Mondays really are Mondays in course II.

I was running a little behind schedule, so I immediately made my way to my station. Well, it turns out that my station wasn't my station - there was a piece of tape with the names "Danny / Nina". Forgot. We'll be changing station partners on a weekly basis. Walking around the lab I find my new station near the front (away from the dishwashing sinks) with Lauren, one of the youngest students (she is only 18).

She and I haven't worked together other than doing dishes, so it will take some additional time to organize ourselves to get things done more efficiently.

The class starts with a short quiz. Of course, the time you have to finish the quiz is quite short as well. I'm usually a pretty quick test taker, but I didn't have much time to spare when I turned in my quiz.

Next, we have to drop some stocks that have been simmering all weekend. This is a fairly major task and takes a not insignificant amount of manpower as well as time. I worked on getting the ice for the sinks for cooling. After a weekend with very little use, the industrial ice maker is usually clogged up with a frozen solid mass of ice. The only thing to do is to attack the frozen mass with a shovel. At least you can get your aggressions out.

After I finished with the ice, others were working on straining the stocks. There are only so many people who can work on that task, so the rest of us began work on getting some of the mise. I pulled the eggs we needed and started portioning out the bread flour we would use for making pizza dough.

With all the plates and various dishes we prepare in course II, we require a large number of "mise cups," small, plastic deli containers in a variety of sizes (8oz, 16oz and 32oz are common). In these cups we place the ingredients we will be using. However, there is generally a shortage of cups in the class. One usually has to scrounge various containers to hold ingredients.

I find that very small mise cups (2oz - 4oz) are extremely handy for holding onto things like minced/smashed garlic cloves, minced parsley and other small items. These smaller cups take up less space and are easier to deal with, when you only have a tablespoon or so of ingredient. So, in order to ensure I have some of these cups to use, I bring my own. I never bring them home, simply leave them when I'm done. Unfortunately, today, someone snagged my cups to use to mise out stuff for the class (in this case, lemon juice). This left my station with a dearth of mise cups, especially the very useful small ones. Another blow to my typical way or organizing things.

The stocks got dropped and the collective mise stopped. Unfortunately, not everything was mised out. So, you had to look through everything and figure out what you still needed, which is not the most efficient way to do things.

Anyway, the chefs asked for volunteers to fabricate an entire salmon. Half of the salmon would be used by the student, the other half would be sent to another course to be turned into Gravlax. I volunteered in order to get more experience filleting fish, especially such troublesome ones.

Yep, I definitely need more practice. We will be getting another opportunity to filet salmon in the class, which is good considering that salmon is on the final.

One of the dishes we make today is peas. First they have to be blanched, shocked and drained. I chose the direct method of accomplishing this, which is probably the dumbest. Fishing in the ice water to get ahold of peas is not very fast. Won't make that mistake again, however.

In any case, the result of all this is that I wasn't terribly organized during my production. I got my plates in with a nice cushion of time, and they came out well, but I wasn't able to keep up in cleaning dishes. My station looked like a disaster area by the time I had presented everything.

Hopefully things will go better tomorrow, organizationally speaking.