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I Graduated this week

We had  our graduation ceremony this week at School. It was held in our Restaurant at School and we were all in our chefs uniforms and the hospitality and hospitality business management students were in Grad gowns

We were all given numbers and had to enter and exit the restaurant in numerical order I was number 34, It was quite emotional for me ….. coming to the end of this chapter of all my hard work over the past year. As we walked in to the Restaurant, everybody was standing, all the staff, family and freinds, VIPS which included the Mayor and they were clapping us in, that made me just want to cry.

We had speeches  and a power point display was shown about the school which also made me bubble up a wee bit. There was a picture of our class in the display, then a picture of a freind of mine competing in a competition and then there on the screen was a great shot of myself with my medal and a blurb about winning big at the competitions.

We then proceeded out the way we came  in and through another entrance to receive our certificates, and Justin the announcer was just calling out each persons name, when it came to me  he made a little speech about me, saying i was one of the celebrities of the school and a great student etc, which just took my breath away and made my very big grin on my face even bigger.

When all the formal stuff was done we had some great entertainment, with  one of the students and her freind playing the most beautiful music on a piano and a cello  and one of our tutors dressing up in all different kinds of things which were very funny.

We finished off with a wonderful lunch prepared by all the cooking tutors  and plenty of wine which was just lovely

Bruce snapped lots of pictures  which I just have to download and will post very soon

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other foodie sites and bits and bobs

A Chocolate Fantasy Dessert

A few weeks ago I entered my first professional chef competition in over 20 yrs .This competition is run by the Culinare Institute , its a competing arena for the hospitality industry. I didn’t win anything but I gained so much experience and insight in to what was expected and what I need to do in the future. I entered A Chocolate Fantasy Dessert and the dessert that I entered was A Chocolate Turkish Delight Brownie it was a rich dark rose flavoured chocolate brownie layered with soft decadent turkish delight and then it had rose sugar syrup drizzled over the top and served with a rich truffle of chocolate ganash on top and roasted pistachios and toffee shards as decoration.

Iwill upload the recipe and a picture fairly soon,

I am teaching myself some new skills as a result of this competition, things like sugar art and chocolate sculpture and art and also brushing up on some old skills that haven’t been used in a while