Mussels, Oysters, Osso Buco, Calamari, and Filleting a Flat Fish

We finally ate the Osso Buco that we've been working on all week. I'm not sure it was worth that much time, but it was good. Today the whole class worked together, and I took the lead on the mussels. We cleaned them, steamed them in wine, lemon juice, garlic, and onion, and ate a few of them. Then we cooled the rest down to save for Monday. I have no idea what we're doing with them on Monday, but I do love mussels, so I bet it'll be delicious!

I didn't eat an oyster because I know I don't like them, but I shucked one, and I filleted a flat fish (flounder? I don't know what fish it was). We made a fish stock with the bones and saved the fillets. The calamari was delicious; we all had Norma and Jamie to thank for that.

We formed the leftover risotto into little balls stuffed with bacon and cheese, breaded them, and fried them. Those were the highlight of my day, I gotta say.

Oh, and to elaborate on what I said at the end of my last post:
Pico has left the building. He had something come up and had to move back to California. Everyone was really sad to hear the news; Pico was the most well-liked person by just about everybody in our class. I miss him so much already, and like I thought it would be, class is totally different without him. I need to pick a new favorite person in my class, I guess. We're hoping that he'll come back, but if he does he'll be at least one block behind us. I'd hate him having to take Foundations III again, plus our other two classes right now are incredibly dull.

I do have good news, so there won't be a depressing end to this post: I brought in my transcripts from University of Washington today, and it turns out that I do get out of taking English next block, which is a two hour class that starts at 8:45AM. This means that next block I will have one class, Baking and Pastry, and won't have to be at school until 10:55. This means I get to sleep until 10AM every day if I want to, and I'm sure I will. Looks like all those English classes in college weren't that useless, huh? I'll also save $1200 or something on tuition just for the class I don't have to take, plus I won't have to stress about papers and studying for a whole six weeks.