Culinary School: Part 2

Just returned from another week in sunny (HOT) Orlando at Le Cordon Bleu Orlando College of Culinary Arts...whew, a mouthful! They changed their name as a part of the alignment process for all of the North American branches of Le Cordon Bleu.

Anyway, it was a fun week, I learned a lot, and got to connect with a lot of ProStart teachers from around the country, which was fun! Some of my "classmates" from last summer were there too, so it was great to see them again. The school treats us like kings and queens--they're so great to us. They feed us the best, give us so much attention, and mostly really great instruction.

They have a Certified Master Chef on staff, which is a really big deal since there aren't very many in our country, and many other instructors that have done great things in there careers.

For year two, we made all sorts of stocks, sauces, soups, and breads. We went through some techniques I haven't used before, and I got graded a 5/5 on my consomme, which I was extremely proud of!! :) I don't even care much for consomme with all the babysitting you have to do for it and in the end it tastes a lot like chicken broth to me, but I do have to say that it was crystal clear and garnished beautifully!! I'm totally bragging here, but I hear it was the only 5/5 of the class that day..wahoo!!

We spent one evening at Downtown Disney and toured the kitchen at Captain Jack's, which was seriously smaller than my guest bedroom. The restaurant has over 100 seats, and their kitchen looks like a submarine kitchen. Pretty impressive what they do with such little space!

We also ate a lot at Machon, the student restaurant. If you live in Orlando or are visiting, you should try it out. A lot of the other teachers told me wherever they go on vacation, they look for a culinary school nearby and try to eat at the student run restaurant. That sounds like a good idea to me! Machon is definitely worth going to!

I took my first trip to IKEA while in Orlando!! I went with Ash, who came from Tampa to hang out, and I was totally overwhelmed. It could take hours to walk through that place, and the whole "have to follow the arrows to get out and you can't see the front door from where you are" part was a little weird and claustrophobic to me, but it was still a cool place. If I would have had more suitcase space, or if it didn't cost another arm to bring another suitcase, I would have bought some stuff, but I left with just a jar of lingonberry preserves. Can't wait to try those, though.

I'll be making some of the Cordon Bleu recipes in the weeks to come, and I am planning on working quite a few into my curriculum this year, too, so I will be sure to share those when I get to them!