My personal "Farm to Fork"

In my last post I said that not much was going on for me, but then the next day something did happen. well... I have chickens in my backyard and I love to use there eggs for all of my delicious food, but every year we get a rooster in our new batch of chicks. it had been a year sense we got a new rooster and out of no where my dad said this: "Lets kill the rooster today". At first I thought that he was joking, but after a couple of seconds I realized that he was most defiantly not. I was okay with the idea because we had done it in the past (I had not personally done it). By the time I caught the rooster, my father had already gotten a large pot of water boiling (to help feather it). we had two roosters and my dad had "Chopped" the first one, and then it was my turn. I was holding it by its feet, after a couple of seconds it became docile, I laid it's neck against the log, it did not take long for me to raise the hatchet and to hack at it's neck, but it did not just cut threw, I had to hack about five times until the neck was only being held on by some skin. I looked down at my apron and it was covered in blood. Some people say it was odd that I named the roster before I killed it, But I guess that is just how I roll.
After that I feathered it, took the guts out (I will spare you the disgusting details) and Broke it down, It was amazing, I was chasing it around the yard a half a hour ago, now it was just two breasts, two legs, two thighs and two wings. Now I was out of Ethan the Butcher mode and was in Chef Dutcher mode. I had decided to brine it over night (so it would get extra moist). I looked to see what is in my pantry, and decided that I should make Italian herb Chicken breasts, and buffalo wings. the wings where fine, defiantly not my best work, but the breasts where great, the bread crumbs where home made and the herbs I put in was delicious, I even fried it in clarified butter. My father thought that it was wonderful.
I fell that doing this is important, I always knew where my food came from, but there is a whole new depth of respect for my food now.



Me right before I Chopped "Rudy"

Never take yourself too seriously.

I have not posted in a little bit because not a lot has been happening, the general, going to culinary school, cooking dinner, so on and so forth, but if there is any thing a can post on it is the best/strangest time I have ever gone looking for a job. In a nutshell myself and a couple of other students (from my high school) burst into a restaurant dressed like pirates... yes I know, but hear me out. It all started at school we where doing a skit about pirates and afterwords one of my frends yelled out "LETS GO GET A JOB A PIRATE ISLAND PIZZA!" and at the time seemed like a great idea, but I was not open yet. so we waited till the restaurant opened (acting like pirates the whole time) and drove over there. when we got there we opened the door and all yelled "AARRRRR", the hostess seemed surprised and amused, I walked up to her, looked at here and said "Arrrrr ye hire'n" and that was when she started to laugh. they did say that they where taking applications, so we grabbed some a left because none of us remembered our SS#. we we came back we did pretty much the same thing, made a lot of noise, dropped the applications off and left as I said before, Never take yourself too seriously.

Internship, It is looking good.

Well, today is Sunday I met with Jason Kieffer and it went great! We mostly just talked about what sort of things that I would be doing if I do intern there. It was great, The cafe was all about using fresh ingredients from local sources and making it from scratch, even the stocks and to be truthful MATC dose not exactly make all of there stuff from scratch, lots of frozen breads and pastries and having somewhere that has the same philosophy as I do is wonderful. I am extremely exited for this to work out, but there is always a downside... Gas. If this dose work out then I will be doing yard work, so I can do more work, but lucky Chef Kieffer talked about maybe making it so that I can get paid a small amount for working up there, And if that will pay for gas money, then I am ecstatic! It looks like I will be starting in the summer after school starts. I will post more as I find out more.
But today I had another adventure, as I was trying to get home I got lost, which I am notorious for. long story short I was in Utah... and I ended up in Wyoming. it was not good. now hopefully my parents wont read this because they don't know that I got that lost.

So that was my day, I am so happy I am finally moving forward, I have felt like I have been floating in a stagnant pool for a while. My culinary career starts now.