Brrrrr… it’s cold ’round here.

For those of you who don’t live in a place that offers four complete, unique seasons you may not recognize the phenomenon I’m experiencing.

Imagine that it’s the dead of winter – January or February. Outside it’s -32 degrees Celsius – though with the windchill factored in it feels like -47. When April rolls around and the high is +10 it feels warm, almost hot. Everybody’s walking around in t-shirts and driving with their car windows open.

On the flip side, the exact opposite happens in September – especially after a long, hot summer. Today when I left work it was +14 degrees. In late April or early May we would have been pleased and enjoying the ‘beautiful weather”. But today everybody was bitching about how cold it was. We were rolling up the car windows and pulling sweatshirts and light jackets on over the t-shirts.

The weirdest thing is that I’m actually thinking about braising something for dinner this week – something I don’t usually choose to do until mid-winter. I think I’m in shock. Yesterday it was hot – I think it hit +30 C. Tonight’s low is +3 C. Premature seasoning. They claim there will be a couple of cool days and then it will warm up again, so we’ll see if I’m pulled out of my early-fall-mid-winter freeze. By Sunday I’ll probably want nothing but a salad – or something simple on the grill. Or else I’ll put a pot-roast into the slow-cooker

Making of a Chef – by Michael Ruhlman

Good book.  You should read it.

I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but I really enjoyed this book. I’m in the food business, and I do some writing.  I went to university to study Hotel/Restaurant Management, but I’ve often thought about and wondered if I should have gone to culinary school. (Or taken some writing classes.)

The Making of a Chef didn’t answer that question for me, but Michael Ruhlman is a great writer who allowed me to take a glimpse at a year of culinary school. 

I’m almost embarrassed that it’s taken me so long to read this book.  Though I heard about the book years ago, it wasn’t until I started reading some of Ruhlman’s posts on eGullet and other places around the web that I decided it was time to get a copy.  Late is better than never, right?

I enjoyed it so much I immediately started reading Soul of a Chef – but that’s for another post (when I’m done reading it).

So, if you’ve thought of going to the Culinary Institute of America or another cooking school I think you should read this book.  It takes a special type of person to become a cook/chef. Ruhlman helps us see what it takes.