Day one at Oregon Culinary Institute

Today was my first official day of school at OCI. I woke up with a start half an hour before either of the two alarms I set went off, got a refreshing shower, re-read the chapter on kitchen safety that we were asked at orientation yesterday to read for today, donned the whites and stripes and headed off to school, which, incidentally, is mere blocks from my apartment. I have a feeling that this proximity to school will come in great handy on those mornings that I'm feeling a bit sluggish... just roll outta bed and I'm in school minutes later.

My class is literally 11 people large, or small, I should say. It's kind of fantastic, because when we're all in the kitchen, it doesn't feel overly crowded. At least not yet... we'll see how I feel after a few weeks in the kitchen rubbing literal elbows. I felt great in the morning, covering a ton of basics about equipment and safety and getting a detailed tour of the T1 ("term 1") kitchen. Being culinary school, there's tons of coffee, teas and water for us every day. By noon I was slurping down the black tea in hopes of getting a recharge. This waking up early thing is a whole different animal.

I admit that after a couple of hours of standing in the kitchen and listening to our instructors talk about various types of pots, pans, strainers, graters, machines, etc. in brand new, hard-ass clogs, I started to get restless. It made me think of the days catering events in LA when I was far too busy too notice that my feet hurt or I was hungry. I'm truly looking forward to getting busy in the kitchen. Tomorrow we get to actually use our knives from our lovely, brand new knife kits. I swear, it was like Christmas day unwrapping a whole new set of knives.