10 May 2007

small update

You don't know how glad I am to have turned in all my work.

Last night was great -- no worries, and we had my friend Hallie over for dinner. It was lovely. She's moving away soon, maybe, and we decided that she needed to know how to cook something for herself. So we invited her for a cooking lesson, and it was super fun! Steve taught her how to dice onions and shallots, trim green beans, saute chicken, make a pan sauce, cook rice pilaf. I mostly stood around and drank wine and ate some very tasty cheese.

It was all delicious! Sauteed chicken with a pan sauce served over rice pilaf so that the rice soaked up all the tasty juices, with blanched and sauteed green beans tossed with carmelized shallots.

After dinner we made Nutella Cupcakes (recipe), which were absolutely fantastic. Hallie got regalled with stories of my family, which is always entertaining, and she also wanted to see the wedding photographs. And then we noticed that 4 hours had flown by and it was nearly midnight. Ooops!

We're going to do another lesson next week (Stirfry!). And I've decided that cooking lessons for real life might be a good gift to any church fundraiser, silent auction type of thing. And that when we're no longer renting, we're going to have a kitchen where it's easier to cook in tandem. And there will be a bar counter for people to hang out an socialize while others are cooking.