Day sixteen

a courtesy of

What is the biggest plant on the Earth? 

Another day of the liberal arts study. Math in the morning, following by product knowledge, food safety and yes, my 'favorite' - first year experience.

We started recipes conversion at the math class. That's really useful. Let's say you have a recipe for a wonderful goat cheese tart and it calls for 10 oz of goat cheese and the yield is two tarts 12 oz each. Now you decided that you do not want two tarts, but you want one and you don't want a huge tart 24 oz, you want normal size 15 oz. So, the question is how much goat cheese do you need? This is really useful to be able to calculate recipe conversion factor and apply it.

Back to the question of the day. Do you know what is the biggest plant on te Earth? I did not know myself this morning. There were many guesses - eucalyptus, baobab (African tree), sequoia and so on. But the answer is -
mushroom. Product knowledge was about mushrooms. What we see in the grocery store or at a farmers market as mushrooms, are the fruit of the plant. The plant itself is underground and it's really huge - it may be miles and miles long and wide. Many varieties we can buy are farmed now. Sure, we still have many varieties which are wild - porcini, chanterelles, morels and so on. Farmed mushrooms are grown on a sterilized soil, so they are not dangerous at all and we may eat same of them raw. Wild mushroom have to be from a reliable source, because there are many poisonous mushrooms very similar to the eatable one (we have what sometime called fake porcini or chanterelles and they are toxic). Many mushrooms can be quickly fried in oil over high heat and they are delicious. They might be a part of a garnish to the dish or a separate dish.

Food safety was as usual about food and safety, nothing remarkable.

First year experience was about taking notes at lectures and also about different ways of thinking.

Lunch was different today. One group on the fifth semester has started a practise for customer service at the restaurant. We were Guinea pigs today. We were seated at small tables and served a lunch. These guys were our waiters. I was not demanding client, indeed. I do understand that this is not easy for them and also they have just started this program. So these guys really need some support before they go to serve clients at the real restaurant, clients which are paying money and really demanding.

The last good thing for today is that I was able to obtain the letter from the college confirming that I am a student and my legal status is a student. They screwed up on the system and as a result the Department of Homeland Security is not able to verify my status. This verification is required to obtain SSN and get a driving licence. So correction was made on the system and hope this will work.