Wow-- the cooking class yesterday afternoon was as amazing as you could ever imagine! It definitely made up for the disorganized and boring teacher workshop in the morning. At 1:00, I arrived to the smiling chef Vincent and his huge commercialized kitchen! I was one of the two new students to this group of 10. He handed me a white button-up cooking jacket, pointed to the sink, and told me to get ready for three hours of hard work. And it was hard work, but I learned a lot! He showed us how to quickly chop vegetables without cutting your fingers--you bend your fingers in a certain way behind the knife as you quickly cut through carrots, celery, onions, etc. I`m not very good at it, but with practice, I could get it..I think. We made some meat ragout in red wine sauce as well as chicken, vegetable soup with puffed, cut-out pastries. It was kind of like mini chicken pot pies but better. There were rows of gas stoves and ovens with every type of dish, pan and utinsel that you could ever imagine! The pans were always hot and I guess that commercialized fine cooking doesn`t believe in hot pads because the only way to move the pans and put the lids off and on was by using these thin white towels, sometimes doubled-up.
When making my own beef ragout, I guess I didn`t pay much attention to the presentation because I took the cup of oil he gave me and dumped the whole thing into the pan. Vincent screamed, "Ahhh! Too much oil!" I quickly poured most of it back into the cup before I sauteed the mushrooms. The rest of the afternoon, when demonstrating, he always joked, "Not too much oil" and looked at me. I said, "I love oil, Vincent" and smiled back. I only burned my hand once and that was when I stuck the pan, filled with puffed pastries, into the oven. Oh well...as they say, a souvenir from Quebec.
I finished all the hard work at 4:00, took one taste of the delicious mixtures, boxed it all up and put it on the fridge to have for lunch today. I met with the other French teachers outside the school and asked how their afternoon conversation classes were. They said that they were as boring and pointless as yesterday. We are all a bit disappointed with the school system here and disorganization, but at least all the other French teachers here are lots of fun to hang out with! We are actually upset about the lack of ideas we are getting to use in our classrooms at home, but we joke about how bad it is, so it makes us feel better. For example, our morning French teacher told us that our mornings will be surfing the web for two hours about the subject she gives us and then sharing with the other members of the class everything that we found. I said that I could be the teacher at this rate. She doesn`t bring any of her own original ideas to share....We could do this at home!! Oh well..at least I have cooking to learn from!
After class yesterday, Andrea, one of my roommates and a French teacher in the top of Alberta where it isn`t dark at all these days, and I walked towards the Chateau Frontenac, the most photographed hotel in the world. It got so hot, though, that we turned around and took the bus back to our little house. We decided to help Christiane make the dinner and then put our feet in the swimming pool. It was a nice evening. Fernando, the only guy living there, didn`t help with the dishes. Christiane joked, "Hey Fernando! Guys do dishes here in Quebec!" I threw a towel at him and told him that he needed to learn how to work. He looked embarrassed but actually helped out really well.
This morning we took the 45-minute bus ride to school and got here right on time--at 9:00. We were given 2 hours to look for French songs to share with the others and come up with lesson plans. She didn`t even give us one lesson plan idea! Oh well...now I get to write in my blog. It is near 11:00 and I am thinking about the delicious food that I made yesterday which I will soon get to try out. Mmmmmm!!!
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