Gastronomy and Food Safety.

So today was my first day of Gastronomy and Food Safety.

My Gastronomy teacher is Irena Chalmers.
She is from England and probably one of the funniest and warmest teachers I've every had, even after one day.
She spoke very briefly to us during orientation a few weeks ago, so I was really excited to learn that she would be my Gastronomy teacher.
The thing about her is that she is honestly funny.
Apparently she has horrendous stories about Martha Stewart, which I'm sure she will eventually tell us.
She doesn't believe in exams, tests or quizzes. Just that we take notes and pass them in at the end.
She has assigned us a project today of researching a famous chef.
Guess who I chose?
Gordon Ramsay, of course.

She will also go off on a tangent about any subject on food and can talk for hours upon hours about it.
Like one of the things she taught us today was on the benefits of breast milk:

1. It is always at the right temperature.
2. The cat can't get at it.
3. It comes in nice packages.

Yes.
That is my teacher for the next six weeks.
Be jealous.

I'm also going to take her Food Jobs class at the next opportunity I get.
Which will be in October sometime.
Here is a link to her Wikipedia page if you would like to read up on her, she is fantastic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Chalmers


For Food Safety my teacher is Professor Richard Vergili.
That man is funny.
And a tad bit eccentric.
(But aren't we all?)
But after listening to him talk for a few hours, it's apparent that he really knows his stuff.
As a self proclaimed "Tree Hugger", he is all about locally grown food.
He took the time to get to know us in his own way and by doing that, made his classroom a very welcoming environment.
Did you know that about 76 million people get a food borne illness every year? and those are just the people who report it and who also knew that they had a food borne illness to begin with.


I know that I'm about to learn a lot from these two teachers.
Hopefully I'll continue being lucky tomorrow when I meet the rest of my professors.

Banquet tonight.
I'm hoping for Creme Brulee for dessert!