Day 35, 36, 37, 38

Yeah I am going to be lazy, but there really isn't a lot to write about. I got back in Orvieto from Ireland at about 3 pm on Monday. We had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport, go through all the security and get to our plane. We arrived in Rome around 11 pm and of course the next train wasn't until about 1:30, so we had to wait. By the time I got home I was sick of traveling. In hind sight I wish I had just done Dublin over the weekend. I enjoyed the town more than London and I didn't get to see a lot there. Still, at least I can say I've been to both places. I spent the rest of the afternoon in town, just resting and making sure I was prepared for this weeks classes. My number 1 priority this week is to just get my internship hours done. I only need 28 hours this week to finish. I will work more than that, but at least I wont have it hanging over my head and I will have the option of taking it easy if I want to. Also there are a lot of students who still need a lot of hours, so the last few weeks there is going to be some fighting over shifts so everyone can get done. Tuesday we had World Cuisine class, we are doing African cuisine now. The recipes themselves don't sound to appetizing but we usually find a way to make things work. I just took a dessert, a date and almond cookie or brownie as it really should be called. It was simple enough that I got it done pretty quickly so I did a second dish with a ton of dates that we had lying around. I took the seeds out of them and stuffed them with a mixture of marscapone cheese, salt, pepper, and hot pepper oil. The contrast of the sweet dates and then the salty spicy stuffing was really good. I got a lot of compliments. The brownies were also a hit, Chef was thinking of using that again in the restaurant as a dessert. We topped the brownies with melted saffron gelato that we had in the freezer since last week. Wednesday it was European cuisine and I made coq au vin, which is just chicken marinated and then braised in red wine. That was also very well received, the chicken was very tender and everyone loved it. I like how much more comfortable with cooking I am. For the chicken I only read the recipe once and I didn't really follow it after that, I just kind of knew what needed to be done to get the desired result. Today, Thursday was Latin class in the morning, I made empanadas. They also went really well. I made a beef filling for them with tenderloin, cumin, red peppers, potatoes, raisins and hard boiled egg. It turned out very flavorful and had some good spice to it which is what you want in an empanada. We baked them and were very happy with the outcome. I also made a chimichuri sauce for dipping. It has been a good week. I haven't gotten as many hours done as I would have liked, but I am still planning on working a lot this weekend so I'll get my target hours done. Tomorrow we have another group trip. We were supposed to go to a buffalo farm to learn about buffalo mozzarella, but that got cancelled, so I am not sure what is on the agenda other than a planned picnic for the group which should be fun.