Chef Shadow

I can remember the first time I got to work in Sullivan's kitchens just as a sophomore in high school. It was so cool to be able to skip regular school and spend the day as a culinary student instead. It was the day I knew for sure that this was what I wanted to do with my life. As a student ambassador, I got the chance to be the chef that a student in high school could shadow. It was great to be able to help inspire someone and help them along on their culinary journey. 

The menu we worked with featured various Hispanic dishes such as empanadas, Patatas bravas, and pork roulades. I feel that all of the young students had a great time, just as I did when I was in their position. -Heather 

Baguettes!

As a part of my Advanced Techniques class, we are learning how to make various types of breads. One we have been practicing with is the classic baguette. We learned what it takes to make a preferment and how long of a process each of the preferments take. It was very interesting to taste the difference in each of the baguettes we made.  At first, the baguettes were very oddly shaped and our scoring was off, but now we are getting the hang of it! And not to mention how much fun it is to work with so much dough! -Heather

Cookie Decorating Competition

I have now started my Advanced Techniques class as a part of my Baking and Pastry Arts Degree. It has been such a blast to learn new ways of doing things. Recently, we were given the chance to unleash our creative sides in a cookie decorating competition. Each group had the class period to present one dozen cookies with a royal icing design. My group decided to go with a superhero theme. The time went by a lot faster than we had expected! Luckily, we were able to present 12 cookies. We did not win, but it was a great experience! It was awesome to see all of the different themes! -Heather

Internship Progress

I'm finished with the fourth week of my internship. If all goes well, I should be working at the Seelbach Hilton sometime starting in February. I really love it there so far and have learned so many things. I think the most important thing about interning is that you get to learn about working fast paced and product consistency in mass production. These are things we don't learn at Sullivan since we learn to make small products perfectly. In the real world, you don't get one hour to ice a cake to perfection. It's eye opening to plate 400 desserts in a few hours, which is what I did today at the hotel. I graduate in April and I'm so ready to take on the world!

-Kate Richter

Paper usage

Sullivan has enacted a new paper usage policy last quarter. Basically, every student can only print a certain amount of pages. I think this is a great policy because it helps save paper and save the environment because it forces students to think twice before they print any unnecessary pages.  I wish there was also a way to use recycling paper instead of regular white paper and that we could print research on paper that was already used (at home, I reuse old paper and I print my research or drafts on the second side so I can save paper). I really wish they would give us an option to print to a "draft" printer and to print on a "regular" printer with the assignments that we actually turn in. There is one thing that really upsets me though: the printers in the library are set up to print Word documents as "draft" (in gray, not in black) and every time I print something I forget and then I end up printing the same paper twice because I can not turn it in as draft. I know it's my own fault, but instead of saving ink and paper this default setting costs more ink and paper. I wonder how many students are like me and keep forgetting to set the printer to regular before they print their papers.

Claudia (January #2)

Winter Quarter

Week one of the winter quarter is over and things are started to come together. The first week is always so stressful with trying to figure out assignments, deadlines, books, homework, and new teachers. Once the first week is over you finally know your way around and what to expect. I can't wait to get the first graded assignments back to see if I was headed in the right directions or if I need to make adjustments. It's always good to know what to expect and what is expected. It makes doing your homework so much easier. I have one night class and two online classes this quarter and it seems that it will be less stressful this quarter than last quarter. Last quarter all my weekly assignments were due on the same days and this quarter they are more spread out. My one class has due dates of Tuesdays, while my other class had due dates of Thursdays. So much easier than when everything is due on Tuesdays! I think that this quarter will be just fine. Let's hope that we won't have any snow days that could ess everything up.

Claudia (January #1)