Fruit and Veg Carving-first class

I was so happy to finally make it back to classes at Grossmont College. I thought I'd share some of my experiences.

This is from the first carving class.   I figured that this would be useful for general dexterity, and may give me cake decorating ideas too.  It was a lot of fun, although it can be very frustrating, as Chef Joe is very skilled and makes the whole thing look super easy! 
Here he is cutting a chrysanthemum out of a turnip.

We were then taught a simple technique of cutting small flowers out of carrots.  I found this infuriating, hopefully I'll get the hang of it with some practice.  I can tell we'll be eating a lot of carrots this week!

 Chef then showed us a technique with a potato where you carve a straight line, then a diagonal to meet it, resulting in a striped pattern.  This looks to be one of the techniques which will be very important.

 Thankfully I found this technique a little easier than the carrot one, here's my potato!

 Chef then showed off a bit with some more ornate carving of a melon.

 The flowers were all combined together to form a bouquet.

 Here is the chef's handiwork

And our team's work.  I thought it came out very nicely, and it was lucky for me that this was a team project, so my pathetic looking carrots were hidden amongst some much prettier ones!