Potions Classes

[Zarleycat at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 27232

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Eric Oppen" <oppen at c...> wrote:
> It occurs to me that if I were in Hogwarts, I might actually do 
fairly well
> in Potions.  From what we see, Potions looks a lot like a magical 
version of
> cooking, and I'm a fair-to-middling cook (that is, if I have a 
recipe to
> work from) and, if I say so, a crackerjack home-brewer.
> 
> I would like to know how much carry-over there is between Potions 
and
> cooking.  

> doubt I'd be interested in snacking in Potions class...


What?  You don't think you'd like chewing on boomslang or 
shrivelfigs??  I can't imagine why not...

 
> It wouldn't particularly surprise me to find out, in a future book, 
that
> Professor Snape, in his non-teaching moments, is a Cordon Bleu-
level chef in
> his own right, and one of his jobs (other than terrorizing 
Gryffindors and
> piling loads of unearned points onto Slytherins) is to supervise the
> house-elves so that the food is up to Hogwarts standards.  Wouldn't 
it be
> funny if Hermione, on one of her expeditions into the kitchens to 
rouse the
> house-elves to revolution, found herself hiding in a corner while 
Professor
> Snape told the house-elves just _what_ standards he expected to see 
from
> them?


Yes, I can see Snape going off on some poor house elf because s/he 
isn't chopping the parsley fine enough for Snape's exacting 
standards.  Or Hermione will come back to the dorms with a revelation 
that Snape's idea of a great midnight snack is hot cocoa and a 
meatloaf sandwich.

I've had a similar thought about how I'd do in Potions, and my 
conclusion was that I'd probably mess up because I'm not the most 
exact, precise person in the world.  Which is how I cook - I live by 
fairly broad definitions of terms - chopped, minced and finely diced 
may all look pretty much the same, depending on how involved I want 
to be.  This would not be good in Potions.  Plus, I do have that 
devil-may-care attitude of "Let's throw in 5 extra cloves of garlic, 
and maybe some additional hot sauce and see what happens..."  
Guaranteed to send Snape screaming into the night, or at least lose 
my house way too many points....

Marianne, more casual Italian than Cordon Bleu