Culinary Arts Education Getting A Degree In Less Than Two Years

blogger

Culinary Arts can be a very exciting career, but before deciding on furthering your education you may want to step back and consider exactly what it is that you want to do in the food industry. Many job opportunities don’t necessary require an education pass high school or an equivalent diploma. Short order cooks, fry cooks and even food preps often simply require on the job training. It is usually chefs, nutritionists, food managers, and those who truly envision food preparation as a form of art who will need to further their education into culinary arts.

A degree in culinary arts can usually be obtained in two years or less. The first part is obtaining your culinary chef certification and from there you can get your AOS degree. (Associate of Occupational Studies) Those who get the culinary chef certification but not their AOS degree are more often than not limiting themselves to being a sous-chef at best. It is with the AOS degree that you open the doors to so many carrier paths. On-line degrees are not recommended for culinary arts as working with foods is more of a hands on task. It’s important to be able to see, smell and taste as you are learning. A good palate is very often a chef’s best friend.

The nice thing about obtaining a degree in culinary arts is that you aren’t limiting yourself to only being a chef. If you’ve gotten your degree and started working in a five star restaurant, what happens if you find cooking simply isn’t for you? There are a variety of other career paths that you can choose from! You can work in restaurant management, as a nutritionist, you can teach others the art of cooking, you could become a food critic for newspapers and magazines, and you could even become a food stylist and photograph all that yummy goodness you see in magazines!

There may be some of you who know you aren’t interested in becoming a chef or want any type of career where food is involved. Maybe you want to learn to cook different meals for your family or learn how to incorporate more nutritious food into your daily menu. We don’t all need to want to become a chef in order to want to cook our family good nutritious meals they will enjoy. There are also a wide variety of ways for you to learn as well. You can find a local cooking class, recipe swaps, even cooking school getaways for you and your spouse.

We are living in a time where chefs are no longer tucked back away in a kitchen never to be seen. Chefs are, in fact, more recognized today than ever. Just recently one of the contestants from Hell’s Kitchen moved into a neighboring town where I live. Overnight he has made what once was a place where only the young went to enjoy their spirits a restaurant that has people waiting in lines to grab a table. If cooking is your passion, furthering your education is the key to success. Aim high and enjoy every bite.

Sleep To Pass USMLE Boards

blogger

Have you ever wondered what effect lack of sleep has on you? At some point or most probably, all throughout your medical school career, you probably pull an all-nighter, staying up 24 hours straight, cramming for the next day’s must-pass examination. Is that extra studying worth the effort? Or are you likely to lose as much as you gain by being exhausted on the day of the test?

The effect of sleep deprivation on your test-taking ability depends on the type of examination questions. If they are multiple choice or true-false questions, a night without sleep won’t affect your ability to deal with them. The reason is that in answering such questions you rely on familiar, established problem-solving techniques, an ability unaffected by the loss of one night’s sleep. But then, how familiar are you with USMLE questions? Does the question bank generated sets of questions for your practice tests in your USMLE review the same way the actual USMLE board questions are stated? You can never be sure as the questions contained therein are also subjected to development and improvement by a duly responsible organization.

The basic function of sleep is to repair the cerebral cortex from the wear and tear of conscious activity. The loss of creative ability is a signal that lack of sleep causes something to go wrong in the cerebral function, thereby disturbing some fundamental in the decision-making process. Most of the questions in the USMLE require you to decide medical diagnosis, diagnostic tests, analysis of results, treatment. In order to answer such questions, you need to think flexibly, and this ability is diminished after only a single sleepless night. How can you decide properly and correctly with lack of sleep? Sleep deprivation may hinder your ability in high-risk situations like operating on a patient, emergency room stat surgical procedures as well simply prescribing a drug for your patient.

Accidents have been caused by lack of sleep such as what happened in the Three Mile Island power station. The control room operators were working on a slow shift rotation days for a week, evenings for a week, then late nights for a week. Such cycle does not give enough time for the cerebral cortex to recover. The slow rotation shift may result in the worst possible human performance because it disrupts the body’s biological clock especially the sleep cycle.

Indeed, adequate sleep is a need that everybody recognizes such that New York State now requires hospital staff and personnel to work no longer than an average of 80 hours a week per month. “We think most patients would rather have a well-rested doctor than a zombie working on one-hour’s sleep.” – NY State Health Department (Sleep; the New York Times, 1989)

How To Make The Most Of Culinary School

blogger

Culinary school is a great option for anyone who loves to cook and for anyone who loves food. This sort of school will prepare you for professions in the culinary world, and can also prepare you for setting up your own culinary business.

Many people assume that cooking schools are relatively easy, consisting mainly of creating dishes. However, this is not true. Most culinary programs today are very diverse, some offering marketing and even business information as well as culinary information. Most programs require you to learn about food preparation as well as safety and hygiene. There is a science, as well as an art, to culinary professions.

To get the most out of culinary school, you first need to attend the right program and the right school. Decide ahead of time what your goals are, and aim for a school that will help you achieve those goals fastest. For example, if you want to become a dessert chef, make sure that you attend a school that has a stellar reputation for that. Investigate the instructors working at specific schools and study with instructors who have professional experience that you admire. If you want to become a caterer or run your own business, find out which school the culinary entrepreneurs in your area attended. Make sure that the program that you intend to enter offers you the financial help, hands-on training, and in class learning that you will need in order to succeed at your goals. Ask lots of questions before you enroll and don’t be shy about requesting additional information. School is a costly and time-consuming investment, so you want to make the right decision.

