Tips on How to Become a Chef

The common image that we have on chefs is brought about by popular media. In the movies or in television, we see chefs as people who wear tall white hats, white clothes, and talk in a strange accent. However, you should realize that all people have the potential to become chefs. If you want to know how to become a chef, here are a few tips:

1) Patience The key to cooking is patience. Many people find out that if you follow a recipe without hurrying anything along, you will end up with something delicious or at least, edible. People who want to learn how to become a chef need to learn patience as this will help them cope with the wait that comes with great food preparation.

Patience is not only useful in cooking. It is also very useful in learning how to become a chef. Many people who are eager to become world-class chefs tend to try and skip ahead to the more complicated lessons without first mastering the basics. Patience is essential since many of the advanced cooking techniques require people to master the most basic steps first.

2) Study Of course, an important step in learning how to become a chef is learning how to cook. You need to be taught in order to become a chef. Some people think that you need to go to a culinary school in order to do this. However, you should realize that going to a culinary school will merely enable you to become a certified chef. That is, a culinary school will allow you to have a piece of paper which says that you are a chef. However, the heart and soul of being a chef still lies within your cooking. Because of different media like the internet and television, a person today can learn how to become a chef without the need for certification. You have at your fingertips different networks which tell you how to prepare dishes from different parts of the world.

3) Practice Of course, knowing how to become a chef entails practical as well as theoretical knowledge. You need to practice what you learn in order to truly master it. Do not expect to become a chef after watching one episode of Iron Chef. You need to learn from experience. The key to becoming a chef is becoming a chef. In order to learn how to cook, you must cook. It doesn’t do you much good to read cookbooks and then declare that you know how to cook. You might be able to recite the entire procedure of cooking Jambalaya but the question is: would you be able to do it?

4) Honest judgment In order to learn whether you can cook a dish properly, you need to have it tasted. People like to try it out on their family or themselves. The danger in this is that they might not receive a clear image of how good (or bad) they cook. In order to truly learn how to cook, you need to make sure that you receive honest feedback, whether it is positive or negative. You need people to tell you what you did wrong in order for you to do it right the next time.

5) Passion The most important ingredient in learning how to become a chef is passion. You need to pour heart and soul into a dish in order to call it truly yours.

What you should and should not do when giving party

What you should and should not do when giving party favors

Party favors may not be a priority during these times of economic recession when planning parties but no one will doubt that it makes a party extra special and extra memorable. This is why even while there is no more budget, people still do what they can to at least give a small token that will make guests remember the event. This is after all the purpose of giving party favors, so that guests will have something that will remind them of how happy they have been on that day.

It is thus important that you make sure that you do it right when you give party favors. Although there are really hard and fast rules in giving these gifts, there are things that you should remember and take into consideration. Below are some of the dos and donts of giving party favors.

1. Do include your name, the date and the occasion.

It is important that you put a piece of paper that will have your name, the date and the occasion you are celebrating. This will remind the guests where the gift came from even years after receiving them. Although some people even write the information on the item itself, this is discouraged as this renders the item virtually useless. Who in their right minds will use items that have names on them?

2. Do put them in a decent bag

Although you can hand the party favors in itself, it will also be good to invest in a small bag. This is especially true if the item is fragile and your guests just came from a dinner party, which means that they have only brought a small clutch bag. It will be a considerate thing to do to at least not expect your guests to lug around the gift all over the place.

3. Dont buy something expensive, just something beautiful and meaningful

You dont have to buy something costly. What is important in a party favor gift is that it is beautiful enough to inspire happiness in your guests when they look at them and it is meaningful enough to symbolize the occasion that you are celebrating. This is why it is important that you plan your purchase well and that you choose the item that will best symbolize you as a person and the occasion that you are celebrating.

4. Do buy something they can use

Think about your guests also. When choosing party favors, make sure that it is something that they will not only admire from a display case (unless it is a Swarovski or something) but something that they can use in their daily lives. Your guests will not only remember the occasion where they got it and the person that gave them, they will thank you for it.

Party favors may not be a vital part of a party like the foods and the drinks but it is nevertheless something that can add a little vibe and life in your party.

What to consider when giving party favors

Party favors are the least of peoples priorities when they are organizing a party these days. After all, one usually will only have a budget for the food and the entertainment and nothing left for other expenses. But those who do find a small piece of the pie chart and dedicate it to party favors muck up the whole process of giving party favors that it would have been better if they didnt give any. For me, it is better to give nothing than to give the wrong thing.

One of the most basic things that you should remember when choosing and buying a party favor kit is the purpose of giving it. It is a souvenir that will hopefully make the person remember your party and your event. Remember this when thinking of party favor ideas. Most people think that it is enough to just give a small token of a useless thing just as long as it has their names, the date and indicates what the occasion is. They dont realize that for their guests to actually remember them through the party favor that they gave, it should be something that they can use, preferably every day. The party favor should not only be beautiful, it should also be functional.

Another mistake that people do when giving party favors is to just give it with no information on it about the party or the celebration or to give it with the information engraved on it. The latter is actually done often and has actually been a practice in most cultures. Doing both is wrong because not giving any information about you or what your party is about defeats the purpose of giving the swag bag in the first place and giving too much information and actually putting them on the souvenir item is in bad taste.

What you should do is to put information on a separate small piece of paper and attach them on the gift. That way, they will have a reminder of where they got it, who gave it to them and what the event was. The gift itself should not have any trace of identification whatsoever. If they want to display the gift with the tag and keep it along with the rest of their souvenirs, they can choose to. The key here is the freedom to choose what they can do with the gift. If your guests want to use their gifts without having to explain every time about the inscriptions on it, it is their decision.

It is also much better to give one big gift than to fill the swag bag with small useless items that seem cheap and tawdry. This is not only very time-consuming to prepare but also costly when you really add up the total. Why not buy something that will cost around the same amount when you combined your small gifts? Giving one big gift will also make your party favor more expensive than it really is.