slkinsey

Interesting, my brand new edition of the The Compact Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition has this to say: I assume your use of the word was intended to be sense 3 above. Regardless, I don't see how Lesley C's behavior was patronizing no matter whose definition was used, yours or mine.

Although I have been using Skyy for mixing, on the rare occasions when I want a hit of the straight stuff from the freezer, I like Brilliant. It comes as close as any vodka I have ever tasted to being completely odorless and tasteless. It is all texture, mouthfeel and finish.

I'm in a graduate level teacher training program. That's extremely vocational, but there are plenty of people in the program that want the certificate for reasons other than teaching in the public schools that require it. Interesting... Would you say that there are plenty of people in the program who do not plan to pursue teaching or a relevant related field professionally?

Wow, that's a big "etc"! Most of my educational experience is in universities. (I have 2 undergraduate degrees in the sciences, and am doing graduate work now.) Most people in higher education are not studying medicine, law, or music. They have a clear idea of what they want to do when they start, but by the time graduation comes, they just want to hit the road. The reason I specifically mentioned music, medicine and law is that these schools are fundamentally vocational schools, as is a cooking school. The goal of a conservatory is to train people to take jobs as professional musicians. The goal of an academic course of study is different. As University of Colorado President Howard Goldblatt said, "I consider liberal arts as a freeing of the mind from the demands of narrow specialisation and vocational preparation, and a focus on ways of learning -- seeking coherence and unity, developing a skill for critical rational analysis, and viewing history, arts, and sciences through the prism of morality and ethics." This strikes me as a pretty good description of pure academics. If you are pursuing an academic advanced degree, I imagine you would agree with me that you are not being trained to do a job. This is a good example of the "weeding out" I described earlier in this thread. Music schools, especially undgraduate, have to admit students based on talent and promise to a certain extent, and then let the next four years sort the wheat from the chaff. As for music schools, or any schools for that matter, that "accept all comers" -- that is the difference between a not-so-good school and an elite school. Berklee, I have to say, is not exactly what I would call a high-level music school. Fundamentally it is a jazz/pop "music school" where a large percentage of the students who go there form musical groups with fellow students and leave to pursue fame and fortune. As for colleges accepting substandard students to subsidize the education of more talented students... I have spent my entire life around career academics, many of whom have been involved at the highest levels, including admissions. There is no college or university of which I am aware that admits students based on their ability to pay.

Isn't this the same recipe as dulce de leche? Nothing white trashy about that! It's a hip foodie ingredient -- or, at least, it was a few years ago.

What blend are you using from Sweet Marias? Are you making your own blend? I have been using their "Espresso Monkey Blend" for some time with around 7% of Monsooned Malabar and 7% of their top Robusta added. I roast to a "Northern Italian" (i.e., just a bit beyond full city) roast using a Hearthware Precision air roaster. Never had any problems with excessive brightness.

I don't know what your school experiences were like, but I can tell you that the number of students in most any conservatory who intend to work professionally in music is a lot more than half. And I have to believe that the same is true for most law schools, medical schools, etc.

How many amateurs are really taking classes like this? What percentage of students in your class are amateur? Also, we must consider the fact that different schools will differ as to the percentage of amateurs in such programs and the degree to which such programs accomodate them.

Lesley's reply to my post (also on the same page): Hmmm... it doesn't strike me that you two are disagreeing there. Your statement that all the real training is out in the field could be interpreted as implying that formal training is without real value. I read Lesley's reply as simply pointing out that she had got some valuable training in cooking school and that not all the "training" she got in the field was necessarily -- therefore it is not the case that all the real training is in the field. However, your restatement has a different flavor than the quoted comments above. The way I see it, one forms a (hopefully) firm foundation through formal training and then builds on that foundation in practice. This does not seem to be incompatible with what either one of you has said. ...not that Lesley needs me to stick up for her, of course.

Absolutely! Is anyone suggesting that this is not the case?

