Travel-Sized Mise en Place
For those of you who don’t know. My name is Meredith, and
Justin and I are going on an adventure to Europe in July. We will be gone for 6
months, visiting 7 counrties. Backpacking most of the way, working at vineyards
and farms and learning from the locals. Being a part of their lives through a
program called Workaway. We volunteer to work on their farm or in their organic
garden and in return we get free room and board. We get the amazing opportunity
to live in their lives and eat their food and learn from their culture and
cooking. I'm so excited I am counting down the days. We still get to be tourist
on the weekends and find cool restaurants along the way. So keep reading in the
months to come as we get prepared for our trip and in July you can follow us
along the way.
So why did we pick this name? Mise en Place is a French
phrase that means to gather and arrange the ingredients and tools needed for
cooking, literally “put in place”. I learned it first in culinary school it’s a
way of concentrating your mind and managing the work load of a fast paced
kitchen. But I’ve learned that you can apply it even when you’re not in the
kitchen. You mise en place your life. You know everything that you need every
step of the day. We cooks can easily do six hours of prep for a three hour
dinner shift. Mise en Place forces cooks to account for every minute of their
time. Every component of a single entrée dish is in one corner in one station
so the cook’s hand only moves a few inches. That way you are always ready to
go. It also means a way of working mise en place: working clean. I always have
clean knives, clean cutting board and clear space to work that gives me a clear
mind. Same with my kitchen at home, and many cooks will agree with me we often
bring our work habits home. I have personally been cooking for a little over 6
years. I’ve cooked at Disney and currently cook at Universal as a banquet cook. I
met by boyfriend Justin when we worked together at Universal, I trained him on
his second day. And we became close friends and later started dating. He now
works at Disney as a cook one in a restaurant called Captain’s Grill. I’ve done
3 years of culinary competition and had the opportunity of meeting so many
great chefs and a hand full of master chefs. Some of the advice they gave me on
stepping up in my career was to get experience and then take ea piece of what I learn
along the way and then make it into my own. That’s what I plan to do on this
trip. We both are passionate about food and cooking and learning. I have been
wanting to travel and taste the amazing food of these countries since I was 14
and I discovered my comfort zone in a kitchen. We have mise en placed this trip
and organized it to fit our interests and our passion for food. Hopefully it
will further our careers in ways we can’t even see right now.
This year's competition. . .
Join us as we browse through a food market in Spain and site
see in Barcelona. Then stick around to learn about French cooking and where to
eat in Paris. Then follow us to Ireland, where my ancestors are from, and then we
will hop over to Scotland and ride a train to London. Then we stop in
Switzerland to see a Swiss chocolate factory and find out where they make Gruyere cheese. And then we go snowboarding in the Alps. Last but not least we will spend a
lot of time in Italy and learn about wine and pasta!
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