Blog #1 - Pre-Project

After listening to presentations about carving wood, building automobiles, and hosting birthday parties for little kids the last month of my junior year, I had no idea what my project was going to be about. Would it be something I am already used to such as piano or would it be something completely different? Well, it turned out to be the latter. Fast forward to the halfway mark of senior year when we had pick a mentor and what our project would be. Thankfully, during the bleak months of the previous winter, I had watched multiple seasons of Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef/Masterchef Jr. Perhaps it was the cooking drama or Chef Ramsay's fiery ambition that impressed me, but nonetheless, I was hooked. That spring, I wanted to be a chef too so I too could cook, but I didn't know a single thing about proper knife skills, recipes, or even kitchen equipment. Also, my parents didn't help as they wouldn't let me purchase Chef Ramsay's $80 cooking masterclass. So... my urge to cook slowly dwindled. At first, I asked my advisor if I could do something related to STEMM or piano, stuff I had done and currently am doing, but she told me to think outside of the box. To my good fortune, one of back-of-the-shiv dwellers (David Lyons) had a dad who happened to be a chef, so I got in contact with him to see if he would be willing to take me and Tim (who was also in need of a project) as two untrained chefs that he would have to teach from the beginning. He agreed, so here I am. I will, over the next three weeks, be learning how to cook at Chef Lyons's house with Tim Yi, who is my partner. In the meantime, we are reading books that are from the perspectives of various different chefs, and they are seriously great reads. Hopefully in the next three weeks, we can learn how to cook well and be prepared to make our own food in college and beyond!