AHS culinary students heading to state competition

ARLINGTON Arlington High Schools culinary career class students are cooking.
AHS sophomore Kathryn Pomeroy and seniors Ruslan Bizyayeva and Sam Howard placed first, second and fifth, respectively, at the SkillsUSA Puget Sound Regional Competition, hosted by the high school Feb. 2.
Last year, nobody hosted it, so each school turned in their own scores, said AHS culinary class teacher Dorothy Edwards. This year, we hosted Northshore and Bethel in the regional competition. Cassandra Ball won third place at last years state competition.
While the SkillsUSA competition for Washington state will take place later in the spring, the AHS culinary class students have little time to rest on their laurels, since theyre also gearing up for the 2008 Washington Restaurant Association Education Foundation ProStart Invitational Culinary Competition March 6-8 in Spokane.
Howard, Pomeroy and Bizyayeva will be joined by fellow AHS culinary class students Tyler Haskins and alternate Chris Gustafson on the culinary team, while Haskins and Pomeroy will also serve on the restaurant management team, alongside classmates Charlie Ewell, Lindsey Kehoe and Danae Rutt.
The competition will challenge the culinary team to design not only an appetizer, entree and dessert, but also a menu, costs and recipes for their food. They will be given 60 minutes to prepare a timed meal, and 30 minutes to demonstrate their knife skills. As for the restaurant management team, they will be presented with a real-life example of a problem in a restaurant setting, which a panel of food service professionals will ask them to solve in 20 minutes and present their solution in 10 minutes. A printed exam will follow, and the top eight teams out of the 25 schools in attendance will move on to a Jeopardy! style final round.
The AHS culinary class students traveled to Charlotte, N.C., to represent the state of Washington in the National ProStart Student Invitational April 20-22, 2007, where they ranked 19th nationwide.
Wed never been to the nationals before, Edwards said. These kids are dedicated, goal-directed and ready to learn. This is an all-volunteer effort on their part, so they have to be willing to put in the hours. They study together, they work together, an they do it on their own time.

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