last week we butchered chickens, ducks, poussin (baby chickens), striped bass, and sole. i'm finding taking apart animals comes naturally to me...once you have a vague understanding of the anatomy of an animal, taking the meat off its bones is pretty easy. i'm learning a lot about my fellow classmates as we're going through these exercises as well. there are a few squeamish people, a few who don't think they need to learn how to disassemble a tiny bird from the inside out (and stuff it with a mushroom rice stuffing and wrap it in bacon and eat it! yum!), and a few who are also quite good at taking the bones out of things. i actually find it calming. like methodically taking apart a puzzle. last weekend i bought three chickens just so i could take them apart at home - my freezer is full of beautifully butchered airline breasts and quarts of chicken stock. i also made the stuffed boneless deal, but with a full grown chicken's boneless thigh and leg quarter. here's what it looked like:

it tasted divine. if you're nice, i'll make one for you sometime.

i'm starting to feel a bit restless in class - i want to do more, bigger, harder things. i want to debone a turkey from the inside out and stuff it with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. seriously, i am feeling the urge to flex my crazy inside out deboning knowledge and make a turducken.

chef pierre praised my poussin deboning, saying "SOMEBODY did a good job, em-ay-lee!" that is my favorite thing to hear so far.

*i realized i didn't link to my friend's culinary school adventure blog, so here it is. enjoy comparing out stories.