Recommended Culinary Books:

1. On Cooking by Labensky and Hause (Prentice Hall).

2. Professional Cooking by Wayne Gisslen (John Wiley).

3. The New Professional Chef, The Culinary Institute of America (Von Nostrand-Rheinhold).

Basic outline of courses taught in culinary arts courses:

* Culinary arts in modern food service.

* Culinary terms.

* Utensils, modern kitchen equipment, knives, and techniques of their usage.

* Basic cooking principles (dry and moist cooking and alternative methods).

* Five basic ("leading") sauces, secondary sauces ("small"), manufacture of stocks, soups.

* Seasoning and chefs flavoring.

* Classes in meat, poultry and seafood butchering and preparation.

* Ethnic cuisine, essential baking, starch and potato cookery, and vegetable cooking.

* Salads and "garde manger," breakfast service, sandwich making.

* Recipes and menu design.

The steady rise in temporary employment and contractual assignments is a definite indicator, not only of state of our economy, but of things to come. Employers are realizing many benefits of hiring temporary and contract employees. They don’t have to go through all screening and interviewing that is typical for permanent employees; they don’t have to pay benefits; they can try out a person without any obligation to hire if it isn’t working out; and they can convert a temporary or contractual employee to permanent status once person has proven themselves.

At this time, there is a coupling of two factors: employers are seeking more people for temporary and contract jobs that used to be strictly for permanent employees, and job seekers are taking longer to find permanent employment. It would appear that temporary employment and contractual assignments represent ideal solutions.

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