The less than honest gush at someone's piss poor piping skills that would be considered laughable is in fact patronizing. I wouldn't know if it was haughty or cooly. Can't hear the tone of voice! It is too much the manager in me -- I look to coach and encourage the troops. I'm only successful if my team is successful. And that is how I view an educator ought to be -- however in the real world... ahem. Sometimes they are hard to find! Beans... I hope you understand that I am only jerking your chain in a friendly way. And I hope you can also tell that all I was doing was quoting the dictionary definitions of the words you were using. That said, I don't recall reading anything Lesley C wrote that would indicate she made a practice of lying to amateur students and praising their poor piping skills disingenuously. I think it's more a case of making the decision to say nothing about the sucky piping skills, because such feedback is not well received and also because that is anyway not the reason such students are in the class. I refer you to Jersey13's comments earlier in the thread to the effect of "having taught ... continuing education programs, I noticed that there tended to be an 'I came to get what I paid for, so you just keep your negativity to yourself' type attitude among what we've been calling the 'hobbyists' in the groups." Patronizing someone, as my earlier post of definition showed, is to adopt an air of condescension toward a person; to treat him/her haughtily or coolly. To condescend, by the way, is to assume an air of superiority over another. There is nothing in what I have read to indicate such behavior on the part of Lesley C towards certain students. Acknowledging to us that such students nevertheless had poor piping skills does not make one a poor or patronizing teacher. Also, the way to "coach and encourage" the troops, which you suggest, very much depends on the context as well the mind set and expectations of those being coached. As it so happens, there is a certain kind of maintenance and refinement work that classical singers routinely do on an ongoing basis called "coaching." From my perspective, I am not really interested in hand holding and sugar coating -- I want to identify what I am doing that could stand to be done better, and work hard to improve on those things. This involves a lot of looking at and working on things I am not good at, and not a lot of patting me on the back and telling me nice things. I do not continue to patronize (another meaning of that word) coaches who work that way. Needless to say, this style of work is not appropriate for an amateur singer who wants someone to help them learn the notes and Italian pronunciation for an operatic piece they have no business singing so they can perform it at the church social. There is nothing wrong, in my book, with a professional opera coach who doesn't care to work with amateurs for this reason, or who interacts with amateurs in a fundamentally different way than he/she might with me. This directly corresponds to Lesley C's remarks regarding amateur students. There is nothing inherrently bad with understanding that someone is bad at something. There is nothing wrong with a teacher using his/her judgement to decide whether it is germane or prudent to inform a student of every shortcoming.

You think she was adopting an air of condescension toward them; treating them haughtily or coolly? I think it is probably best described as "an attitude that strikes you as 'elitist' and which you don't like." I, personally, have no problems with elitism -- even though I can hardly ever count myself among the elite.

Hee! I can remember when I was a kid and we had a small mouse problem for a few months. My parents set some traps, and every so often when the family was eating dinner around the kitchen table we would hear SNAP! "SQUEAK!" come from one of the cupboards. Kind of unnerving, as I recall, but we laughed about it. As far as I recall, our traps got them in the head and killed them right away every time. We used peanut butter. Perhaps some Nutella or Gianduia might do the trick for your gourmet mice? For those readers that are horrified at the use of mouse genocide, I won't tell the story of how my grandfather tried to smoke out a squirrel who had taken residence in our North Carolina mountain house's chimney, in which the squirrel became confused, ran the wrong way and almost burned the house down.

Ugh. How about coaching their dismal piping skills instead of telling them that their technique is laughable? Why lie? After all they are paying you to teach them how to do x, y or z. When I enroll in a "professional" culinary school, I'm paying them too, they better tell me if I suck. My law professors didn't hold back if something was flimsy at best. I think you said it best -- you loathe teaching amateurs. That's fine. I loathe arrogance in teaching. Interesting... I am trying to figure out how this attitude towards teaching constitutes a feeling or an impression of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or presumptuous claims.

I remain unconvinced as to whether making confit in cryo or plastic offers any tangible benefits over doing it the traditional way. That said, I do think that two of the techniques discussed in this thread are very much worthwhile. Cooking below the simmer is sometimes a little bit of pain in the butt, but it can produce very good and interesting results, and does allow one to hit the perfect temperature with much more accuracy. I suggest you check out the McGee book I referenced earlier in this thread if you are interested. Cooking in cryo (or in FoodSaver) can also produce great results. The main thing that is great about this, IMO, is that it makes it practically impossible for any of the juices to run out as the food is cooked because there is nowhere for it to go. Can work great with certain fish, for example.

I don't understand why the assumption is made that LCB "dumbs down" it's coursework - at any given time they may have a class of all aspiring pros or a class that has a few amateurs - the coursework is still the same, it has been for years. That is not my assumption at all. My assumption is that, if a cooking school does not "dumb down" the professional curriculum, then it will have a hard time attracting/retaining amateurs for that curriculum. And I think my assumption is borne out by the relative numbers of amateurs and aspiring professionals in the various curricula.

