Winter 2013-2014 Cooking Classes

Next month, I'm teaching one of my favorite cooking classes: The Ultimate Cocktail Party. Each December, I plan a fabulous spread designed to inspired your own holidays parties. This year we're making cranberry-champagne sangria, gingersnap-apple vodka martinis, roasted five-spice cashews, baked cheddar coins with pecan-pepper jelly, caramelized onion bread topped with olives and anchovies, smoked shrimp with cilantro-lime yogurt dipping sauce, & homemade marshmallow s'more skewers.

I'm also teaching two new Girls' Night Out demonstration classes: Italian food on January 11 (featuring ricotta-spinach gnudi in parmesan broth & sautéed garlic shrimp with saffron orzo) and Asian food on February 1. This new menu includes Thai-spiced hot crab dip, smoked salmon and edamame panzanella salad, red curry noodles with shrimp and scallops, & cardamom-caramel apple cake.

As usual, I'm teaching several Date Night for Couples classes: A chili cook-off with three different recipes on January 19, sushi on January 25, and a menu featuring all foods made with rum on March 23 (coconut bisque with rum flambé, macadamia-crusted scallops with rum beurre blanc, jerk pork tenderloin with spiced rum glaze, Caribbean rice, & mini-hot buttered rum cheesecakes).

I'm also repeating one of my popular kids' pasta classes (for ages 7-12) on March 8.

Below is my schedule through March. To register, call Kitchen Conservatory at 314-862-2665 or register online.

Lane Cake

As you might have guessed from my previous post, I am single...again. Corey and I broke up a couple months ago. It's been really, really hard. Though we are keeping in touch and are friendly to each other (it wasn't necessarily a "bad" breakup), I miss him. A lot.

Sigh.

I'm getting better, though. I'm taking it day by day. Some days are, of course, better than others. I'm working through some of my own issues, keeping busy, and trying to figure out that thing called "happiness."

I haven't told many people about what's been going on...and while I don't usually tell my students much about my personal life, they can tell something is wrong. I've gotten many "hope you feel better" and "don't be sad" messages from my juniors and seniors. I even got a few "we love and need you" messages. One of my classes gave me a group hug; the other made me a huge Frankenstein card with sweet sentiments like "you're beautiful" and "boys are stupid." ;-)

Caramel Apple Cake

I've been dragging my feet on this post for weeks, writing and rewriting...wondering how much is too much to say, how little is too little.

So, I'll just say this:

Life isn't going as I'd planned or hoped. I am heartbroken. Again.

Doesn't that seem to be a reoccurring theme for me?

But, I'm dealing with it as best I can. Trying my hardest to heal myself and to be a better, stronger person. Keeping some hope--what little there might be--alive. For now.

Because I have to. I have to belief in love and happiness.

Besides, cake always makes it a little better, right?

A Culinary Diversion

I was looking through a couple of boxes of old cookbooks recently and found a copy of the 1976 British book The Alice in Wonderland Cookbook by John Fisher.


Fisher’s book features illustrations and excerpts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass.  Recipes are inspired by each of the Alice passages.  Dishes include “Drink Me” Soup & “Eat Me” Cakes, Ambidextrous Mushrooms, Not “Too Much Pepper” Soup, Mock Turtle Soup, Bread-and-Butter-Fly Pudding, and–of course–The Jam Tarts of the Queen of Hearts.

Jalapeño Pepper Jam

What do you do when a friend gives you a bunch of jalapeños, you don't have television, you're feeling kinda antsy, and you realize you have some fruit pectin in the pantry?

You make jam, ma'am!

I've made pepper jelly before, though I didn't blog about it. Several years ago I had to use up a bunch of Thai bird chiles, so I made a red & green pepper jam and a raspberry-pepper jelly. I chopped so many of those peppers that my hands were red and burning. I had heard that you can pour rubbing alcohol over skin that's come in contact with capsaicin (the hot stuff in peppers) to relieve the pain. I didn't have any rubbing alcohol, so I poured most of a bottle of vodka over my hands. It helped...though drinking the vodka may have helped even better.