Day SIX. Behold the Fruit Salad.

Day Six. Behold the Fruit Salad. After getting up before the birds the day before you think I would have been exhausted. First day nerves spilled over to the first night of school nerves and I was restless all night. Up again before the birds wasn't fun, but off I went to class. It was our first demonstration this morning. Fruit Salad and Sugar Syrups. Wow. I know. Pretty exciting right? All 48 of us were in the demonstration room, taking notes on how to cut each kind of fruit in different ways. Thank goodness for Ina gartens grapefruit salad as I have peeled and cut in between the membranes plenty of times before. Did you know that if you cut through 2 grapes almost in quarters and lay them on top of each other they make a cool looking flower? Well there's your tip of the day. I must say that I could truly see that the instructor showing the cuts loved his craft. Seriously he plated fruit on a plate like I had never seen, it was a piece of art the way that the colors flowed through the plate with caring heights and textures. Then he made the fruit salad in a bowl and that was nothing in comparison to his work of fruit. After learning about the stages of sugar, thread, soft, hard, hard crack and how to make a simple syrup, class was dismissed. Sounds simple enough? Well he did show us over 15 kinds of fruit so three hours went by very quickly. Then it was a three hour break. I was barely awake for the break I didn't know if I was going to be able to do it. I kept myself tolerably busy rewriting my notes into a more format-table way. Then it was time. Time to make the salad. I got energy from somewhere because because I was so excited to be in a kitchen. I didn't know if I would like it and sure enough I do! It was like playing a role in a movie, only I wasn't acting. We worked in teams of two to make the simple syrup for our fruits. Then we each cut our own 10ish fruits for our fruit salad. Kind of silly to be so precise when we poured chilled sugar syrup all over them. We then arranged/placed fruits on top. My first piece of patisserie art. All in a fruit salad. Plums, oranges, kiwi, pear, apple, grapes, strawberries, mangoes, currants, and a couple more that I am too tired to remember. Then we went back to teams of two to make the stages of sugar. In demo, our instructor showed us something I thought I would never want to do. Feel the differences of the changing sugar straight from a very cold hand that came out of ice water into the boiling sugar ....very fast....moving it back to the water & making the correct stage of sugar. Do not try this at home. It takes practice and a way better description of it than this to attempt. My ring finger tip will feel better tomorrow. Did I ever mentioned got a knife kit the first day? Today was the first day I actually opened it up. Used it. And didn't cut myself on anything the first day. Plenty more chances for that to happen. Well the internet is down at my flat tonight so I'll post this tomorrow from school where I finally got wifi. Yahoo! I guess all of that watching dancing with the stars on YouTube used up too much of there pay as you go internet. Londoners have pay as you go cell phones, pay as you go internet, tube stations, weekly rent, not monthly, and so much more. The internet/cell phones kill me....it's like we're living in 2000 or something. Or is it London is still partying like its 1999?!? Ttfn-mi