Minneapolis Community & Technical College

http://www.minneapolis.edu/Educational-Programs/Programs/culinary-arts/

Here's a link to the school that I'm interested in. I said previously that I'm not interested in some 5 star culinary college, but that a community college will do just fine. This school is centrally located to the area that I'm probably going to be living. My best friend lives in Minneapolis & my girlfriend lives in St. Paul.

This campus is definitely the polar opposite of Iowa's campus. I'm really excited to apply here & see what happens.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

In my very 1st post I mentioned that my friends & I cook a lot. We had inspiration from Paula Deen & other various chefs from the Food Network. Whenever we would get together we would cook, no matter if it was dinner or just a snack. Usually things ended up getting out of hand & that's where the camera came into play. Here's a look at some of our disasters with food.

Christmas Pretzels '07

Diggin' in Paula Deen style '08.

My hero.

Lee & Dee's grocery store. My friend Deanna & I always said that we wanted to run our own grocery store some day. We worked together at Fareway for over 4 years.

Mom, I'm not good at fractions.

"I'm an English major."
"Oh, are you going to be a teacher?"

"I'm going to go to culinary school."
"Oh, well aren't you an English major?"

These are the kinds of situations I find myself in about every week when I talk with people about my future. As much as I find the questions are assumptions irritating, the only thing I can do is use this conversations as motivation to accomplish the goals that I have set for myself. Yes, I'm an English major. I'd like to be a writer if I can. More specifically, I want to be a food critic. Thus, I'm going to culinary school.

My mom visited me over Thanksgiving. I didn't have the funds to travel back home so she came to Iowa City. We were discussing my plans for after school here at Iowa. It was such a nice relaxed conversation & she made some very good points about cooking, school, &  my degree.

She pointed out that I needed to assess & realize why math is so important in cooking. I haven't always been a fan of math. I'm not great at math & I become easily frustrated. I need to know why things happen, why certain formulas exist, etc instead of just doing the math problems. My mom taught me from a very young age how to "eye-ball" certain recipes, how to buy food at the store while on a budget by comparing prices & ounces, etc. She told me this past weekend that over the years that my love for cooking has grown & I seem to have forgotten the fact that I hate math. That all fades out of the picture when I'm cooking because I love doing it so much.

I thought this was a really great thing to think about as I'm moving forward with my life.

Grocery Shopping

For about two years now I've been participating in buying local and organic foods as wells as staying away from anything that happens to be processed. Living on a salary that permits me to barely pay my rent and necessary bills, sometimes ONLY choosing from the organic/health section is a task. I've seen Food, Inc & whenever I pass through the middle sections of the grocery store it makes me cringe. I pick my foods from only the outside walls of the store & only on certain occasions do I venture into the processed, artificially dyed sections.

When I eat healthy & stay away from processed foods my weight goes down...and so does the bloating. I feel so much more confident & have mass amounts of energy to hit the gym.

On Sunday I went to a local store here in Iowa to pick up the necessities & I felt SO guilty for not buying organic eggs, bread, & other staple items. I hope that once I get my financial aid refund check I can go & stock up on all natural products. One thing that I noticed & that made me proud as a young adult was the number of college kids reading the labels on items & discussing prices of the food they were about to buy. Whether they were shopping in the health section or not, it was still a nice surprise to see people my age interested in the foods they consume & how they effect your wallet as well as your body.