mizchef

Well, apparently, mine suck. I went to a practice knife skills class last night and I had to face the tough fact that I’m rusty. I haven’t julienned, or brunoised, or matchsticked in months and it showed! I told the instructor, “I don’t know how I passed my knife skills test.” She just kind of looked at me with an unnerving expression, like, “Yeah, I don’t either.”

All the other students there were about to take their knife skills exam the next day. At this stage of the game, months after my knife skills exam, I should be slicing and dicing like a ginsu chef! Thank god I’m not going to be tested on knife skills again. I don’t think I’d pass this time.

But, really, I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. After all, I simply haven’t had time to practice. I have a full-time job, go to school part time, I have to put in extra hours for school requirements, I have a writing career, I have to blog, twitter, and facebook to keep my name in circulation because I have a cookbook to sell and myself to sell to future employers and publishers for my second cookbook… Let’s not forget laundry, food shopping, cleaning, etc. A personal life? What’s that?

Do you think that’s enough to do? Every week, I have a long list of things I need to do and I never get through half of it.  Everything requires so much and it’s just too much for one person. So, I’m sorry if I haven’t had time to practice making perfectly formed 1/8 x 1/8 x 2 1/2-inch julienne carrots. I apologize if I don’t waste my potatoes making perfect litttle useless 1/8 x 1/8 x 1/8-inch brunoise. I’m passionate about food, I’m excited to be in culinary school, and I have big dreams about what I’m going to do with my degree, but there’s also something called reality and we all live in it (well, most of us). There are things we need to deal with and things that have to be pushed to the back burner. With luck, we learn to rotate the pots on the burners so that everything gets cooked. But it takes some juggling skills and some patience. I’m trying to  acquire both. And I hope people will understand.