Professional Chef Program | Spring 2015 Class

Hi there! I'm excited to share this video with you. It's was our last event for the professional chef program. It was a whirlwind of food, family, and fun! 

Enjoy :)

NE Highlights and Challenges | Week #22

This is a class assignment that I write about at the end of each week called Highlights and Challenges. If you are new to my blog I am enrolled at The Natural Epicurean Culinary Academy in Austin, Texas and this is my online journal (among other things!).

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Describe: What did you find especially exciting, interesting, inspiring, satisfying and/or fun this week in the kitchen?

This was our last week in culinary school and our final event happened on Saturday! It was a whirlwind of food, family, friends, and yes some tears!

Here is our AMAZING menu that Tiana hand drew for us for our Earth to Table theme. She killed it with this menu and I hope she gets an A++:

We had four days to plan, grocery shop, decorate, and cook. Everyone was busy (some more so than others), but there was a calmness that kept me grounded. Since we were all so busy I really didn't capture any photos of food from the final event, but I did take a few random photos:

Check out this groovy mango that had a small arm growing out of it, but what's great about this was Tiana's expression...hahaha!!! 

2. Reflect: In what ways have you begun to apply, develop or incorporate this and/or how does this influence your professional goals?

I will be giving cooking demonstrations and grocery store tours in Dallas for a small group of family members next week. I'm super excited about this :) 

After the final event was over I showed my aunts how to juice wheatgrass and explained to them the health benefits. They were really open to all of this information and excited to learn more about healthy plant-based cooking. We had fun:

CHALLENGES

3. Describe: What did you find especially challenging or difficult in the kitchen this week?

Since we had a holiday on Monday we had four days to get ready for the event. Tight. Deadlines.

4. Reflect: What might you do to meet and overcome these challenges or difficulties?

I believe that if you prepare ahead of time and have all of your details figured out things go smoothly. 

In the end everything came together and our friends and family were very happy and impressed with our event! 

This is my last highlights and challenges entry and I want to thank you for stopping by to read my blog. It's been intense, but I loved the experience!!! 

I will leave you with a group photo of my class. This was taken right after the final event. Love to you all.

NE Highlights and Challenges | Week #21

This is a class assignment that I write about at the end of each week called Highlights and Challenges. If you are new to my blog I am enrolled at The Natural Epicurean Culinary Academy in Austin, Texas and this is my online journal (among other things!).

At the request of our macrobiotic chef instructor, this weeks highlights and challenges will be different that my previous posts. 

We are to create a Spring menu (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for someone who needs to lighten up their meals, or a Spring menu for a wedding. I will be creating a Spring menu for someone who needs to lighten up their meals. 

Before I get into the Spring menu I'd like to share all the great photos of the macrobiotic recipes we made this past week. So much good food!

That last photo is Chef Rachel getting the perfect shot of our food on our last day of macrobiotic class. It was a great day and we sat together and ate for the last time as a group.  

Macrobiotic Spring Menu 

Breakfast 

Miso soup 

Lemon and ginger tea

Lunch

Edamame and chickpea salad with lemon miso dressing

Sweet vegetable drink

Dinner

Sushi with sweet and sour burdock, carrot, green onion and tofu

Dessert

Kanten with pear juice and lemon

That's all for this week! Hope you stop by for another visit next week. It will be my last post of highlights and challenges. My culinary training ends with our final event next weekend!!! It's going to be a blast :)

NE Highlights and Challenges | Week #20

This is a class assignment that I write about at the end of each week called Highlights and Challenges. If you are new to my blog I am enrolled at The Natural Epicurean Culinary Academy in Austin, Texas and this is my online journal (among other things!).

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Describe: What did you find especially exciting, interesting, inspiring, satisfying and/or fun this week in the kitchen?

This week we continued with the macrobiotic course and there were many things I enjoyed. I liked the sweet vegetable drink, several of the snacks, and guest speaker David Briscoe. 

Here is a picture of David Briscoe AKA Chef DaVeed demonstrating for us how to make a stromboli sauce. That sauce was so delicious!!!

David is a highly regarded macrobiotic counselor and teacher. I am very grateful to have met him and enjoyed a wonderful meal he made for us in class. It was an Italian themed macrobiotic feast! So good!

Here are some of the pics from class this week including the Italian recipes that were made:

2. Reflect: In what ways have you begun to apply, develop or incorporate this and/or how does this influence your professional goals?

I'd like to prepare a macro-meal plan really soon and incorporate the three main fundamentals of macro cooking into our rountine at home.

To curb any sugar cravings I think the sweet vegetable beverage will be helpful for me and my husband. 

The spring rolls we made in class was another of my favorites and now that I can roll them I can't wait to share them with others! The almond dipping sauce was really good and a nice change from the typical peanut sauce. 

CHALLENGES

3. Describe: What did you find especially challenging or difficult in the kitchen this week?

The challenging thing this week had nothing to do with macro. It was preparing for the final event and getting my recipes ready for it. I have two weeks until the event and everything right now feels like it's moving in slow motion. Kinda like the character Neo in the movie The Matrix when he is dodging bullets and everything around him is moving slow and he is moving so fast :P

4. Reflect: What might you do to meet and overcome these challenges or difficulties?

The good news is I have completed scaling, costing, and filling out a requisition form for both of my recipes!!! 

I'd like to give a special thanks to my classmate and friend Paula. She is so awesome and taught me some things that I was not aware of when scaling and costing recipes. She's very experienced and has her own restaurant in Columbia called Sana Que Sana. If you are in Bogota and want a healthy meal or a refreshing beverage go to her restaurant :)

Here is a pic of Paula in the school lab sauteing some veggies:

The other person I want to thank is Chef instructor Dianne! Yay! She has answered a lot of my questions and pointed out mistakes that I needed to correct to get me on the right path. Thanks Chef :)


That's all for now! See you next week :)