Saturday Evening Post

What a weird day. I was so looking forward to my "knife skills" class at Whole Foods this morning. It was taught by my favorite chef, Jamie, and it never hurts to brush up on your skills. I picked out my station. My station had the 12-inch chef's knife. It was huge! I'm used to 8-inch knives, and my hand is sore after 2-1/2 hours of chopping and slicing. After practicing cuts on onions, potatoes, carrots, etc., we were paired off to prepare soup, salsa, and pico de gallo. I was paired with a 49-year-old man who told me he had never prepared a meal in his life. So we start preparing the sweet potato and kale soup. (He had never heard of kale or chipotle.) I took the sweet potatoes and he took the onions. After a couple of minutes, I heard him say "uh-oh." Well, his knuckles weren't quite curved under enough and he had sliced off a nice chunk of skin below the nail of his left middle finger. He was washed and bandaged and given a glove to put on. That glove filled with blood in no time. How appetizing is that? Needless to say, I went into high gear to prepare the entire menu myself.

So there were these 2 giant jalepenos to chop, which I did. When I went to wash my hands afterward, there was no soap at the sink. Yeh, I could have left the kitchen and gone to the public restroom, but I didn't. I just kept chopping. I AM SO STUPID! MY HANDS ARE ON FIRE, and from what I hear it will last for 3 days! I baked cookies this afternoon and having my hands near a hot oven is just unbearable. I am as stupid as my partner was.

Otherwise, the class was great. Jamie said when she was in culinary school, the instructors would come by and measure each piece of whatever they diced to make sure it was uniform and the proper size!

Thursday night I went to an open house at Whole Foods. They were previewing their holiday foods. I was pleased to find a platter labeled "Vegan Antipasto" which was a delicious variety of grilled veggies with a balsamic vinaigrette. There was also wonderful potato pancakes with an onion-apple topping. I also shopped. I found some items I had read about on other blogs and wanted to try; mainly, Sunshine Burgers and mochi.


I had to have a burger right away. I didn't have any tomatoes, so I used lots of ketchup!

And I sprinkled hemp seeds on my steamed broccoli.

Here's the almond crisp cookies I made this afternoon.


The recipe is interesting. I adapted it from the "12 Best Foods" cookbook. Remember when that list came out a couple of years ago? It's one of my favorite cookbooks. Aside from the section on salmon, it's very veg friendly. Anyway, the recipe has no butter and just 1-1/2 tablespoons of flour. I was supposed to get 24 large cookies, but I only got a dozen regular cookies. So I'm not sure if they are 55 calories or 110 calories each. But they are nice and crispy and will go with our pizza party tomorrow night.

I'm off to run my hands under cold water again.