Wrapping Up Week 1

I wasn’t going to blog tonight because I’m exhausted but apparently European dryers have a water tub that needs emptying. 60 minutes of waiting later, my clothes aren’t nearly dry and smell kind of moldy so here we are.

Let’s start with the theme of this blog. Real work. The kind of work that I’m assuming most city/corporate types haven’t done in a very long time or never. For me it was never. Embarrassing, but true. I washed a ton of dishes and fed the hens (the hens are fed table scraps, which eventually become our eggs. NOTHING is wasted here. Seriously, nothing). When I say a ton of dishes I mean I started off with a healthy stack thinking it was doable. Then one of the teachers pointed to the counter behind me with a sly smile and said “those are yours too.” As I got to work I was observing the other 15 or so people on “duty” running around doing similar tasks. Every week the “rota” is posted. “Rota” is short for “rotation,” who knew? These are basic tasks like making the bread in the morning, milking the cows, making the salad, clearing plates and of course washing dishes. So back to me washing my stack of dishes…. About half way through I realized I was smiling. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I was washing an endless stack of dishes. But as I observed everyone else running around doing their part it felt (this is absolutely pathetic) GOOD.  It felt good to do real honest work for once in my life. It inched me closer to realizing that money doesn’t matter if you’re doing work that makes you miserable. By miserable I mean the corporate world, not washing dishes. Now let’s be clear that I’m not looking for a career as a dishwasher, but at the same time I don’t mind it if it’s contributing to the greater good of something I give a crap about. Okay so that’s that.

Let’s move on to my homework and what else we’ve covered this week. Once a week, typically on Wednesday, we do a lecture. The lectures primarily cover wine and cheese (!!!). There is a LARGE focus on pairing wine with your food as well as the resurgence of farmhouse cheeses (some of which are made here, which I’ll be a part of). The wine course is run by Colm McCan. He was named the Food & Wine Magazine Sommelier of the Year in 2014. Safe to say, he knows his stuff. Today was was an intro of tasting Chardonnays from different regions and exploring the taste difference the soil brings as well as the oak (if it’s aged in oak).  More on this later after a few lectures. I have an entire college sized textbook on wine I still need to open. Which leads me to my next point.

Along with the long days in class, there is also plenty to be done at night. There is of course reading. But you also have to create an order of work, which is a list of how you’re going to tackle the next day’s recipes, file your recipes (this is a TALL task, pun intended) as well as try and fit in the every day stuff (like laundry, which still isn’t freaking done yet).

Let’s end with my new friend Florence. Darina Allen runs this school and she is 69 years old. Florence is her Aunt. Her orange cake is famous in these parts and is a recipe I’ll eventually make. She popped in to our cottage tonight and had a glass of wine with us. It was so great spending time with her. She is a wealth of knowledge on the school, Ireland and life. It felt so great that she enjoyed our company and stuck around for a bit. We of course told her that she is welcome back any time. The last point here is that it brought me back in time a bit. Not because she is older now but because she didn’t use a cell phone to text us first. She came over because she is our neighbor and she is welcome. I don’t care what I’m doing, Auntie Florence is always welcome at Mrs. Walsh’s Cottage.

Oh, one more thing! The food truck! Darina purchased a slick, restored Airstream food truck. It closes next week for the season. But I’ve already talked to her about letting me open it back up for a test run just for students (we covered hygiene today too, I am NOT certified to SELL food yet). She said no one had asked that before and to come to her with a plan. So I gathered a few other students and we’re going to create a business plan to present to her. I also asked the former students running the truck if I can shadow them this Saturday. They said yes and to show up at 8. Rest assured, I am going to do everything I can to sling tacos out of this fantastic truck.

It might be a few days before my next post. It’s been a long week and pretty much the entire school is going out to get “pissed” on Friday at the Blackbird Pub in Ballycotton. Okay thanks for reading!