It's Been a Hard Day's Night

Naturally, Jacob and I are assured some tough days. Homesickness aside, if you’ve ever cooked before you can relate to being at least a little bummed when something doesn’t turn out how you want.

I know at home I was always upset with myself when I burned something or forgot something silly in the recipe or just plain did something wrong, and generally I was just serving it to friends or family. Now add in a professional chef, often the best of the best, and you can imagine how much more pressure there is and how much harder the fall is when you fail, even if it's just a part of a practical.

We share these large (and beautiful) kitchens with 9-13 people each practical, so not only is there chaos, but there’s also an underlying competitive tone that just doesn’t suit me. Give me a kitchen and a chef to yell at me and I swear I’d be as happy as a clam (why, oh why, does that expression exist? I’m hoping Jacob finds out whenever he does clams). But this is just part of the process. I rather enjoy practicals and look forward to the day when I can pretend to be in the kitchen alone, no inhibitions.

Here’s to moving forward from failed Classic French Apple Tarts!

~Sarah

Full Uniform

Here's a picture of us together in full uniform! We're in Le Jardin d'Hiver, which is the student hangout during our daily one-hour lunch break.

Our full uniform consists of a chef jacket, pants, apron, tea towel, cap (and hair net for me), neckerchief, and safety shoes. When in demonstrations we are not required to wear our cap, apron, or tea towel. On our left arm pocket you may be able to see our covers (table fork, soup spoon, teaspoon for in class tastings), pens, and our name badges/school ID.  

We are to keep our uniforms neat and press them ourselves so they do not look too wrinkled. Each aspect of the uniform is important for one reason or another, so whether we look foolish or professional, we're certainly ready to cook!

~Sarah

Diversity at Le Cordon Bleu

Le Cordon Bleu Paris is home to only 340 students at a time. That, as our director said, is considered “capacity”. Located in a major European city, I suppose some diversity is expected, but I surely didn’t expect THIS much diversity!

My class, my 30-student intensive basic pastry class, is home to a ton of nationalities! Today I sat next to a young girl from London and an older woman from Pakistan and had lovely conversations with both. Aside from them we have women and men from Mumbai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Texas, Columbia, Germany, Spain, South Africa and others that I can’t even remember. I’ve been a part of very diverse groups before, but none groups so small and so diverse.

I’m not too good at making friends, but so far learning our differences has been the most fascinating part and I’m actually itching to have more conversations with them about their pasts and reason why they’ve joined the Cordon Bleu family.

~Sarah

And Now a Break From Our Regularly-Scheduled Programming!

We’ve had a fair amount of posts about Le Cordon Bleu, but almost none about our other experiences in Paris, so I thought I should share a bit.

Our adventures haven’t taken us very far, and certainly not out of France. The first day we hit all of the tourist-y spots on a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus. Since we’ve both been to Paris before we really didn’t have any destinations we absolutely had to go. Once Jacob started class and I had more free time I spent some time shopping for a wedding dress (how could I not shop when in one of the fashion capitals of the world?!) as well as hitting some of the lesser known museums.

Overall my biggest surprise involves…sunglasses. My goodness, if you want to feel like an obvious outsider walk around Paris in sunglasses. So few people do that I’m shocked when I see another person wearing them. That doesn’t stop me one bit as my eyes are fairly sensitive, but it brings a smile to my face just thinking about how odd that is to me. What a weird thing to even notice! :-)

The farthest we’ve gone is an hour outside of Paris. This past Sunday, our normal day off for the week, Jacob and I went to Disneyland Paris (formerly Euro Disney). It consists of two parks, the Magic Kindgom and Walt Disney Studios, as well as a Disney Village and numerous hotels. I was raised on Disney and am obsessed with every last detail of the whole company, so it’s an under exaggeration to say I was excited.

It was great fun and such a nice break, almost as if we had left Europe for a bit. Our favorite ride? Crush’s Coaster, which broke down while we were on it the second time. And we’re talking light’s on- evacuation-break-down. Good fun for us, and I got a few nice videos of the inside of the ride. One video is below (we'll spare you the one of me talking).

