Week 3: No soup for you.

I felt all week like last week's update was all over the place, so I'm going to try a little harder to stay somewhat organized this week. Week three was/is (we have one more recipe batch today) soups. I had two thoughts going into the week, "Soup is easy" and "I don't like pureed soups." One of these statements was true, the other, completely false.

And I bet you can guess which one I'm talking about.

On demo day, my group was responsible for setting up the Cream of Broccoli demo (recipe set was COB and French Onion). The chef only demoed Cream of Broccoli, so when Day 1 came around, I was pumped to try my hand at the French Onion. Besides, it's a staple in French country cuisine, which we all know is one of my favorite things ever. It was really fun and a whole lot of work, and although both my partner and I thought it came out WAY too sweet, the chef was pleased with it. Day 1 victory.

Day 2 was when things got a little hairy. We had group members who wanted to do the Vichyssoise (Cold Potato and Leek Soup) so my partner and I were stuck with the Cream of Cauliflower. I openly hate Cauliflower, so I wasn't too excited to begin with, but if you add enough cream and salt to anything it can't turn out too bad, or so I told myself. To make a long, sad, story short, we used the wrong equipment to puree, resulting in a major loss of texture and thinned out the remaining liquid too much with stock. The chef helped us punch up the flavor and thicken it up at the last minute, but we ended up with a mediocre product and far less than the recipe was supposed to yield.

And despite the fact that the chef was totally kind about his criticism and despite the actual humor of the situation, I did feel a bit disappointed as I headed home that night. It was the first real "bump" in the road in this journey so far, and though it was minor, it still causes you to question yourself a little. At least at did me. But as I laid in bed thinking about it that night, I realized that because the soup didn't turn out quite right, I will 1) never take soup making for granted again 2) think twice about the equipment I use and 3) not assume that a recipe is bad just because it includes an ingredient I don't like. Some of my classmates Cream of Cauliflower were gosh darn good.

Soups: Day 3 brought Minestrone and Clam Chowder to our group. Our partners wanted to work on the Clam Chowder (which turned out fabulous- and I don't like clams) so we got ready for the Minestrone. As a result of the flop the day before, and the fact that the Minestrone the group before us made received high praise, I was a bit nervous about Day 3. But as we set about gathering up all the ingredients and chopping up all the veggies, that odd sense of chaotic calm set in and I knew we would be okay. The soup ended up really great- I ate a whole bowl for dinner and was even praised by our classmates and the chef. Perfection? No. But it was good and patched me up a little from the Cauliflower wound.

As I spent about 8 hours doing homework this weekend, I thought about how different this experience is from my "traditional" college experience. And even how different my experience is from a lot of my classmates. I used to be the back row sitting, textbook skimming, occasional class skipping kid who gave just enough effort to maintain my 3.0. Now, I'm that nerd who does all of the reading, who washes and irons their uniforms every night and looks ahead in their textbook excited about the chapters to come. I may or may not have spent 2.5 hours going way overboard on a Beet presentation as well. And to be honest, I kind of like being that Hermione-esque front-row sitting, question answering nerd.