Thursday, May 12, 2011

Making Lemonade from Lemons, or a Smoker from a Lousy Freezer

We’ve been gearing up for a very busy spring, so many events happening! It’s exciting to be busy, don’t get me wrong though I’d like to be even busier, that’s a problem I could happily live with. We’re excited to be offering pastry and baking classes taught by the amazingly talented duo Andrea and Bruce Bowers. Susana and I can make tamales, breakdown a pig, lamb, cow, cook Brazilian, Thai, Indian, French, Spanish, American cuisines of all kind, create cheese from milk, and make a rose out of a radish, to name a few things. I can make a fine rose out of butter cream and some tasty gluten free treats, but we prefer to leave the baking and pastry to the real professionals.
Like everyone here in the Willamette Valley we are waiting anxiously for the sun to stop teasing us with these gorgeous days and then hiding again. There might be a mass migration out of the Valley if we didn’t have these high sun days that keep us going for a few more weeks until summer finally arrives. Our beautiful urban garden is going to be planted this weekend and our grilling classes are filling up quickly. We scored a smoker that makes me quiver with excitement just thinking about it. Did we mention the POS freezer we bought from a lousy vender? That freezer is going to get made into a cold smoker!!! HOORAY!!! What? That doesn’t excite you? You’re nuts, think of the bacon, the vegetables, the salmon the Complete AND UTTER YUMMINESSS!! Okay well I’ll be excited for the lot of you until you come down and see how I McGyvered a useless piece of equipment into a work of art. Don’t worry I’ll document the process.
We’ve had a lot of people ask us about our age limit for kids. Well right now it’s a 5yrs old. We do have those kid specific classes coming up in June where you can drop off your kids and let them learn amazing life skills but if at any time you have a young one that wants to take any of our classes you are welcome to sign them up. We’ve had kids of all ages take our Knife Techniques, Sushi and other classes and we welcome all. That should also give you some indication that people with any level of skill will be successful in our classes. Don’t worry if you can’t hold a knife, it’s our job to show you how.
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