Have a great break!

I hope you had a good Friday yesterday, we certainly did. Getting to spend time with our family and nephews is always great. Tomorrow, Easter, we will be attending Holy Name Cathedral for Mass with the Cardinal. I have never seen him say Mass before so it should be a treat. I was lucky enough to see our previous cardinal, Cardinal Bernadin speak and I will aways remember that.

After Mass, we will be partaking of brunch at Roy's of Hawaii. Roy's is a special place but not just for the food. The service there is excellent. It makes you want to come back. They had sent us a menu on e-mail and it enticed us so. There's a message to you restauranteurs. E-mail works to build traffic. It didn't hurt that we were thinking about going there anyway.

School starts back up again on Monday, April 4 for some of you. April 5 is when most of the classes resume. My cohort begins on Tuesday, April 5. Have a great time off and I will see you when we get back.

Student Government

Scott Donaldson, Vice President of the student government here at CHIC came into my class this morning and talked about involving students in the student government. A student from each of the cohorts is his goal. Volunteer in your class today. He added that soon there will be a student on the advisory board that governs the school. This is a great chance for you to step up and contribute to where CHIC is going. Get in touch with Scott at

donaldsan@yahoo.com

He would love to get you started in the student government.
Will Parsons from my current cohort is representing our class. His e-mail is

willkyndig@yahoo.com

See you in school!

New links on the portal

Good morning all. It's a bright sunshiny day in Chicago and shaping up to be a great week. Check out the student and faculty portals. Marlene Atkins in the Learning Resource Center has put up some links to food and food related sites. They are some tasty links!

The Wrigley Building

Finals

This is finals week and if you're in my class, baking 111, you know you will have to get your dessert platter done by Thursday. But if you are in other classes, try to get prepared for those as well. This includes your general education classes. They are just as important as the cooking and baking classes. If you bear down and work hard this week, you will enjoy your break even more. Friday is Good Friday and we have no school. Thursday is the last day of school for this term. My class will beging working on baking 113, custards, creams and fillings, on Tuesday, April 5th. I am looking forward to working with all of you at some point.

song

Let's Celebrate the Faculty!

You will see me around school in the coming weeks taking pictures of the faculty. We are going to have a "wall of fame". I think it will be in the upstairs foyer. Pictures of each faculty member will be accompanied by a short biography. I will keep you posted on how this project is going. I think it is great that we will be celebrating one of the things that makes CHIC so great, the faculty. If you have any ideas on this project, please let me know. I am completely open to anything you would like to add.

Exploring the web

This weekend I have had some time to cruise around the web and I have found a great site called il forno and it is a very interesting site that talks mainly about Italian food and baking. I have also been using a great piece of software called ipodderIt helps you find podcasts on the web and keeps them organized for you in iTunes. Just passing information on to you.

Podcasting

I just started recording podcasts to be uploaded to the web. I don't know if you have heard of podcasts yet but they are just audio files that you can listen to on your computer. But the cool thing is you can also import them into iTunes or whatever mp3 player you use and listen to them when and where you want. I have been listening to them for a while now. I thought I would try my hand at it. I plan to record them on a variety of subjects. I thought the first one might be on pastry cream. See how you like this one. The audio quality will get better. Hey it's my first try. Let me know what you think.

Tom's First Podcast

Rick Bayless

Rick Bayless will be joining us at CHIC on April 9th at 10:30AM. He is one of the best Mexican cooks in the city. His restaurants, Frontera Grill and Topolobampo have set the bar for high end Mexican food. I told you about the chef from Felchlin on Saturday. I am sure this demo will be as good. Get the most out of your school and come to the demo on April 9th. See you there

March Bread Guild: Irish Breads

Bread guild was a great success on Sunday. We had several new folks join us with the usual suspects showing to show them the ropes. We made breads from Ireland. With that idea, we got into the grains and flavors of very rustic breads. One of the new students brought along some very flavorful currents, a common ingredient in Irish soda bread and freckle bread. We listened to U2, the Pogues and Van Morrison in honor of the Irish bread. We noticed that the breads need quite a bit of water when they have whole grains in them. I was reading that you can really increase the water by about 5-7% when using whole grains. They were delicious and golden brown. Some of the students were amazed at how ugly, Irish soda bread is. You have to realize that it was made by very poor people a hundred years ago. Now it's a tradition but it doesn't compare to say...brioche. But that's a story for another day.

Next month, April, is flatbreads month. E-mail me if you would like to get on the list for the Bread Guild Newsletter. See you in school.

Saturday Demonstrations

Hey guys, boy Saturday was a lot of fun. I started early with my own demo on French Bread. It was for prospective students and they had so many great questions. They were very enthusiastic. One boy in particular was memorable. He asked what was so great about French bread. So I proceeded to explain all the art and science that goes into French bread. Then I gave him some and he went nuts. He said it was the best bread he had ever tasted. He was all of 10 years old but it still was quite a nice comment. Then as he was leaving with his parents he said something I will never forget. "boy, I hope this taste never leaves my mouth!". What a cool and unusual comment. An adult would never come up with that. I love his verve.

Later we all went to a chocolate demo put on by CHIC and Felchlin, a Swiss chocolate producer. Chef Stephen Iten was the presenter and he did a wonderful job explaining chocolate and its techniques to all of us. You must remember that there were pastry chefs, chef instructors, students of pastry and cooking and folks right off the street who wanted to learn about chocolate. He never got so technical that someone didn't understand. And yet he was very interesting to the professional cooks in the room as well.

The family that had been in my demo joined us in the chocolate demo and as they were leaving, the little boy asked if he could have just one more taste of the French bread. I said I could do one better than that. I handed him a freshly baked baguette of French bread. You would have thought I gave him a puppy. He was ecstatic! He made my day and I hope I made his. It sure can be fun at school.

Uniforms

Hey guys, I know wearing a uniform can sometimes be a drag. I have to wear one and I would rather be in jeans and a t-shirt. But uniforms serve a purpose. They help us to be disciplined cooks. Here at CHIC we want you to wear your uniform in full. That means when you come to school be sure to bring all the pieces of your uniform. You should wear a clean white t-shirt underneath your chef coat. The printing on t-shirts looks so cheesy when it shows through the coat. You should have clean pants that are hemed. Have you ever seen those folks with the dirty, ragged bottoms to their pants? I sure wouldn't hire them if they came in my kitchen. You should have a cravatte that is tied and clean everyday. Most of all, bring a clean hat to wear both in the classroom and the kitchen. Do you see a trend in this post? Everything is clean. I want to see all of you in class with a clean uniform. I think we can still have a lot of fun in school but we need to follow these policies from the school. See you there!

March Bread Guild

Don't forget Bread Guild is March 13th. That's a week from tomorrow at 1:00PM-4:00PM. We have fun with bread and our other members. If you are enrolled in school, you are a member of the Bread Guild. Come and join us. We will be working with Irish breads this month. Everyone is welcome! See you there.

First Week of Classes

You know that the first week of classes is a hectic one. I know that too. Take some time this weekend to think about what you have learned. I think going back to assess what you have already learned is very important. We have three more weeks in our classes until the spring break so let's bear down and work hard for those three weeks. Then we can get outside and have even more fun.

Chef Julie Walsh's Visit to CHIC

Howdy guys!
Chef Julie Walsh has been with us for the last two weeks and she has shown us a lot of new techniques. She had student and instructor demonstrations ranging from working with chocolate to artisan breads. She is a welcome visitor here at school and we look forward to having her back again later in the year. She heads back to England today where she works at the Le Cordon Bleu school in London. If you missed her this time, be sure to check her out when she returns.