Before I left class today, Chef Duffy surreptitiously handed me three tablets of Ibarra chocolate and asked if I would please make hot chocolate before class starts tomorrow morning. I guess he wasn't kidding when he said he likes his students to be warm and well-fed.

Garde Manger is very self-directed — or, more accurately, team-directed. Ours is working together smoothly, whether Travis shows up or not. When he took roll this morning and marked Travis present, Chef looked closely at his attendance sheet. "Hmmmmmm. Absent, Present, Absent, Present. According to the pattern, should I mark you Absent for tomorrow?" Travis shook his head vehemently.

We had an aspic demo today, with fruit. Chef used canned pineapple juice as the gelatin base and we'll end up with several layers of raspberries and strawberries suspended in a triangular shape. We'll be cutting slices to add to fruit platters. He also demonstrated making neutral gelatin, colored with soy sauce or mayonnaise, to pour onto trays as a base for canapés (in lieu of doilies). You can embed shaped vegetables or seafood or anything, really, so that your tray becomes part of your garnish. He described all kinds of things you can do — cut out pieces with a cookie cutter, fill with another color gelatin — leading me wonder who will actually be preparing the food. There's clearly a certain personality type (not mine) who was born to play with gelatin.

During break, I melted the duck fat and put the duck legs into the oven to bake. A couple hours later, they were falling-off-the-bone done, and we'll be using them tomorrow in Duck Confit Spring Rolls.

Silvia and I worked together on the four trays of deli meats we needed to slice — ham, turkey, and salami — while Andrea smoked the duck breasts, and Travis grilled the marinated chicken breasts. We saved some ham and turkey and made a tray of tea sandwiches, using four different kinds of bread. Besides ham and turkey, we made salmon gravlax sandwiches, and herbed cheese and cucumber ones. After they were arranged on the tray (on the doilies), I sprinkled the whole thing with daikon radish sprouts and it just made you want to lift a cuppa, with your little pinky finger in the air, of course.

Travis and Andrea made a vegetable pasta salad, nothing really spectacular, and the same could be said for the wheatberry salad that I completed. But they looked good. I roasted two turkey breasts, some of which we'll use tomorrow to make "Curried Turkey with Mango" canapés.

We ended the morning by putting together the chicken satay canapés: cucumber slices topped by a swirl of peanut sauce, with a small slice of grilled chicken leaning against it, garnished with a bit of cilantro, a short batonnet of red bell pepper, and a sprinkle of sesame seeds.

Tomorrow, after hot chocolate, we'll be making the spring rolls and the curried turkey. That takes care of our five assigned dishes for the week. Chef also mentioned something about platters: cheese, fruit, antipasto. Andrea's planning to roast some bell peppers, first thing.

Despite our thousands of dollars worth of supplied equipment, we have no tool appropriate for applying mayonnaise to bread. So it was really necessary for me to stop after class at Economy Restaurant Fixtures (about three blocks from campus) to buy a spreader ($1.99 before my student discount...) And while I was there, I also got two new potholders, two half-sheet pans (they look SOOO small, but just barely fit into my oven), a 9x13 baking pan (before Baking & Pastry, I know, but I can use it for Super Bowl dessert), and the big score: a lifetime supply (or 1000 sheets, whichever comes first) of parchment paper.