OK... one more question for when you are back, and I may have this thing figured out. What I think I understand is that sometimes the protein, fat and carbohydrates are used to build things our bodies need, sometimes they are converted to metabolic energy and sometimes they are converted to stored fat. So... let me make a hypothetical example: I eat 50 calories of protein and 50 calories of fat. My body takes a look around and says, "OK... we really don't need any protein or fat to build anything right now, but I do need around 50 calories of metabolic energy to keep everything going." So, the body needs to decide what it is going to use immediately and what it is going to store as fat. My understanding is that the body will "selectively choose" to store the 50 calories worth of fat and will therefore use the 50 calories of protein for metabolic energy. This is what I mean when I say that the form of the calories and the efficiency in converting calories in their various forms to stored fat doesn't seem to matter too much so long as there is enough dietary fat around. My understanding is that any time the body finds itself in an "excess calories situation" it will first convert dietary fat to stored fat and will only convert dietary protein and carbohydrates to stored fat when there is no longer any fat around to store. In other words, the body won't burn 25 calories each of the protein and fat, and store 25 calories each. This is relevant when applying your efficiency figures, as the 25/25 protein/fat mix would be converted to 36.25 calories of stored fat whereas straight fat would be converted to 47.5 calories of stored fat -- a 31% difference. This page seems to support that idea: Given the relative efficiencies of storing fat, protein and carbohydrates you quantified earlier, the above would seem to indicate that an ultra-lowfat diet would be recommended for weight loss, because any time the dieter did eat any excess calories, the efficiency of converting those calories to stored fat would be much lower. Of course, as I think you pointed out, protein is almost always accompanied by plenty of fat in the real world. Thought this was interesting: http://www.accessexcellence.com/AB/GG/Fig_4.02.jpg

If the Cordon Bleu regularly trains amateurs alongside aspiring professionals in the curriculum leading to the Grand Diplome, the question it to what degree the standards you mention are affected by the participation of the amateurs and what they might be if the school exercised different admissions criteria for the curriculum leading to the Grande Diplome. I'd like to reiterate that I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with a cooking school accepting amateurs if they elect to do so. A provate school may accept whatever students it chooses. I also don't think there is anything wrong with such a school insisting that all students, whether amateur or aspiring professional, exhibit performance and dedication up to the level they have determined is appropriate for aspiring professionals. I do have a hard time believing that any such school would be able to retain a significant number of amateurs in such a curriculum. But, if they can make the grade, keep up with and otherwise behave like the aspiring professionals in a rigorous curriculum geared 100% to professional cooking, I don't see a reason why any school would not allow such amateurs to attend.

There are "a lot" of variables, though, including portion size. Most people don't drink 20-ounce servings of coffee, whereas that's pretty standard for iced tea. And how long you steep it, the type of tea, etc., all affect caffeine levels as well. Exactly. Looking at the numbers I just quoted, a 20 ounce iced tea could easily provide 400 mg of caffeine... perhaps more considering that tea for iced tea is often brewed longer and stronger than tea for hot tea.

This page says: Double espresso (2oz) 45-100 mg Brewed coffee (1 cup) 60-120 mg Instant coffee (1 cup) 70 mg Decaf coffee (1 cup) 1-5 mg Tea (1 cup) 40 mg Cola (12 oz can) 38-45 mg Chocolate milk (1 cup) 4 mg Dark chocolate (1 oz) 20 mg Milk chocolate (1 oz) 6 mg This other page says: NoDoz - 2 doses - 200 mg Coffee Drip - 5 oz - 110-150 mg Excedrin - 2 doses - 130 mg Jolt - 12 oz - 100.0 mg Anacin - 2 doses - 64 mg Coffee Perk - 5 oz - 60-125 mg Mountain Dew - 12 oz - 55.0 mg Tab - 12 oz - 46.8 mg Coca-Cola - 12 oz - 45.6 mg Coffee Instant - 5 oz - 40 - 105 mg Tea, 5 min. steep - 5 oz - 40-100 mg Dr. Pepper - 12 oz - 39.6 mg Pepsi Cola - 12 oz - 37.2 mg Espresso - 1 shot - 30-40 mg Tea, 3 min. steep - 5 oz - 20-50 mg Chocolate - 1 oz - 1-35 mg Decaf Coffee - 5 oz - 2-5 mg 7 Up - 12 oz - 0 mg

Do all teas contain caffeine? I thought herbals didn't. FG, I think I would agree that the non-tea-based Snapple drinks are probably caffeine free. KNorthrup, I think the Fat One was referring to infusions made from the leaves of the tea plant, rather than infusions made from other plants.