Once you’ve chosen the right culinary school, you should put all your effort into it. Don’t just walk through the motions of pursuing your degree, but really show up every day to class to learn as much as possible. Learn as much as possible from your hands-on training, and be sure to ask lots of questions. Observe others to see where you can improve. Always ask instructors for feedback, so that you will know exactly what you should work on in order to succeed in the culinary profession of your choice.

Ideally, your culinary school will offer you hands-on training as well as classroom learning. Make sure that you show up for hands-on training faithfully, and take as many courses as you can that allow you to get these practical skills. Always do your best in these environments, because the good impression you make with instructors and workers can be crucial when you need references later on. Get to know the people that you’re cooking for and working for, and try to develop a good rapport. You never know whether some of these people might be your employers one day.

Make sure that you also use all the resources that your school makes available. If there are classes that you can take that will expand your knowledge, consider taking extra courses outside of your field of study. If you have the option of traveling and cooking, consider doing so. If there are exchange programs or work-study programs, look into these. Most schools also offer things such as scholarships, career counseling, and special workshops and job fairs. Learn as much as you can about your school, and at least try all of the resources that they’re offering you.

Getting the most out of culinary school certainly requires that you show up and put in your full effort. However, taking the time to actually do your best while pursuing a degree can make you far more attractive to employers and can help you get the most value from your tuition money. Pursue your culinary dreams fully, and you may well be amazed at how far you can go.

Your Own Indoor Herb Kitchen Garden

blogger

It’s so easy to set up an indoor herb kitchen garden because so many culinary herbs are well suited to growing both indoors and in recycled containers. Your ability to grow veggies in your organic kitchen garden starts with only a few simple recycled materials and the simple will to feed your family only the finest organic foods grown fresh in your designed kitchen garden.

Here are six easy to grow herbs without even trying; chives, thyme, mints, French tarragon, sweet marjoram and sage. As well, also think seriously about growing your own parsley, rosemary, nasturtiums and basil. So which ones do you plant and how do you grow them? It really depends firstly on which ones you would like to grow, how much you use of one or the other and then your budget, and of course the amount of well lit space you have.

The high tech “A-Garden” type with its own lights and gadgetry is great and really works well (you know the one it’s advertised on TV everywhere), but it’s not cheap and not very big. Whereas, at the other end of the budget is a set of recycled pots and containers with seedlings and your sunny windowsill, planter box or sunroom.

Something in-between these two extremes are the compartmentalised pots like the “strawberry pot”, which is also great. Also in the middle are the grow veggies kit forms where you just add water and place in a sunny position and look after for a period of a few weeks. These are also absolutely great for those limited to space for your kitchen garden.

I personally do not recommend planting different herbs in the one single pot as the competition for growing space problems far outweighs the advantages of individual containers. If you do use the compartmentalised pots then try to mix the same general types of herbs together for the re-growth habits, height and moisture requirements.

The important thing is light, whether natural or artificial. Adequate light is essential to growing good herbs and veggies. If you don’t have enough natural light then you’ll need to supplement it with artificial light.

Why not consider making your own tiered shelving with its own lighting? I’ve seen it done and its particularly good in climates where it’s dark for much of the year but indoors is continually nice and warm; or even consider using a skylight or solar tube, another inexpensive method of free natural lighting.

If you have a well-lit patio or sunroom where you grow dwarf fruit trees in containers (citrus, stone-fruits or pomegranates etc) then you can plant perennial herbs in the same pots with them such as rosemary, mints etc.

Charleston She Crab Soup The Signature Dish Of Charleston

blogger

Many restaurants in Charleston, South Carolina feature Charleston she crab soup on the menu. It is one of Charleston’s signature recipes. Sometimes referring to the types of foods in a particular region, signature foods are those which are typically used to identify the chef who cooks it the best.
The soup is named after the ‘She-Crab’, or female crab, which supplies the flavorful orange roe, or eggs, that consist of a chief ingredient in the soup. A culinary icon of Charleston, South Carolina, the Charleston she crab soup was conventionally a rich combination of cream, crab meat, roe (eggs), and a splash of sherry. The meat from a female crab is supposed to be sweeter, but it was the addition of her red-orange roe that created the dish’s depth of flavor and beautiful pale color and that resulted in the name she crab soup.
Roe is no longer harvested in order to maintain the crab population ecologically. But Charleston she crab soup traditionally has roe in it. Is it still she crab soup without the roe? The core of the recipe remains the same, but purists know that including roe in the basic recipe is the true Southern tradition. When you can, make the soup with roe and enjoy every precious spoonful.
It’s crucial that your crab meat be fresh, and so catching your own is the best way to make this recipe. Have a dozen crabs ready to shell–if you shell the female crab and find clumps of miniature red-orange beads inside, get excited! This is roe and you should be careful with it, removing it delicately and then stirring it into your soup. Crabs with roe on the outside, however, should be put back in the water.
The onions, garlic and celery need to be cooked in a heavy bottom medium sized sauce pain with some olive oil until they are clear. The next step is to deglaze the pan using sherry followed by the crab roe, bay leaf and shellfish stock. When that is done, get it to a slow simmer and simmer for 15 minutes.
After you add the milk, allow the mixture to simmer for 15 minutes. Then, keeping it on simmer, add the rice and cook until the rice softens up. Next, add hot sauce to taste, Worcestershire sauce, and mace. Take out the bay leaf and then use a blender to puree. Once smooth and thick, strain the soup using a fine sieve. Finally, add crab meat and season with salt and pepper.
When making the best she crab soup be sure to use high quality crab meat. Cheap crab meat that you need to take out of the shells is always mushy so don’t waste your time. Crab roe however can be a bit salty, so do use it sparingly. You can freeze crab meat and it will keep well if you use a secured sealed bag.