gift from my old job so I headed over to the mall to get some new shoes. After perusing the shoe department for a while, I decided on some Dansko's. They are not very cute, but they are a typical chef/nurse type shoes and you are supposed to be able to stand for a long period of time in them. I think I would have preferred some Berkenstocks or something simular, because they are a bit more my style, but my options were limited. So Dansko's it is! Bonus factor is they make me like two inches taller!!!

In class today we discussed weights, measures, and conversions and did a ton of knife cuts. The idea of more cuts both sacred and excited me! Knife cuts are the foundation of a chef's training, but I really felt I was behind the curve just getting started in my 30's. No matter, it was time to put my big girl panties on and belly up to the prep table. I began the lab portion with a ciceler of an onion. Now, granted I've cut tons of onions in my experience of cooking at home, but generally it's not quite this fine of a chop. Needless to say half way throuh processing the onion my eyes began watering like a fountain. I had put on a bit of mascara that morning, BIG mistake! I had huge streaks of brown running down my face and I couldn't see anything. Pretty embarrassing really, Chef Sara (our instructor) was laughing at me. Apparently some people have more sensitive eyes than others, and I am one of these lucky individuals. I guess I need to invest in some water-proof mascara....

Some other cuts we did consisted of  large and medium dice potatos, rondelle of carrots, minced garlic, and chiffonade of basil. Funny thing was I have been cutting basil in a chiffonade cut since I was in collage. I had no idea it was an official knife cut. One of the managers at Nick N Willy's, a take and bake pizza joint I worked at, taught me to cut basil by layering the leaves, rolling them like tabacco, and cutting the tube into small strips and voila! Chiffonade. All of my cuts turned out pretty well. We are given a set of plastic models that our cuts should resemble in both size and shape. So it's a good place to reference as we are practicing our cuts. Looks like I'll need a bit more practice on the large and medium dice potatoes though.

Tray of sample cuts for today.

The model kit of our cuts we'll be doing.