Culinary Training Isn't A Cakewalk

A career as a chef can be fulfilling and challenging, and if you have a passion for food culinary training may be a perfect fit. However, it isn't easy. Anyone who has attended a culinary institute can tell you that the education you receive goes far beyond simply learning how to throw together a few meals. In fact, you learn much more than just cooking.

Being a successful chef also involves being able to manage your kitchen properly, work well with your staff and understand nutrition, food purchasing and plenty of other things that go beyond the stove or oven. Culinary training can be an eye-opening experience for many students as they prepare for their career in the food and restaurant industry.

Training to be a chef may be challenging, but it's also incredibly rewarding. There are few careers that so perfectly blend creativity and a love of food with a practical skill to yield a job that can propel you onto a successful career path in any number of areas. With the proper culinary training you can work at resorts, restaurants and clubs almost anywhere in the world. You may even find yourself working on a cruise ship.

Choose Culinary Training That's Comprehensive

If you want the best training possible, look at the curriculum offered at each school you are considering. If the focus is just cooking, you will be missing some important components that will make your culinary degree marketable when you graduate. The most comprehensive programs will have six distinct areas, each of which will break down further into specific units, some with basic, intermediate and advanced courses.

Food Service and Sanitation

This is the foundation of everything a chef or food service worker must know. If food is improperly handled, nothing else matters. Unsanitary conditions are absolutely unacceptable at any establishment no matter how talented you are.

Culinary Arts and Cooking

The core of most programs, these courses will have a variety of names, but will usually focus on a variety of cooking styles and procedures, usually focusing on savory dishes.

Food Science and Nutrition

Understanding the make-up and nutritional content, taste and value of ingredients and foods. In today's health-conscious society these courses are more important than ever, particularly if you would like to go on to work in a setting such as a spa or luxury resort. Understanding the way various flavors and textures interact and react is also a part of food science.

Purchasing

Learning cost analysis, how to evaluate and purchase individual ingredients, and knowing how much you will need along with where to shop. All of these are elements of purchasing that are central to being a successful chef. You can't cook well if you don't know where to get the right ingredients and how to work within a budget.

Mixology

This is sometimes called beverage service or viniculture, and is the art of understanding how wines, alcohols and liqueurs complement and interact with foods. No fine meal is complete without the proper accompaniment of wine or alcoholic beverage, and being knowledgeable enough to select the proper accompaniment is essential.

Pastries and Baking

Some culinary training programs will offer pastry and baking education as a part of the culinary arts, while others will offer a complete curriculum specializing in this as a separate discipline (some offer both options). Baking science is much different than cooking and has different rules and methods, so it requires separate attention to some degree. Because there are so many types of breads and pastries, many schools offer a complete course in this for those wishing to become specialized pastry chefs.

Some schools that offer culinary training will allow you to download their curriculum to review. This is a great way to see if they cover the basics, how much time they dedicate to each topic and what you will be covering in each class. Choosing a school without seeing the complete curriculum is like purchasing a car without a test drive, so be sure to know what you'll be learning and how many hours you'll be spending learning each technique or topic during your culinary training.

Find A Top Driving School Online

Did you know that with the advent of the internet and online convenience, you can access programs from a top driving school, sitting in the comfort of your home? These online programs, conducted by reputed accredited schools, can help you learn the basics of driving, clean your driving record and help you avail discounts on your car insurance premium. All the online driving courses are user-friendly, interactive and make lessons from a top driving school, interesting and fun. Few of the features of an online driving course could be: tips on traffic safety rules, flexible time schedules and interactive media presentations. The prices are affordable and some schools even deliver the pass certificates to your door.

When you are searching for a top driving school for enrolling, there are a few precautionary steps to be taken. For instance, do not get lured by the school which offers you the cheapest rates. Check out what are the extra benefits they have to offer against your deposit. Other items on your check-list should be, whether there is any discount for paying in advance and length of each lesson. There are some schools which might request you to pick up and drop off other students on your way to the school! Check whether your driving instructor has a green badge on the windscreen of his car. This proves that he is a certified trainer from the Driving Standards Agency. If he has a pink license, then he is not yet qualified to teach. Check whether the car which is used to coach you the practical aspects of driving, is equipped with dual controls and is maintained well.

