Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Comments Are Fixed

Fire Away.

It Was a Very Good Year

My Restaurant Operations professor, who has years of experience in the food and beverage industry, and is quite knowledgeable, informed us yesterday that this is going to be a very very VERY good year for Oregon wine. Apparently, from what he was saying, the grapes are both of high quality and in abundance -- usually you get one or the other. Furthermore, this is the height of the harvest, and we haven't had rain in almost a week, and don't expect any until some time NEXT week -- by then the grapes will be in. In the meantime, our weather is warm (almost hot) and dry, with mild, cool nights.

What does this mean for the wine drinker? It means that within a year or so, maybe as soon as six months, you should see a huge influx of very good wine from Oregon at a very reasonable price.

Musical Geography Question(s) of the Day

1. Through where do the move it?
2. Where do they sell it?
3. Where do they hide it?

Quote of the Day

Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, sweet as love.

- Turkish proverb

OK, So I'm a Lunatic Too!

The other day, my friend Lurch and I were discussing the gibbous moon:



(Not to be confused with the Gibbonous moon:)


I was mentioning how it has always seemed to me that the shading of the gibbous moon provides a sense of depth that a full moon doesn't, and that a gibbous appears most like the sphere that the moon is, while a full moon appears more flat and disc-like.

We were also discussing the appearance of the moon during daylight hours, and how it appears more mysterious and surreal than at night when it shines so brightly.

Well, this morning, while relaxing before class, I looked outside and noticed the moon. Because it was just after sunrise, the sky was a deeper blue than is normal for full daylight hours, so the moon was clearer, more pronounced, and incredibly beautiful. It was quite a sight.

Black and White Issue

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we now wear full brigade in class. In fact, it's required both in lecture and kitchen lab classes. In addition, Culinary Arts students also take some hospitality management classes, and we are required to attend those in brigade as well.

This morning around 7:30 I was relaxing in a student lounge area on campus before class when one of my classmates walked by, not yet in Brigade. She made some snarky comment about not understanding why all of the rest of us came to school already in brigade, and how it would get our whites dirty.

I'll give you three guesses which classmate it was, and the first two don't count.

Personally, I enjoy wearing my brigade. Maybe for someone who's just learning about cuisine, it's a silly school uniform. And I can understand her reticence to get it dirty.

But for an aspiring chef, it's a badge of identity -- it represents not just culinary school, but being a culinarian -- it's inclusive and exclusive at the same time, marking me as an acolyte into a special society. I may be just barely in the door of that society, but I'm already embracing it not just as a vocation, but a lifestyle, a culture.

And if it gets dirty, I'll wash it. But when I'm going to and from school and someday work, I intend to wear it so that people can see me and think, "Oh, there goes a chef." Clothes don't make the man, but they sure to lay a foundation.