Wednesday, May 6, 2009

not so Umami

Did you know that aside from bitter, salty, sweet, sour there is also another sense on your taste buds called Umami which just means overall savory.
Anyways, this blog is twofold, or bittersweet in terms of sensory glands.

This week I had one last final which I got a A on. The same class (Food Prep 1) lab part of the class I ended up getting an A as well. Now this is the class final lab that I thought I absolutely failed miserably. I ended up getting a B on that! A miracle, I know. He said the only problems with my products was that my biscuits were tough and my cheese rarebit was too thin. Oh and I got 50 points deducted for being late in turning in my product. I am so happy right now because I seriously thought I had failed.

*I never did tell the story about the final exam, did I? Well I had two hours to complete the following products:
-broccoli with cheese rarebit sauce
-biscuits
-chicken a la king
-baked custard
I was so elated not to have the godforsaken Orange Charlotte on my list, I can't even explain.
So I started cutting up all my vegetables and putting stuff in bowls so I could just dump them in when needbe. I ended up cooking my baked custard first and then it got to cool off in the fridge the rest of the time so that was no problem. Then I fabricated my chicken (woot woot) and started simmering it while I made my biscuits. I cooked my biscuits and took them out after about 15 minutes and so those were complete now too. I then made my rarebit sauce and let it sit on the double boiler as I worked on my chicken a la king now. Somehow the 30 minutes til service called turned into the "you have five minutes before I take what you have" call. Yeah-NOT a good sign. I threw everything together, not even measuring anymore since Chef was out of the room. I threw a few sprigs of herbs on for a garnish and presented my products. Seriously, I don't know why I have the inability to complete tasks in time! And it only seems to be for the important days like midterms and finals. Every other day I'm fine- but not on the most important ones. So needless to say, I thought I had failed because he said four people were okay and three were not. And I was the third to last person to turn my products in. WHEW! but I made it!

Then this week I've had two certification exams. One was for ServSafe (or Sanitation and Safety) and one was for ManageFirst (or Nutrition). Both were actually pretty decent so I think I find out in a week how I did.
Today I went in to school at 12:15 and just had to clean for an hour to get an easy 100 points for lecture and I am officially done with spring semester!!!!! I have finished my first semester of culinary school! And now I have 21 days until it all starts again.

So that's my good news.

On the other hand, my dad had some tests done last week because they found a suspicious spot. Today we found out that his cancer has returned. After battling it for the past year and then being cancer free for a few short months, it has returned...worse than before. He was in stage 3 last year and now it's in stage 4. My mom says its sovereign timing because she no longer has a job so now she can take care of him and take him to his chemo treatments once a week. What happened before was that he had cancer in his appendix and it burst. So technically he doesn't have an appendix to have cancer, but all the yummy juices of it are still floating around in what the doctors call like a balloon.
Last time he was taking chemo he ended up having bleeding in his brain and had to have a really serious brain surgery. So there are all these questions of if it will have the same negative effects it did last time or if they would have completed the chemos the first time around- would it have come back? I try not to think about it, but to just accept it. It's hard. Harder then I make it out to be at times.
So that's my update as of now. I know it wasn't public knowledge to all my friends before about my dad's situation, but this time I'm realizing it helps to have people know and not keep all these feelings to myself.

jen žít

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