A top driving school would normally help its students with the theory test. Buying a good book or a CD Rom is part of the service that you can expect. You must make sure that your instructor is keeping a tab on your progress and the instructions are following the official Driving Standards Agency curriculum. Good driving schools allow an hour or two per week for lessons with a qualified instructor. In fact, the instructors usually advise students on how much tuition is needed, depending on the skill level of the student.

There are many top driving schools which offer special driving help for beginners and extra nervous students. They even offer male or female professionals as instructors. You can take your pick.

Therefore before you get lured by claims of top driving schools, evaluate the school thoroughly and find out whether it suits your needs. Only then enroll in the school of your choice – whether offline or online.

Mayan Civilization: Pretty Impressive

Upon seeing Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” I became fascinated with Mayan Culture. With My background as a cultural anthropology minor in college I decided to do some research into Mayan Civilization particularly from a cultural perspective.

The first thing that struck me was how far back the Mayan Civilization goes. It is believed that they came to our part of the world in the 4th ice age via the Bering Strait. My research has led me to believe that they originally descended from Egypt migrated through Asia and then onto Siberia, Alaska and what we call North America. As the Ice melted they migrated south. Most researchers are split with the Egyptian theory. I find that many of the cultural practices including the building of pyramids and their hieroglyphic language closely mirrored the Egyptian culture at various points of pre-historic and historic history.

As soon as the ice age came to an end we see a shift from humans being total carnivores to include plants in their diets. The early Mayan Descendants started agricultural villages as far back as approximately 9000 BC. Stone tools as well as pottery were found in Guatemala dating back to 9000 BC.

The Mayan Empire was not one homogeneous country. It was a series of independent states that were connected by a common culture that unified them. The root of the Mayan culture was based on the Olmec, to which the Mayan adopted, adapted and expanded upon.

Religion and politics went hand and hand in Mayan Civilization. Kings were born to throne and secondary rulers by nepotism. New Kings were the eldest of the male children to the previous kings. Many time priests and kings were one and the same. The king was usually the head priest also. The ruling class was also either hand chosen or born into the royal family, as were priests. In Mayan belief it was the King and his reigning powers that ensured the continuation of the universe as with the Egyptian belief System. The Mayans were big on bloodletting and the higher the rank in class the more blood one was expected to sacrifice. It was not uncommon for the king to pierce his penis or tongue with the blood being part of the sacrifice.

The Mayan Civilization was the only Mesoamerican pre-Columbian culture to have a written language. They also developed complicated calendar systems as well as astronomy and mathematics. The Mayans did practice human sacrifice in times of extreme difficulty. No one really knows why the Mayan Civilization collapsed even before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is speculated that natural things like natural disasters, disease as epidemics and climate change were part of the environmental factors to help the decline of Maya Civilization. Non-Environmental factors included foreign invasion and warfare, peasant revolt and trade break down. With these factors already present it was easy for the Spanish to come in and finish off the Mayan Civilization.

What is Gravity?

All of us know the mysterious force called gravity, holding us firmly onto Earth's surface. However, the question 'what is gravity' is not easy to answer at all. The reason is that we don't really understand what this force actually is (if it is indeed a force). What follows may give you a different way of thinking about gravity.

Let's see if the three 'gravity giants', Kepler, Newton and Einstein did answer the question 'what is gravity?'

Kepler's Gravity (1605)

Johannes Kepler published the 'laws' of planetary motion in 1605, after studying the precise measurement of the orbits of the planets by Tycho Brahe. He found that these observations followed three relatively simple mathematical laws, i.e.

1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two focus points.

2. A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.

3. The squares of the orbital periods of planets are directly proportional to the cubes of the major axis (half the "length" of the ellipse) of the orbits.

The physical explanation of this behavior of the planets came almost a century later when Sir Isaac Newton was able to deduce Kepler's laws from his laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.

Newton's Gravity (1687)

Newton, reportedly while observing an apple falling from a tree, got an inspiration that allowed him to work out how the force of gravity can be described mathematically. In his 'Principia' of 1687, Isaac Newton included his famous three laws of motion and also the law of 'universal gravitation'. They can be briefly stated as:

1. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by a net force.

2. Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.

3. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

4. The force of gravity between two point masses is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Double one of the two masses and the force of gravity between them will also double. Double the distance between the masses and the force of gravity will be four times weaker.

It is now known that Newton's universal gravitation does not fully describe the effects of gravity when the gravitational field is very strong, or when objects move at very high speed in the field. This is where Einstein's general theory of relativity rules.

