In my two years as a culinary student at Trident Tech, I’ve made plenty of good memories and plenty of bad memories. I’ve met some awesome people, some stupid people, some creepy people, and even a few average people. Over the next three days until graduation, I want to recap a few of my favorite and least favorite moments for the three people who loyally follow my blog. It’s hard to decide which stories are worth telling and which ones would bore you all to tears, but there’s one that I know without a doubt I have to share. I’m sure some of you will know what I’m talking about if I just say the word “spatula.” For those of you that don’t, here’s what happened...
It was one of my last days in Intro to Bakeshop. We were decorating a strawberry whipped cream cake, which we had to score into sixteen slices. I pulled out a knife I had never used before that resembled the one Chef Fritz had used in her demo. It basically looked like one of those straight pallet knives (which is a spatula, not an actual knife, for those of you who don’t speak that language), except it was really long and sharp. I was told it was a meat slicer, but I wouldn’t know. Anyway, I pulled it out and started scoring my cake.
Just a few minutes earlier, when I had iced the cake, I was using a pallet knife. I guess I forgot that I had switched tools or else I was just really stupid, but I somehow got it in my head that I was scoring my cake with a pallet knife. Because I thought it was a pallet knife, I also thought it would be safe to wipe the whipped cream off the edge of the “pallet knife” with my fingers each time I marked the cake. I did this a few times before I felt a sharp pain shoot through my finger as I slid it over the cold metal. I looked at my hand, confused, and said aloud “Did I just cut myself with a spatula?”
At this point, of course, I remembered that I was using a very sharp knife. Unfortunately, my partner heard my spatula comment, and I made myself look like even more of an idiot than I had already done by cutting myself twice in Intro to Bakeshop. We hardly even use knives in that class!
Chef Fritz offered to call public safety, but I managed to choke out, “No, it’s just a tiny cut,” without crying. I slapped a band-aid and a rubber glove on it and went back to work, this time keeping my fingers off the blade- or so I thought. I somehow ended up slicing through both the glove and the band-aid within about 5 minutes. I felt super smart that day.
Since I’m already talking about injuries, I might as well go ahead and tell my favorite injury story from CIC. The reason it’s my favorite is because it’s pretty much the only one that wasn’t my fault.
It was practical final day in HOS 101 my first semester at CIC. We made cream of broccoli soup and hollandaise and did some vegetable cuts. I didn’t get hurt at all during the exam, but then it was time to clean up, which can be very dangerous in a kitchen full of first-semester culinary students. I decided to pile all of my dirty dishes onto a cutting board and carry them to the dish room where I would set them next to the sprayer and then wash everything. It seemed like an easy enough plan.
When I walked into the dish room with my hands completely full, there was a pot sitting next to the sprayer right where I had planned to set all my dishes. Well that wasn’t too bad because, since I’m not a midget, I could just reach over the pot and set all my stuff behind it. That’s exactly what I did. About two seconds later, I was plunging my right forearm into the depths of the not-quite-icy-but-cold-enough sanitizing sink.
Apparently some idiot and/or jerk had taken a pot straight off the open flame and tossed it in the dish room without thinking enough to at least put it in water! (Just kidding, I know who did it. I don’t think he’s an idiot or a jerk.) When I had reached behind the pot, my arm had pressed against its top edge, and it left a nice little red line on my skin. I assumed it wasn’t a very bad burn since it didn’t immediately blister and turn black, but I spent the rest of the class with a cold, wet towel pressed against my wound and had to bandage it up as soon as I got home. That was the end of my first semester- November 2009. It’s now May 2011 and I still have a mark from that burn. I’ve forgiven the guy, though, because he wrote a nice apology on one of my jackets.
I wish I had the time to tell detailed stories of all my wonderful injuries since the first thing I want to do is relive all those painful moments, but I don’t have the time or a reason to do so. I’ll always cherish the memories of getting boiling glaze brushed onto my finger and not putting it under cold water, cutting myself on a loaf of bread, shredding my hands with aluminum foil while sculpting a bear, burning myself on a speed rack that tried to attack me, and accidentally running my hand into the blade of a knife that was lying on a table, but all those stories are just too boring to tell.
 |
| This is the day I cut myself with that "spatula." Chef Fritz was laughing because she knew what was about to happen. |
No comments:
Post a Comment