I started! School has begun; and what is that? Homework you say? And then some. I conveniently forgot that I would be assigned piles of reading. The good news? It is all about cooking, so I love every word. Just a shift from my usual perusal of cookbooks, cook magazines and food blogs to instructor given, culinary driven textbooks.

The first week was an eye opener, the usual overviews of ‘what you are going to learn, what you are going to do.’ You know, where you jump into class bright eyed and bushy tailed, only to crawl in to bed later, dog tired. But it was a good tired.

The photo above is a biscuit: my first recipe and kitchen experiment at culinary school.

I am tickled to pieces because I am more in my element with cooking, than I am with baking (and lets be frank, more the home cooking than the restaurant cooking where for all practical purposes at this point I would end up in a heap on the floor, buried in flying pans and fancy sauces: boy, do I have a lot to learn!). So I am particularly excited to learn all I can in my Intro to Baking and Pastry class.

Later this week, we will be making muffins and zucchini bread and I believe, rolls of some sort. My favorite part is hearing about the chemistry involved with baking. How you can take flour and sugar and butter and treat them in so many different ways to land on different results. With biscuits you barely, barely mix it and the butter stays in chunks: corn kernel size at a minimum. Just so you know; and that makes two of us.

I could go on. My other class is Culinary Concepts and Theories. Which means, we are learning about the history of cooking, the chefs who brought it to be, the brilliant minds topped with tall, white, pleated hats. So if you hear Boulanger (credited with the first restaurant in France, 1765) Marie-Antoin Careme (sheer brilliance 1783-1833), Escoffier (Grandfather of Cooking), or Alice Waters (American Culinary Revolution 1970’s and 80’s), you will know they are world-renowned chefs. There are of course, many more.

Oh, and since I learned microwaves are ONLY to be used for heating butter (tsk, tsk), I just reheated last night’s steak, onions and black beans over the stove… with a cracked egg on top… and greens under. It was yummy.

And here is a fun tidbit: the height of a chef’s hat denotes their skill and experience, their hierarchical role in the formal kitchen. Which means, my white chef hat looks more like a beret: a floppy little topper with just enough material to get the job done. I am so the peon… I figure when I am at home I should wear a hat so tall I have to duck to walk through doorways, and if I really stretch high, it brushes the ceiling. That should offset the flimsy with a bit of fanfare, don’t you think?

Bad first, I always say. Or perhaps it should be good, then in all your bliss you forget to receive the bad news. But in this case it cannot be helped. The bad news is that I have been super sick, I am home now but did have a short stint at the hospital. I didn’t have the heart to photo hospital food for you, to display on my blog. Nope—it just wasn’t going to happen. Besides, it would have been hard to get a good angle on canned peaches and chicken broth. When I got home it was smoothies, scrambled eggs and plain toast. Yeah, not riveting.

That was the bad news.

The good news is juicier.

I am going to culinary school here in Seattle; I begin in a few weeks. The humble little school teeters right next to Seattle’s own Pike Place Market—the longest standing Farmers Market in Seattle—where we will comb for good eats and fresh seafood, take in the salty air and decide which eggplant… squash … and tomato to buy.

I have wanted such formal schooling for some time, to fill in the culinary gaps in my brain, to have professionals teach me a thing or two, and to round out my ability to play with food of every kind. I look forward to the practice and methodology and a better understanding of all things food—especially since this is where my career/interests/passion/life/stomach is taking me.

My greatest hope is that you will enjoy the ride vicariously. I hope to share tricks and ideas, and my goal will be to pare down (with an uber sharp knife, no doubt) what I have learned, to make it accessible and easy for you/me to try in your own/my own kitchen. I am and will remain queued up to keep food simple, ever determined to find amazing recipes that employ efficiency—a practical nod at harried lives with little to no time, plus kids, work and multi-layered schedules. Don’t get me wrong, the labor for amazing food is often worth the effort. But I am a mom, and the best kind of foodie I can be is practical.

So then, although I have been sick and in bed rather than in my kitchen, soon I will be more often in a commercial kitchen learning and writing and cooking and sharing with all of you. Tomato talk will start including chatter from a mom going to cooking school.

Who knew?