Oops! I notice it's been a while since I last posted (I thought about have adding "anything of note", but that claim might be debatable"). At any rate, fear not; your humble narrator is still alive and kicking. Still fighting the good fight against homelessness and struggling to regain his honored place in society. And still marveling at how little human nature changes even when confronted with the most dire of circumstances.
Let me start by telling you that there's been a full moon over Vegas recently, and that may have led to a spate of uncivilized behavior that has suddenly swept across the Salvation Army campus where I reside. We'll get to that shortly. In the last week or so, I've gotten my official Nevada Health Card. The process for doing this is extremely complex and harrowing: You have to go watch a 15 year old video (transferred from VHS) with a group of other aspirants. Here, you learn all about the dos and don'ts of handling food carefully and all sorts of arcane info about maintaining a sanitary work environment (wash your hands after going to the bathroom, for instance. Who'da thunk it?)
The video lasts about 50 minutes. But that's not all; you also have to complete a quiz that goes along with watching the video. How tough is the quiz? So tough that even when the presenter gave us the answers along the way, some people still couldn't get them right! Your narrator nearly screwed the pooch because of attractive 20-something sat next to be and kept distracting me with her amazingly tones legs and seductive perfume. Sheesh, I have cavities older than her. Anyway, the presentation ended I had to get a shot for Hep B (was an honest to God old-fashioned needle; I didn't wail too loudly -- kinda). With the quiz passed, yours truly was presented with his very own official health card. Complete with photo that makes me look like I'm pleasantly buzzed on near beer.
I have also been attending culinary school classes at night along with 14 other SA participants. As I've said, I enjoy eating food more than cooking it. Recently, I had the pleasure of filleting a couple of fish. Apart from the offensive smell, I found it repulsive to cut open fish flesh (and nicking my fingers on scales and bones (bet the fish was laughing in fish heaven) and handle deep sea guts and viscera. It was especially distressing since it was a female fish and I had to extract the ovaries. Then again, that's as close as I've been to female ovaries (of any species) in quite a while. Maybe I should brag about it.
Frankly, I think it's all a waste of time, and have even less respect for the "sport" of fishing than I had before. Who the hell wants to clean these things? Why do people want to eat food that has eyes, for God's sake? I don't know about you, but I don't want my food watching me while I eviscerate it, let alone eat the damn thing. I got through the nonsense surprisingly calm, even joking about it ("Tonight this fish sleeps with the fishes"). Maybe I just didn't give a fudge. Others, like the guy next to me, were venting their frustrations by shouting, "Man, this a goddam nightmare! I don't believe this sh*t!"). Others complained that the sight of fish innards was making them ill. There merely verbalized what i was thinking the whole time.
Of my teammates, only Pitbull really had the hang of cutting and gutting fish; maybe he's the Gorton's Fisherman. Even Rain Man had problems with this assignment; you could tell he wasn't used to having difficulty with preparing food, so I imagine he was a bit put out by the experience. As for me, I pretty much butchered the assignment -- literally. I was told this when I asked Chef X for help. I merely responded, "Yeah I know it's all f**ked up. Just show me what to do so I can get through this thing." He graciously demonstrated the fine art of filleting out of concern for time constraints more than concern for my actually understanding what the hell I was doing.
Which is fine by me. At this point I merely wish to get the whole sad, sorry business over with. The good news is that we're more than halfway through this course. The bad news is that there's another 5-week course to follow in garde manger. And oh yeah -- we get to cut up a chicken tonight. Guess who can't hardly wait.
One nice byproduct of the classes, however (yeah I do actually have something complementary to say about the experience) is that the students get to eat their own cooking. Actually, I think Chef X looks forward to this more than we do. Over the last two classes, we've enjoyed various beef dishes and fish entrees like Sole Vin Blanc or some Frenchy sounding name. Whatever, it was made with white wine, so it must be good. I say this because I didn't try any of it even though my team made it. I don't generally eat fish. I did try the battered fish (ala Long John Silver's) and it was pretty good.
Frankly, from my experience thus far about reading of beef cuts and filleting fishes I'm finding it ever more difficult to eat the flesh of these animals. When they talk about cutting here and taking out veins and whatnot, it sounds like we're training to be morticians, chefs. And when they talk about preparing internal organs like hearts, kidney, sweetbreads (thymus) or tongue, forget it. By then I'm halfway to the nearest toilet to pray to the porcelain god. I may well come out of this a vegetarian!
And so I'll conclude this episode of my blog -- for now. Why so short an entry? Well, judging from some of the feedback I've received, some of you think I get a bit long-winded at times. In an effort to appease my readers (both of them) I've decided to shorten some of this purple prose and hopefully make it more pleasing to the eyeballs (of which I could use more, so do spread the word). And no, I didn't forget about the wild behavior that's been going on about the SA campus. But that's what we in the entertainment biz call a "cliffhanger". In the meantime, check out one of my favorite graphic novels, soon to be a major motion picture.
Quote of the day:
"People do some strange things for a little bit of change!"
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