YES, that is the case at a university where you would want to be with your intellectual equals or superiors, but cooking school is skill and labour, brains and intellect have nothing to do with it. Huh? You sure you don't want to rethink that? Also, it's not necessarily only a question of "brains and intellect." There are also the elements of dedication, motivation, talent, experience, hard work, etc. Wouldn't you also want to be in a class where your colleagues were as dedicated, motivated, talented and hard working as you... if not moreso? Do you think it would be better to be in a class of cooking students who were all busting their asses 24/7, competing with and helping each other to attain higher and higher levels of proficiency and excellence... or in a class where 50% of the people weren't putting it all on the line? Which one do you think would be more condusive to acquiring the skills and expertise necessary for professional cooking? Do you think it would be better to attend a cooking school that was extremely rigorous and where students had to earn their diplomas by passing difficult examinations relevant to professional cooking, and which not all students are able to pass... or to attend a school where most any student who ponys up the money and slogs through class can say they are a "graduate?" Which diploma do you think is likely to be taken more seriously by the profession? I know which one I'd choose.

A lot of lefties put the knife in their left hand and the fork in their right. When eating with a knife and fork the elbow of the knife hand will naturally stick out somewhat when cutting, whereas the elbow of the fork hand tends to stay closer to the side. If you get a righty sitting to the left of a lefty, the inevitable result is a collision of elbows whenever they use their knives to cut at the same time. This can be mitigated, of course, by having both diners keep their elbows at their sides while cutting (which may be better table manners anyway), but in actual practice this rarely happens and some diners may find it unnecessarily restricting.

Steve, why? Why and how would that change a school for performing arts? Or the culinary school for that matter? It wouldn't change a public high school for the performing arts much, because they are not necessarily designed for students who are going to pursue a career in the performing arts so much as they are there to help the students develop their performing abilities as much as possible no matter to what end. Think of it this way... what if Julliard filled up with a bunch of amateur violinists who could play OK but didn't want to become professional musicians? What if one of those elite tennis programs filled up with players who were good but didn't plan on turning pro? You can't tell me that those schools wouldn't fundamentally change. I can't believe that an adult who does not aspire to be a professional violinist is going to spend 5 hours a day in a practice room hammering out his chops. No serious amateur tennis player is going to spend 5 hours a day on the courtsand sacrifice social and home life to train. Likewise, I can't see a non-career-track culinary student spending hour after blistering hour turning potatoes until it is just right. The point is that there are sacrifices an aspiring professional is willing to make, and there are lengths to which an aspiring professional is willing to go that 99% of "civilians" won't. To make a hypothetical example, I could see an aspiring professional cook at cooking school staying up at school until the wee hours of the morning turning potatoes and practicing because he has been told that he won't pass on to the next level unless he makes a certain grade turning potatoes. I could also see an amateur chef in the same class saying, "fuck this, I don't care if they give me the diploma or not... what use is turning potatoes to me?" Putting these two students together in a classsoom is going to make a difference. One thing my father, a life-long academic, told me once about college admissions standards is this: the reason Harvard and MIT (et al.) set their admissions standards so high is that a big part of the reason an elite student would want to go to these schools is to have the privilege of working alongside other students at a high level. It is not the case that an intro level English class at Yale is somehow "better" at teaching English than an intro level English class at Brooklyn College. It may be more rigorous and challenging at Yale, but that is completely determined by the composition of the student body.

I have always understood that, unless a soft drink lists "caffeine" on the ingredient list, it doesn't have added caffeine. Whether or not there may be some natural caffeine may be an issue, but I don't think it is a huge one. I'd stay away from coffee or tea-based drinks. Something like Fresca, for instance... I don't think they make a big deal out of the fact that it doesn't contain caffeine, but it doesn't. Similarly, I think that regular Barq's root beer contains caffeine while the diet version does not. As I recall, I only discovered this by comparing the ingredient lists. I know a number of serious Mormons (serious enough to have "temple recommends") who, as you may well imagine, do not take any caffeine. AFAIK, they don't worry about drinking sodas that do not list caffeine as an ingredient.