I have barely had time to breathe much less write. The longer I am at wd~50 and the more I learn, the more responsibility I get.

Christmas and New Years have come and gone. New Years was probably my best day to date. We had two seatings, one at 6 and the other at 9. For the second seating the menu was changed complete with a champagne toasting at midnight. Every able body was upstairs working on individual dishes; it was literally a full house. I was solely in charge of one dish- celery root "baskets" floating on a celery root soup with a crab salad and micro chives. I had to grate celery root then arrange them in molds in the fryer at a certain temperature and delicately pull them out in organic but sturdy shapes. Even though I came in an hour early to work they it still took me almost four hours to complete all 100. They were very fragile and only I was allowed to touch them during service because I had the delicate touch. To plate we arranged 3 cubes of clery root in the bowl, poured in the soup with a spout and then gently rested the basket on top so it looked like it was "floating." The crab and parsley root soup was then gently spooned inside and micro chives were placed on top. Overall they turned out very well and Chef was pleased.

Since then, John (the prep cook who was in charge of me) has now moved upstairs to fill the empty spot on the garde manger station. I still go up occassionally but now I help run the prep kitchen with the new prep cook named Clay. He is only a few years older than me and we have a pretty cohesive relationship.

Meanwhile I'm trying to catch up on sleep and stay aware for each new lesson everyday. I enjoy my work but am looking forward to going back to classes in the spring.