Thursday, January 10, 2013

Hiding Behind My Stock

   Since my next course will be the fabled Culinary Skills 1,  I have decided to cook my way through the course outline in preparation for the class....... kinda Julia Childish, ( movie Julia and Julia). So yesterday I went to a butchers and purchased beef bones to make stock. I have the textbook already and have made the stock from it once before, therefore I figure it will be a fairly gentle introduction.
Alright, I'm afraid to try anything else........... I'm kinda intimidated by this course.
I need to pick up carrots, celery and more onions today then I should be good to go. I'll probably make it tomorrow and read up on coagulating proteins today. Last time I made this it made the air in my house smell like steak all day mmmmmmm.

Then I'll look at what else I'm supposed to cook. I need to buoy up my confidence first. Stock's easy as long as you don't let it boil. I can do that.

Usually.

Cheers,
Christine

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

I'm Back!

I have just finished a gruelling 4 months taking a required nutrition course. If anything made me think of not finishing my program it was that course. I experienced the true joys of group projects, note the sarcasm, and the wonderful...... more sarcasm, pace of quizzes and tests every 3ish weeks.
It's a bit of a blur, hence the "ish". 

Ugh.

The only real highlight was that I got to do a study on medieval nutrition, which I must say, was extremely cool! I learned all about how to stuff and cook a boars head, no I didn't actually do it, and dress it so it still looked like it had eyes and skin and stuff, and about cooking peacock and fowl so it still looked alive. Really neat!

Ok, some of you might be getting sick at the thought, my apologies....... but I just pictured castles, medieval music, candles and long beautiful dresses. 

PLUS I got to read lots of books on medieval cooking, gingerbread, roast pig..... that I would do, mincemeat and that vegetables were evil. 

Yes they were evil. Apparently the medieval philosophy concerning food was just a little off. Vegetables were not considered healthy according to the ancient Greek philosophy of the Humours. Since the European medieval doctors adopted this teaching...vegetables were baaaaaaad. 
Except the peasants couldn't afford too much meat....... so they had to eat the poisonous veggies.

So guess who was healthier???

Many a glass of red wine was drunk while I wrote my paper and watched this video.  I thought it was interesting and funny, but I'm a little weird, 
so I'll just give you a clip to see......


Cheers, Christine