Ice Carving, Louisiana Style

The chef always gives us a talk on safety and tells us cutting the ice, when it is properly tempered, is like cutting butter. He lies. If that ice were butter, my biscuits would never be buttered. It is just too hard to cut.

We had high school visitors today and he is getting them started by carving out a basic shape. All they will have to do is chisel a little bit and smooth the ice and they will have a nice looking vase.

I don't know where the chef is from. I know he ain't from around here because he is the only person I have ever heard say (in real life) "yous guys", as in "some of yous guys may have brought your own chisel". I am not even sure how to spell "yous".



These guys are working on a Coronna bottle, I believe. It could have been Diet Coke, I suppose.



Even the students from Instrumentation got in on the act. I think their tool was my favorite, although at first, I thought they were going to be carving a crawfish. That would have been nice too.



These girls from Culinary Arts worked hard on a tool of their own. Here they are polishing it with a towel to smooth off the rough edges. They really enjoyed the process. So much so that I worried they would polish it all away.





Chef got in on the act too, helping the girls to get the shape just right. We Commerial Art students were busy getting it all on a tape for our video production class. I don't know if the chef just got carried away or started thinking too much about the ramifications of this particular sculpture, but by the time he finished helping the girls out,



the carving was only another innocuous phallic symbol, now known as the Eiffel Tower or a rocket ship, depending on who you were talking to. We all knew something was up when he carved that square out at the bottom of the base. Guess we will never know whether it was an ill-timed slip of the knife, or a planned cut designed to keep the chef out of hot water.



These poor folks have just learned the hard way that you have to be careful when you try to carve a hole out for a handle. If you hit an unstable spot in the ice, the whole top of your block of ice will crack and fall to the ground.

All in all, it was a great day for ice carving. The temperature was in the upper seventies. Unfortunately, that left some of us exposed to more cracks than we might have liked.



What else can I say? I mean, other than

THE END.