Dinner at the chateau

I'd hoped to have blogged about this yesterday, but the Internet was down, so ... a day late isn't too bad. On Tuesday we had a wonderful dinner prepared at the school for all of Josh's class and others involved in his program. Dane, the guy who oversees a lot of the program's details, was nice enough to invite me to join them. A good time was had by all.

We got a group shot (or 20) on the school's front porch. L-R: Yulia, Josh, Clovis, Lizzie, Cindy, Annie, Jeneva--that's Josh's class--and then myself and Lionel and Karen, who work at the school. Karen, incidentally, has family in Red Bluff, just a 45-minute drive from Chico. Her husband also works at the school.

After the pictures, we went to the school's restaurant, where we were served drinks and some delicious food--wonderful deviled eggs and veggies to start off, then a white fish of some kind (we couldn't put our finger on it and the server only knew the French name for it--nobody wrote it down) accompanied by ratatouille. Yum! And conversation was easy. Dane started off with an introduction in which he said "this group is special."

During dinner he gave us some more insight into how the program works, particularly the internships. Apparently the students start looking for internships at the three-month mark. The school has a relationship with chefs all over the country and they try to pair students up with chefs they think they'll work well with. Then the students have to set up their own interviews, etc. If their first match doesn't work out, there's time for a second pairing. Dane also indicated that, while the students may not get "graded" they are assessed, weekly, and at the end of the program there will be a star. That star might be offered a special internship. The star from the last program split his two-month internship between two MOFs (pronounced moff, it stands for Meilleur Ouvrier de France and those who earn the title get to wear the colors of the French flag on their collars).

Speaking of MOFs, dessert Tuesday night was a special treat. It turned out there was a MOF in our midst. He'd been visiting the school and put together the impressive dessert spread. I'm sad to report I didn't take pictures. You'll just have to take my word for the beauty and deliciousness. There were three tortes on offer. The first two included raspberry and lemon and were amazing. The other was chocolate and had a wonderfully creamy mousse in the middle. Surprisingly, despite my penchant for chocolate-flavored anything, my favorite was one of the tartier concoctions. Who would've guessed ...

OK, that's all I have for now. I'm getting ready to head to the market and this evening I'm going to make lamb stew for Josh and his classmates. It's been a cold week and it's nice to give people a reason to socialize! I hope to have more pictures to share tomorrow.