Today I finally got the schedule for my co-op at Rioja restaurant. Six weeks of AM shifts and six weeks of PM shifts with two days off! Before I even had my schedule, if I could not stay at my co-op site all day, then I wanted to be in another kitchen and/or somewhere around food to learn more. I mean, I've paid to be in classes all day and the culinary labs are only six hours long; if I am going to have a trimester with just working (and a food writing class which I am so happy about having), I want to be in a kitchen all day too! So I've been pushing for another place to go to since the beginning of the co-op process and today it seems to have paid off.
I went to the guy who handles our whole co-op/internship stuff at my school. At first I was told it's impossible to have two co-op sites and/or it would be too much work to handle. Unfortunately I feel that my work ethic for food can not be compared to any other students at this school (no offense to anyone.) So I went and talked to the school guy and informed me that there are ways that if I really want to be in a kitchen all day what I need to do is network with my co-op chef (which is well known in Denver.) I was advised to ask the chef if there are any other places she may know of that I can stash at to keep me in the kitchen and/or around anything culinary. Maybe another Italian/Mediterranean restaurant, or another cuisine restaurant such as Mexican, French, etc, or even go to a fish monger (and with me wanting to learn more about fish is off the scale beneficial to my career) which will only help start and build my career as my journey to chefdom better.
So now that's the plan, to find a way to be somewhere around a kitchen and/or food at least six days a week, I was also advised to at least take one day off for myself which was to read my cook books all day pretty much. I can not wait until the day my co-op starts because I finally get to be in the environment that I want to be in all the time (besides the one day off.)
Oh and yesterday I was able to spend some more of my extra college money on another book! The book choice this time was Charlie Trotter's Seafood book and I can not wait to read that one soon! I was going to get Charlie Trotter's Meat and Game book also but I decided to wait on that one! Knowing myself though, it was hard just leaving with one book this week getting Thomas Keller's Bouchon and Charlie Trotter's Seafood on separate days, I usually end up leaving any bookstore with about three or four books average anyways!
- Kenon Thompson
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