Day 9: The Big 4-Oh!

Today is my 40th birthday. It shaped up to be just like any other day except I let myself sample a cream puff AND some creme brulee the pastry students produced, cause everyone knows calories don't count on your birthday or the first day of your period.

As for today. We started on the mother sauces - bechamel and velouté. They went well, but then we used our velouté to make a mac and cheese. I didn't brown my bacon long enough and Chef C came around.

"You should have let that bacon go longer, eh? Still looks pretty white."

One minute later he's back.

"Sauce looks a bit thick there."

One minute later he's peering into the pot.

"Sauce looks a bit thin. How much stock is in there?"

And finally, on his last pass through, he looks into the pot and says - "Yeah we've already talked about that", and moved on.

AAAgh!

But I won him back when we had a window of time to practice our julienne skills. My julienne was criticized last week for being slightly too big, this week my little matchsticks are getting much smaller and more uniform.

As Chef C passed by he picked up my carrot julienne and smiled "Very, very nice!" and moved on. (YES!) But then! I saw him whisper to Chef T and point to my pile, "Check it out." (Double YES!)