Einstein's Gravity (1916)

Einstein reportedly got the inspiration for his imaginative leap in the understanding of gravity by contemplating a man falling off a building. Such a falling man would not experience any force while he is falling, at least not before hitting the ground and suffering severe forces.

In his monumental 1916 work 'The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity', Albert Einstein unified his own special theory of relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation with his crucial insight - the effects of gravity may not be a force, but can be described by the curvature of space and time.

It is reasonably easy to accept that space can be curved – after all, we all know that a disk has a curved edge, but how can time be 'curved'? The secret lurks in the way that space and time is combined into space-time. Normally, a space-time diagram is drawn with a straight horizontal spatial axis and a straight vertical time axis. Just bend the two straight axes a little and we have curved space-time.

It's not quite that simple, but the effects of gravity can be viewed as no more than an arrow of spatial movement and an arrow of time movement that are both slightly bent. The bending is accomplished by the energy locked up in every massive object. It has been stated that 'mass tells space-time how to curve and curved space-time tells mass how to move'.

Summary

Have we got an answer to the question 'what is gravity?' Not quite. At the most fundamental level, no one really knows. We can say that it is an effect that keeps planets and moons in their orbits. We can say that it is a force that makes one mass attract another mass or we can say that it is what controls the movement of matter through curved space and time. Lately, we can also say that it is (perhaps) a manifestation of 'quantum gravity' - but that's another story…

Teaching Children to Overcome Math Problems

Although it is indeed difficult to overcome a math problem, there are many remedies that can be used to help students succeed. Before getting to any specific math instruction, however, you should work at overcoming any math anxiety the student may have. This is a real problem. The students who are poor at math have a real fear of it. Reading can cause anxiety in children, but math anxiety seems to take over their entire world, and when doing math, fear is their major emotion. It is first important to work on this fear by taking the pressure away. So what if you fail a test? The world won’t end. Look, you’re doing great on multiplication, etc. Praise, praise, praise when the student does something right. Patience is important as well. After working on the anxiety aspect, move on to specific skills that help the student succeed.

First, find out the student’s ability level, regardless of grade level. Start instruction and practice at that level. Even if the student is in the 6th grade and is performing math at a 2nd grade level, it is vitally important to start at the 2nd grade level. Math is sequential, and one building block must be in place before the next one is put down. Next, work on visual processing skills and eye/hand coordination. This helps the student place and align problems on the paper properly so that the correct answer can be attained. One of the biggest problems found in students is the inability to line up math problems. It is as though the red margin line on the left doesn’t even exist to them! Keeping columns lined up neatly for proper computation is another problem, and both can be remedied easily enough. Spatial and perceptual skills training helps in this area.

You should start a math tutoring session with activity using brain integration activities with numbers. If the student is weak in visual memory (and usually these kids are), spend time on visual memory and recall activities. These activities help the brain cross over to the left hemisphere, since math is a left hemisphere activity.

Finally, when doing actual math instruction, it is recommended that you do the following activities to ensure for math success:

1. Use blank paper with no lines – this eliminates distractions on the student’s part. Lines and other markings on paper will take the student’s eyes to places other than math, and this is not good.

2. Model the process step by step very slowly in color on the blank paper. Show the student what to do using a different color for every step of the process. When you change steps, you change color. This helps the student “switch gears” while doing the multi-step processes.

3. After showing the student what to do, have the student practice the math problem. Once again, the student will be using color to do the steps, using a different color for each step.

4. Have the student practice several times in color on the blank paper. If the student makes a mistake, simply redirect him and have him keep practicing. Praise any correct steps. You may need to show the student the correct step several times. Be sure you have the student practice immediately after the steps are modeled.

5. Have the student verbalize the steps as he writes them. Telling you the process will help him remember it.

6. Give the student immediate feedback. Don’t wait for the next day to tell him what he did wrong or right.

7. Only work on one small skill at a time. You don’t want to show the student how to do all fractions in one day. Start with adding and subtracting fractions with a like denominator.

Other tools to help students succeed in math are:

1. The card game Blink or the card game Speed. Both help the student process more than one thing at a time.

2. Writing and practicing math facts in some kind of a gooey substance or a substance with texture, such as sand.

3. Visual memory games. The student is shown a series of shapes, numbers, or figures for a few seconds. They are then taken away and the student copies them on paper from memory.

Math is difficult for a student who is right brain dominant. You can help these students access the left hemisphere of the brain so that math success can be met.