Practical Talk

I know I promised in my last post that I would talk a little about the concept of the practical exam, so here I am. Better late than never, huh? We've been working on chocolate and pastillage pieces in class for the past two weeks, and I will get some pictures up soon of my yarn ball and truffles. We seem to have misplaced the cord that connects from the camera to the computer, so once I find that I can actually free the pictures from the camera.

One of the things I like about chocolates is that we don't have to take a practical. In all my other labs, there's been a mid-term and a final practical, in addition to our written exams. I can't speak for what happens in the culinary side of things, but our baking and pastry practicals work something like this:

Most chefs give you a day's notice as far as what will be expected of you during practical. There are certain skills that they are looking for, and as such you are expected to complete a certain number of different kinds of pastries. In Classical French, the list was exact and nearly impossible. Nobody finished except for one girl. In Hot&Cold, we also had a specific list of things like a fruit pie and a cream pie, but we had a lot of leeway within those categories to design our own flavors and plates. In Cakes we had to torte, fill, and finish a cake. We had to produce certain skills (rosettes and marzipan roses) and complete some petit fours (see my previous post about that petit fours adventure). Practicals are incredibly stressful because you're under an exact timeline, and the chef is usually watching you more than usual. I do my best when I stay focused on my own stuff. Sometimes this is hard, because other people make it difficult by hoarding all the bowls or spoons or whatever. It was so bad in Hot&Cold that I brought my own wooden spoon and rubber spatula from home just to make sure I wasn't going to have to fight somebody for the things I needed. Some chefs don't mind if you bring your own tools like that, while others feel that the school-supplied tools in our kits are sufficient.

So, no practical in Chocolates. We have one more day this week, a field trip on Thursday (our original field trip got thwarted by a blizzard two weeks ago), and three days next week. Then, on to Advanced Cakes. I'm in the middle of selecting my co-op site. Friday I have my interview with the campus co-op coordinator. Working. Working on our big group project for Cost Control. Knitting a chicken . Reading. The weather is fabulous today, so I'm here at Tenn Street Coffee enjoying an iced chai, a blueberry muffin, and free wifi before I go to work. I had to email my paper draft to my professor, and I didn't feel like hauling the computer into work, so...

Speaking of work, I need to move on. Look for another update when I get pictures off the camera.