Friday, 10/1/10 – Level 6 Day 10 (Canapé)

We're officially halfway through the last level of culinary school, and I am getting increasingly more terrified as the minutes pass. I miss the days in Level 5 when I could just put my head down, blindly execute the recipes and mentally block out chef as he yelled at each of us, moving from person to person to slowly chip away at our happiness. I miss Level 4 even more, though, where our biggest worry was planning and cooking the big buffet for the entire school, and we got to experiment with suckling pigs and squid ink. Alas, all good things must come to an end, so here I am barreling towards Final Judgment Day: October 25^th, 2010.

Friday was a chilly, fall day in New York City, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and watch a movie (let's be real: I would do that any day regardless of the weather). Alas, I picked myself up and headed to school for another night in the canapé station, where we were planning to make a puff pastry piece with creamed goat cheese and roasted tomatoes. First of all, I HATE goat cheese. I could barely get it down my throat when we had our cheese training class in Level 2. However, every single time I've eaten goat cheese since it's been a surprisingly pleasant experience. Maybe I just needed to get over the first time willies, and can now move on and enjoy the repertoire of cheeses from the goat. I'm not making any promises, but I'll keep on trying goat until this good luck streak is broken.

Apparently most of my class had the same movie-in-bed idea I had, only they actually acted on it and stayed home. We were averaging about 60% attendance, and I could tell Poissonnier was going to be struggling on this busy Friday night. I was quietly cutting up potatoes, looking forward to a leisurely night in canapé when chef came up to me. "Jacques-leen, you will be in Poissonnier, yes?" Crap. "Um, sure chef, is that where you'd like me for the night?" "Yes, that's what I just said." Fantastic. Normally, I'd be happy for another day in a hard station to prepare for the final. The problem was that I hadn't even glanced at the recipes yet. Ok, it's worse: I didn't even know what fish are involved. I quickly borrowed the recipes and did a cram session in the hallway, trying my hardest to memorize the components and ingredients. I carried my tools to my new station and tried to be the biggest help possible, plating the dishes, grabbing pans and heating up vegetables where needed.

At one point in the night, right after I had removed my sweaty gloves, aired out my hands and then started to season a few new salmon filets for my teammate to cook, I got a quick, intense itch in my right eye. I subconsciously rubbed it, blinked a few times then went back to my business. Seconds later, once I realized what I had done, I started to freak out. Oh my God, my eye itches. I can feel the bacteria multiplying…I am going to have a horrid infection. Oh crap…oh crap…oh crap, here it goes. I absolutely cannot have pink eye for Jess's wedding next weekend!! I started to hyperventilate and obsess about the fact that I was feeling a slight twinge in my eye every thirty seconds.

-Pause-

Before I go any further, I must explain that my eyes and I have a long, tortuous history, one that I would love to soon forget. In high school, I had one goal in life: to be a veterinary surgeon. I was obsessed with big cats (lions, tigers…) yet spent my free time volunteering at the local animal shelter changing litter pans and picking up excrement. One day, when I was "restraining" a "patient" I absent mindedly rubbed my left eye. Minutes later, I was getting sharp pains in my eye and it was getting harder to blink. I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror…and almost passed out. My eye had swollen to double the size (my actual EYE, not my eye lid), and it was turning an eerie greenish-yellow color. I was dead center in the middle of my advanced awkward years, so I locked the bathroom door and had a mini breakdown about how I could possibly escape from the worried looks and concerned expressions of my coworkers and bee-line it home. I made a frantic phone call to my mom (a nurse), who, although she was trying to mask the urgency in her voice, offered to pick me up from work immediately and take me to the nearest emergency care facility. I was given an allergy shot and some eye drops that stung like heck, but the lasting creepiness didn't wear off once the swelling went down. Until….

A few years later, my mom and I had planned a trip to a large feline rescue center in southern Indiana, and we were so excited to see the family's tigers, lions and bobcats that roamed their expansive property. I packed my camera, a pair of comfortable shoes and we were on our way. When we arrived, we were greeted by a 400-pound male lion, and I stuck my hand through the fence (with permission) to let him smell my fingers and give me a nudge. We started our tour of the property, but I immediately sensed something was wrong – that sharp pain shooting through my eye had returned. One glance in my mom's direction indicated that we needed to scoot – ASAP – so we said our Thank Yous, hopped into the car and headed to the nearest town to search for something…anything. By the time we found a CVS, my eye had swelled so large my eyelid would no longer fit around it, and I was using lubricating contact drops to keep it from drying out. I put on a pair of the largest sunglasses I could find in my mom's car, and we ran to the back of the store to see the pharmacist. "Hi, may I please speak to the pharmacist?" I quietly asked the cashier. She called him over, he introduced himself and asked me how he could help. Not one to pass over a dramatic opportunity, I looked at him through my black sunglasses and slowly lowered them down my nose, keeping my lopsided gaze level with his. "Sweet Jesus" he muttered under his breath, then, "Guys, come over here and check this out." As the pharmacy attendants ogled my Big Green Eye and said things like, "Never seen this before" and "Submit to medical studies," I was getting anxious. He suggested I use some high-powered allergy eye drops, so we bought a few bottles and ran…quickly…back to the car before someone could call the local news. We fishtailed out of the parking lot, hit the highway and didn't look back. I still wonder if that poor small-town pharmacist went home that night and hugged his children.

So as you can see, my relationship with my eyes, and the allergens that infect them, has been a matter of worry throughout my entire life. Which is why, when I started getting itchy and blinky after unknowingly rubbing my eyes with fish hands, I started to freak out. Luckily, BGE didn't rear his/her ugly head, but I won't push my luck. Lord knows I need another reason to make my classmates think I'm a weirdo.