Will she survive to graduation?

[FuzzyKitten99]

This is the question and a small inside bet going on with one of my classmates.

She calls herself a 'former vegetarian'. She said she is working back up to eating meat again, knowing that culinary school doesn't have a special 'vegetarian/vegan' option to get your degree.

However so far, she has done the following:

-Started crying when Chef Paul (our instructor) put a large container of veal bones in a pan to roast for making espagnole.
-Cringed when Chef Paul was cutting a whole chicken to show how to make chicken stock & broth, etc.
-Made grossed-out faces the whole time we were cutting chicken breasts yesterday for eating with Hollandaise sauce.
-Didn't want to filet the skin off her fish and almost asked another student to do it.

We don't work with meat every day, but every time we do, it is kind of fun to bet on what she will do in mild-protest. She even touts proudly that she has made her 4yo son a vegetarian. All I can say is, poor kid.

So, what do you think... will she survive to graduation?

I am on the fence on this one. She may "grow out of it", however people with her mindset rarely do. I think she seems to thrive on being 'different' or 'controversial', even if it is getting old and annoying to hear about it every time we have to deal with any kind of animal flesh. People with that mindset and lifestyle seem to do it more to 'stand out' and get attention for something rather than really believing in what they say.

A degree in culinary arts by going through school is probably not something a vegetarian or vegan should consider unless they are smart and logical about everything they have to do that involves meat.

[Cat]

I can understand where she is coming from, to an extent....it is hard being veg and tossed into a meat eating community, which is what she will get in culinary school.

Pity there isn't a vege option....I'd almost be interested in that (I was veggie for a long time, then omnivore, now I'm a flexatarian....ugh I hate these terms )

I wish her the best!

[ArcticChicken]

(I was veggie for a long time, then omnivore, now I'm a flexatarian....ugh I hate these terms )

I eat food, it is tasty.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

To me, people like that seem to be nothing more than trying to get attention.

They want to make sure everyone notices how opposed they are to meat eating, so they go into a field that will guarantee that they will have to come into contact with it.

There are other things like this I've seen people do in other fields or situations. All boils down to the same thing. If she honestly found it all that offensive, she wouldn't put herself in a situation where she'd have to humor it.

You know what? Most people find dog crap to be highly offensive, but most of us can clean it up without making childish faces and making sure everyone sees how grossed out we are.

[NorthernZel]

She even touts proudly that she has made her 4yo son a vegetarian. All I can say is, poor kid.

I hope she knows that applying vegetarianism to young children can lead to serious malnutrition if she doesn't know what she's doing? (Like, for instance, knowing which vegetables have enough proteins to replace meat proteins.)

Over here, a vegetarian diet for children is only advised if the diet has been approved by an authorized nutrician, and Vegan diets are highly adviced against unless some allergy issues are involved. Again, an authorized nutrician should be involved in this. If not, that'd be a matter for the CPS.

[FuzzyKitten99]

I hope she knows that applying vegetarianism to young children can lead to serious malnutrition if she doesn't know what she's doing? (Like, for instance, knowing which vegetables have enough proteins to replace meat proteins.)

Over here, a vegetarian diet for children is only advised if the diet has been approved by an authorized nutrician, and Vegan diets are highly adviced against unless some allergy issues are involved. Again, an authorized nutrician should be involved in this. If not, that'd be a matter for the CPS.

Oh hell, i know that vegetarian diets are recipes for malnutrition even without medical evidence-I have seen it with my own eyes. I have a friend who is vegetarian, nearly vegan. She has two kids and wonders why they are both puny & sickly. They eat meat and have since they could eat solids, but from birth they have always been small, scrawny, and essentially under-sized because she didn't get the right nutrition from natural sources. Some forms of protein and carbohydrates found in animal flesh (yes, carbohydrates do exist in all kinds of meat) are essential for human growth & development and cannot be duplicated via vitamin supplements or plant sources.

Why do you think I said "poor kid"...

[sylvier]

Taste it, then spit it out ... she didn't actually ingest the poor little critter. If she gets through the program, she can cook whatever she wants.

