Guess who’s started chef school? Yep, I’ve hit the ground running. We haven’t finished unpacking and I’ve already headed off to school to fulfill the ‘tongs’ part of this blog’s name. This has been my first week, 2 days of theory which made for very long days, no naps and no daytime entertainment TV. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to sit still in a classroom for 8 hours. The class is about 37 students and we’re a mix of us doing cooking and others who will branch away and do patisserie – good friends to know and I have volunteered myself to test any samples they make. As always, my life is full of laughs and my first day at school was memorable. I was up around 6am to get the bus so it was a bit of an early shock start. I stuffed up the bus routine despite studying the timetables for hours on Sunday. You can picture me running about the bus terminal checking times and bus numbers. Things are a wee bit different since I left. And then, I went to buy something from the café and only realised after scrounging in my backpack, that I had left my wallet at home. Great, bit embarrassing. A nice guy offered me some money but I was ok, bit of old pride there I think but I did I have my lunch, just wanted something else naughty. And then the NEXT day, I came home and was looking for my paw paw ointment for my lips (paw paw ointment is like Vaseline for my non Aussie readers). It was on the bathroom sink. Hmmm, only then did I realise that this was the hair gel I put through my hair yesterday morning!!! Far out, I wondered why my hair was not the best yesterday, Vaseline is not meant to be hair gel. It’s a similar tub to one of my hair products and clearly at 6am yesterday I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah, so it was an interesting day.
After 2 days of theory and some food hygiene/safety quizzes, we had our first day in the kitchen as Day 3. The day was exciting for everyone, putting on their check pants and white jackets for the first time. The white skull caps are a bit unattractive, a bit like those hats that come in xmas bon bons. The kitchen was where we sorted out the rookies from the wanna-be Masterchefs. You could feel the buzz around the kitchen as everyone compared clothes, knives, tools and shoes. The day was another long one, lots of introduction to the kitchen layout and equipment and a thorough lesson in hand washing. Our food outcome for the first day was a lemon herb dressing roast chicken and salad. It was easy to see those who had kitchen experience and those who have never even been in the kitchen at home. About half way through the lesson, there was a queue at the first aid cabinet for knife cuts and a couple of hands under cold water following some light burns from picking up frypans with hot handles – they missed the memo on using your teatowel to pick up hot items. I survived these tests but managed to knock over my little tub of dressing. Thus my salad had about 1 teaspoon of dressing in it making it a little bland of flavor. I worked next to a young guy who clearly has industry experience – he made me feel like I was on an episode of Masterchef and I was going to be leaving next when I looked at his plate and mine. His presentation was fabulous. Will keep my eye on him. I came home exhausted with a headache and had a nap for an hour. Definitely need to pick up my work-fitness game for Week 2.
Well the dogs came home safely and it was a wonderful happy tails reunion. It was a very different welcome than what they gave me in DC so we were pleased. They knew they were home and enjoyed sniffing and exploring their old place. Cricket had only lived here for 7 months before going to DC so it’s not as homely to him as Macey, who’s been here forever. Cricket still looks for squirrels and I feel sad that they are not running free in the massive Rock Creek Park where we lived. But it’s all about the smells and they seem to be overdosing on the new smells here. Funny thing with Cricket….whenever one of us comes home in the car, he runs to the left hand side of the car to see the driver. He’s used the US cars that are left hand drive. It’s very cute to see and he’s such a smart boy.
We are slowing unpacking our boxes and settling in. It feels like a such a chore. We’ve unpacked enough to function but we’re taking our time with the rest of the stuff. It’s a good time to cull some things and we are a bit worried about the stuff still to come home from DC. Where did all the stuff fit 3 years ago? I hope to unpack my bike this weekend – the others are yet to come over from DC.
The dishwasher doesn’t work and the washing machine decided to die by leaking grease into the drum. Sadly, it did this when I was washing my new white chef jacket !! So Deb has had a few dates with tradies this week to get things fixed and delivered. I’ve eaten a truck load of sausages – I love sausages. The coffee is great and I haven’t had a sossy roll yet so that will be task 1 for the weekend. It’s hard to not to ignore that we are both feeling a bit of culture shock. I was not sure this would happen but it has in a few ways. The traffic is certainly very very quiet compared to DC. It literally feels like a public holiday on the roads. I feel very weird getting around, things feel different, the people are different and I feel like bit of a stranger. Driving is ok, only a few adjustments to the proper side of the road. I’m sure things will feel like normal soon enough.
Well that’s a quick wrap on the first week of school. And I have an assignment to do :o
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