Sadly, I graduated from the FCI last week. It's bittersweet, just like L'Ecole's lemon chocolate cake…which I will never make again : (

For all those with weak sarcasm sensors, a BIG "just kidding!!!" on that one. But graduations do elicit sentimentality. I'll refrain from repeating Semisonic's "Closing Time" on my ipod, but the occasion calls for someth... Read More

I feel that it goes without saying that if you want to perform accurate and with speed in a kitchen, you should know your way around one and where everything goes.  Well, apparently some people at my school just didn’t get that memo.

It wasn’t until my second trimester at JWU that I started my first lab.  Nervous that not knowing the kitchen very ... Read More

Classes at JWU Denver are starting very soon, which means its time for me to move back out to Denver and move onto campus.  I am staying in Trianalo Hall, which is an upperclassmen, apartment style dorm.  I will have one roommate, Ericka, you might have heard her name in some of my

I know that almost every meal that you make creates some sort of food waste. Little scraps of leftover potato, extra cake crumbs, and day old bread. And, if you own a business you know that just throwing these extras away that you are just throwing away money.

These sort of extras are amplified to horrifying proportion at a culinary school. In my ‘Intr... Read More

I took the final exam at the FCI last week, which was quite an event. It's an important test that comprises 50 percent of your final level grade, but unlike any college exam, there's not much studying you can do to prepare. After 6 months of training, you can either cook or you can't. Things go smoothly, or there's an unforeseen disaster (ie. knocking your pot of sauc... Read More

In the past several years I have made many cakes.  From large wedding cakes to feed 400 people, to small shaped cakes for only two people.  With each cake that I make, I feel that I have done the best job that I could but I know that the next cake will be better.

I made a cake this past weekend that didn’t turn out like I wanted it to.  I tried to do t... Read More

It almost common knowledge that when you are in a higher altitude, that baking and cooking is effected. Starting my first lab at JWU Denver, I knew that this would be a big part of any baking that I did in class. I suppose it was a little naive of me to just assume that our teachers would give us the formulas ... Read More

Cooks tend to have minds that reside permanently in the gutter. As Anthony Bourdain observed in Kitchen Confidential, "As an art form, cook-talk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules…All comments must, out of historical necessity, concern involuntary rectal penetration, penis size, physical flaws or annoying mannerisms or defects." But even if o... Read More

This is my fourth and final installment in my “The Competition” series.  If you have not already read the previous articles, you can read them here.

The Three Wise Men
Inside the lab, my cake calmly stood; patiently waiting for it... Read More

This is the third part of my “The Competition” series, click here to read the first and second posts.Read More