[AnqeiicDemise]

Class of 2007 -- we had a girl just like yours.

She was always making faces when asked to at least *try* the food she prepared. But she wouldn't be cause she was Vegan and Chef extremely frustrated with her because it is imperative that a cook know how their dishes tasted before they left the kitchen.

We had a Chef Paul who worked alongside my chef (forgot his name, O.o; Chef Paul was super sexy so he was hard to forget, lol!) tried telling her she should at least prepare a dish to show that she was making an attempt.

--

Safety and Sani, she had missed like half the actual term.


---

Butchery: she missed 90% of the class, yet managed to pass the final. I don't know how she did it, considering she spent half the time poking at her cuts of meat and the other half trying 'not to be sick'. Methinks one of the guys felt sorry for her, did her cuts and let her copy off his test.

--

She then made it to our fourth class, Contemporay Cuisine. She did great, I'll grant you that. Girl *could* cook but the one day we had to do Classic Cuisine and she started with her squeamish shit, our Chef, this wonderful Hindu woman, got so offended/irritated she got to the front of the class and gave us a lecture on what it meant to be a Chef.

"My religion does not let me eat pork and other animals, and as a choice, I have become vegan... and when I was learning, I understood that I had to learn the basics. I had to get my hands dirty and learn how to *ethically* dress an animal (because although I don't eat an animal, I don't want it to have to suffer more than necessarily for any dish).How else would I know how to improve a dish if I did not know how to taste it?" she would say. "I did not have to like it; i did not have to eat it. I just had to taste it. Take a small spoon, swish the flavor, spit it out. Go about your day. Once you know the basics and you've done the same dishes long enough, you'll know how a particular dish smells and not have to taste it. And if you don't like it, and you got your own kitchen, then you don't have to cook it. So until you can call the shots, you do what you got to do."

XD

I loved her.

Anyway, Vegan-girl never made it beyond intro to Baking and Pastry. We had European cuisine next and she got into a fight with Chef Pierre. He was showing us how to properly cook a lobster; V-girl refused to kill the animal by cutting the head and put the animal into a pot. Chef told her that was cruel and unnecessary. "How would you like to be tossed into a pot and be cooked to death? I would rather get shot between the eyes than be tossed into boiling water."

...

Damn. I miss the kitchen.

[AnqeiicDemise]

PS: my room mate was vegan, and not by choice but due to a nutrition issue. Her body just can't deal very well with the complexity of animal-by-products (though she's been trying to build an immunity.. or at least a tolerance... to stuff like cheese, eggs and chicken soup. Its been a hard road for her). She wanted to be in the kitchen but simply couldn't be in the savory side...

So she took the Pastry course.

And she's doing fairly well, may I add.

[Sliceanddice]

Anyway, Vegan-girl never made it beyond intro to Baking and Pastry. We had European cuisine next and she got into a fight with Chef Pierre. He was showing us how to properly cook a lobster; V-girl refused to kill the animal by cutting the head and put the animal into a pot. Chef told her that was cruel and unnecessary. "How would you like to be tossed into a pot and be cooked to death? I would rather get shot between the eyes than be tossed into boiling water."

...

Damn. I miss the kitchen.

um actually.... the most humane way to kill a lobster is to stick in the fridge for about an hour or more then toss it in the pot because gettign it cold slows down their metabolism so they cant feel the heat

[Gravekeeper]

um actually.... the most humane way to kill a lobster is to stick in the fridge for about an hour or more then toss it in the pot because gettign it cold slows down their metabolism so they cant feel the heat

Er, that's still a more prolonged boil to death scenario. Also for that one it needs to be the freezer. The fridge can be pleasantly balmy to a lobster or crab. Ideally you want to freeze em for 15-20 to dull their senses, THAN give em the knife. If they've been chilled they won't squirm so you can hit their weak point for massive damage.

Still, the best method is the CRUSTASTUN~

[Sliceanddice]

they die in 5 seconds if the water is properly heated also i couldnt remember if it was freezer or fridge so i aired on the side of caution