On Sunday morning, Mom came to babysit, and I headed to school. It was the big day!
Class, then meeting, then winetasting class with midterm presentations. Whew!
Class was fun. The topic: pizza and designer pasta.
Pizzas… (one trick: don’t cook your sauce. It will cook on the crust raw, cook it ahead and it will burn). My creation: shrimp, tomato sauce, goat cheese and basil. It was really good. Although the basil looked horrible after being in the hot oven. Always add it after cooking.
Even the 17 year-old kid next to me, warned me. But I spent ten minutes arranging it decoratively anyway. Just as he said, it turned brown and shriveled up. But I garnished it with so much chiffonade of fresh basil after the fact, that my mistake was almost hidden. It tasted so good to me. I was happy.
Chef didn’t like it.
What else is new?
Cameron was also taking this class today. I met him at the Wednesday class. He’s definitely gay, and so cute. He totally looks familiar. After we went through every possible connection and almost connection that we have, we figured out that we’re just one degree of separation from each other. I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll figur out where we know each other from eventually. In the meantime, he’s really fun. He and Lu, another gal in the class were cracking me up! It was a fun class. California pizza or not.
After six other dishes and a bunch of clean up, I headed home to prep my hors d’oeuvres.
I only had twenty minutes to make it back before the meeting.
I drove home like a bat out of hell, ran in the house and darted for the kitchen. I ripped the phyllo from the fridge. I attempted to, with my pizza cutter, make perfect squares dredged in melted butter to tuck into my mini muffin pan, but the girls were climbing all over me. They thought I was home for the day. They couldn’t figure out why I was rushed, annoyed, freaking out and trying to get back out the door. The squares quickly turned into decahedrons.
They are “rustic”, I told myself.
I prepped them all, and draped a damp towel over them. I loaded the sheet pan of dates into the car. I grabbed my full mini-muffin tin of rustic mushroom cups, a wedge of parm and my peeler. I ran to the garden and ripped the thyme from the ground, roots intact. I was ready to go.
I kissed the girls goodbye. They couldn’t figure out what was happening, and I felt really bad about leaving them again. And in a tremendous moment of great self-doubt, I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed the tiny 1/2 oz. bottle of white truffle oil.
More later…