First day at Alma

NO ONE was on time! I dont know what the deal with Italians are but they don't have a care in the world when it comes to punctuality. The weather was gross and we had to stand outside in the rain until Francesca.. (the person hired by FCI to work at Alma) strolled in 40 minutes late. anywho it was a typical orientation, lots of sitting around, lots of boring information. The school however is gorgeous! I cant wait for a nice sunny day to take some pictures.

The layout of the program is as follows we have school every day. two days a week we have guest chefs that come from the two regions we are studying. We also have italian two mornings a week..(at 8 am!.. yikes!) and then we have history two days a week.. which is taught by a british man who resembles austin powers, maybe just with better teeth. and then there is wine tasting. Which is really interesting.. and the teacher is awesome.. the only problem with the wine sich is that it is at 9 am.. i know italians like their wine but thats a bit extreme, no?

The first day in the kitchen was absolute hell. We began the day tasting wine from the regions Liguria and Sardegna.

First day in Italy

We got to Milan at around 7:30 in the morning. We took an hour bus ride to the center of milan and then sat there for 9 or 10 hours because apparently sunday in italy is like... a nonexistant day and i don't think they could get the shuttle (that we ordered and paid for in advance lol) to pick us up before 1 (which is actually 2 pmish) so if you can imagine we had quite the commute lol.. we walked amount Milan for a little while, got some food..NOTHING WAS OPEN.. so i got a mozzarella e pomodoro calazone... shocking i know. so different from my diet in NY lol.. anywho it was rainy and disgusting so we ended up passing out in a hotel lobby for a little bit..when the bus finally arrived we got on it and passed out there lol.. it was a two hour trip from the milano center to our school in parma. We got our keys and settled into our appts. Everything is really nice. the kitchen is fully stocked with all the appliances we could need.. dishwasher included..(how great!) the bathroom however does not have toilet paper. i suppose thats because they have a badey ( spelling??).. but yea thats that lol.. um what else? Oh! we settled into our appts and then went for dinner. we met these kids who are in the class ahead of us so they showed us the area a bit.. its a very small town and everything is basically on one street.. but its nice.. Dinner was interesting.. we traveled half way around the world to order what was basically a chicken mcnugget (gross!) at an irish pub... irony at its finest lol.. either way we had a good time at the bar. The people in my program are great (there are 19 of us), just a generally great group of people! Im so excited to be here!

Welcome to my blog!

Hello all! I promised a blog, and here it is. The purpose of my blog is too keep you posted on my culinary adventures. In order to do so I think I should tell you about the program I am enrolled in. The french culinary school (NYC) is partnered with their sister school (Alma) which is located in the small town of Colorno, Parma. Which is located in the tuscany region. The program is thirty weeks in total and is broken down into three parts, approximately ten weeks each. The first part which I have already completed took place at the French Culinary Institute (FCI) in NYC. In short that part of the program was the easier part. We learned basic cooking techniques and traditional dishes, and basically worked to acquire the first building blocks of our culinary journey. The second portion of the program, which I am currently one week into, takes place at Alma in Colorno. This blog will be primarily about my experience at Alma, and in the last phase of the program. The last phase is an internship at a michelin star restaurant somewhere in Italy. I will also try to post some pictures, but as most of you probably know, I don't typically keep up with my pictures. There is however one album on Facebook with a few shots of my school, and our first few nights out on the town. Please feel free to ask questions and leave comments as I am writing this blog as a way to keep in touch with all of you wonderful people at home =)