Day 82: Once more unto the breach

I had just about finished putting the pieces back together when the alarm went off for the final day. A quick glance in the mirror and it looks like some of them aren’t quite in the right place and a few are probably gone for good. But I’m alive. Just. Which is a good thing, because three written exams in quick succession could prove tricky were I not.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you how tough it is. I tried to look at some notes yesterday and last night, but with all that energy expended in the practical, I just couldn’t face it. So I am ill prepared and, to be truthful, over it. One more effort and it’s done. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

But actually it turns out I needn’t have bothered. The first paper is on menu planning, fire safety, food hygiene. Luckily I learnt the colour coding for fire extinguishers. And a lot of questions are simply a matter of common sense. Like:

Which of the following are signs that your kitchen may be infested with rats?

a) Rat droppings on the floor

b) Gnaw marks

c) Nibbled packaging

d) Lots of cats outside the kitchen door

Others, I just don’t know. Like the table of various forms of food poisoning with empty cells for incubation periods, symptoms and causes. Let that one go. Plenty of multiple choice and true or false in there though, so whilst hardly an exemplary performance, it isn't brain damaging stuff.

Another two papers follow either side of lunch. Salad leaf recognition is a breeze this time, thanks to me actually taking the effort to learn their names. Herbs are easy and we now have to identify fifteen spices too, which is straightforward enough. The fenugreek got a few people though. One of them put bulgar wheat! Can’t imagine curry would be quite the same if it were. In the final exam there is meat and fish recognition. I really would have struggled with this a few months back, but it’s easy now. There are tons of questions on everything you can imagine. It’s all pretty straightforward, but knackering, and in a sense daunting to realise quite how much we’ve taken in.

So without really noticing it, the course came to a gentle halt some time just before 3pm. Eighty-two days. Somewhere around 150 hours in the kitchen, probably another 400 odd in demo. Four massive lever arch files bursting with recipes and notes, and a brain that has run out of storage.

I drive straight home and go to bed. Tonight we have a farewell dinner back at the school, after which they have laid on a coach to take us to the Blackbird. I’m not quite sure how they’re going to fit sixty of us in there, but it will be interesting finding out.

Most people head home tomorrow, and there is a “hugging session”, as Darina put it, in the morning. Me, I’m going to stick around for a few days. Like a joint of meat suddenly plucked from the heat of the oven, I think I will benefit from a little rest before carving.