A Quick View Inside Crush's Coaster

Besides that, a memorable moment was when triplee (Jacob) stayed true to his AGO pledge name by tripping in front of a girl wearing a ucla sweatshirt while he was wearing a “Fight On!” shirt. He got so many sighs from me. :-)

More posts about our courses to come!

~Sarah

Fun With Knives

Well, yesterday was absolutely exhausting, to say the least. Just to teach you a little bit about the system of Le Cordon Bleu, there are two different types of classes, demonstrations and practicals. For all of you in college right now or who just graduated,  a demonstration is basically like a lecture class where you watch a chef prepare two or three dishes depending on the amount of time each recipe takes and a practical is like a lab class where you make one of the dishes that you saw prepared in the demonstration. There's a third type of class called "Culinary Theory", but it's just another type of lecture and we only have one or two of them in total. Each demonstration or practical lasts around three hours!

Now that you know the basic layout, I had one culinary theory class, two demonstrations, and a practical yesterday. We made a rustic vegetable and bacon soup that mainly had us practice the knife cuts we had learned in the demonstration (mirepoix, paysanne, brunoise etc.). I also had another practical this morning that followed the second demonstration yesterday where we had to fillet a fish ourselves. I never expected to be taking a whole fish apart in our second class!!!

I also got my first cut today during the fish practical!!! I somehow feel initiated into the school even though I stupidly got it while putting my knives away :-/. Anyway, I have to go back soon to have another demonstration and practical, and then I get tomorrow off!!! Just to leave on a happy note.....here's a picture of my cut :).

Why We're Here...

No offense to anyone who could possibly take it from my next statement, but today just might have been the best day of my life. I bet if you ask anyone at orientation I would be identified as that guy with the ridiculously huge smile the entire time, in other words I looked like a maniac. After going over all of the rules quite a few times, introducing ourselves (there are around 30 students in my class of various nationalities), and getting told a few times how intensive this intensive basic cuisine course would really be, we got all of our swag (knife kit, uniform, textbooks etc.) and a tour of the school and then we were set free until tomorrow.

Unfortunately, as I went to the reception area of the school I looked outside and saw this torrential downpour and had no umbrella or raincoat to speak of. I then decided to leave all of my stuff in my locker and return later to bring it to the apartment since we only live about five minutes by walking. Right as I reached the apartment the rain subsided and I was totally soaking, so I hung up my wet clothes and returned to the school a few hours later and picked up my stuff (pictures to come later).

Who knows when I'll write my next post cause I have 12 hours of class tomorrow, almost back to back. They really weren't kidding when they said this would be extremely intensive!!!

Bonjour, Paris!

Well these have been quite an eventful past couple of days! The stress leading up to yesterday’s travel day was palpable, but we are now finally settled in our new Parisian apartment.

Surprisingly, the worst part of the traveling was not the delay while on the tarmac (Jacob has some VERY entertaining group games on his phone) but the traffic that we experienced right off the bat in France. Even our taxi driver was hitting his wheel as if to say, “Could you please move a little faster?” …Okay, maybe it was without the please.

Even though half the amenities of this tiny apartment are broken or non-existent, and even though we totally forgot bar soap, we know it’ll become cozy enough to us in the next few weeks. I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say we’ll be missing it come the end of our classes, but I can tell it’ll quickly become our Parisian home.

Classes are still the most worrisome part of the trip. Jacob and I are both so scared of not doing well in our respective classes and have come up with small things to keep our hearts steady. I keep looking towards the day when we have a demonstration and practical class on croissants since they are my fiancé’s favorite pastry -- if I come back having forgotten everything but the croissants I’ll still feel okay about the trip. Jacob has a crazy French meal planned (it may or may not include rabbit) for our grandparents after we return. He was picking menu items before we even left! I can't wait to sneak a few bites.

Even after getting a bit worried just sitting here, I looked left out the window and spotted the expected, gorgeous French architecture and realized that I’m in Paris…that’s pretty cool.

~Sarah