July 2010
We hope you had a fun time on the 4th, and celebrated the United States’ birthday with strawberries, white corn, and blueberries along with the fireworks and parades! In these stressful times, we need to be thankful for living in this incredible area of garden and orchard bounty, celebrate what is rich in our lives, and remember the people who have lost theirs, over the last 234 years, to insure that we can live free in this land of opportunity.
What’s Hot This Summer—Cook! Programs
We’re cooking on all burners this summer! Camp is going wonderfully, with full sessions and happy kids—our great staff augmented by having an old friend, chef Samantha Smith, join Tracy for the duration of camp. Samantha lives in Hawaii, but some of you may remember her from long-ago events, and from her erstwhile food truck at the Berkeley farmer’s markets, a truck where I occasionally pitched in to help create farmers-market driven, delicious food. You might say Samantha was ahead of her time, judging from the plethora of carts plying their trade in the neighborhoods these days!
Our fantastic blogger and photographer, Kevin Imah, has been kept busy documenting each group of campers on their journey through the summer, and you can see his work by going to www.cookprograms.com. I think you’ll be impressed!
There’s still room in a few of the camps—this next one, that starts Wednesday and lasts only three days, among them. Sensational Sense Lab brings together food, art and the senses for a three-day exploration session, with our great staff and guest artist Jorge Bachmann in attendance. Check out the description—there’s room for a few more happy campers in this session, something that can’t be said about the next, our Baking I camp is as overstuffed as can be, and we’ve added another teacher to the mix to accommodate the many kids. After that, Baking II is just about full, and our special sauce class might have a spot or two as well. Let your kids wrap up the summer by learning how to preserve its bounty in Making It Last, our final camp of the year.
What Else is Hot This Summer (answer: a lot of great classes and events!)
Selome is back! Ethiopian Vegetarian Cooking classes on Saturday the 17th and Sunday the 25th, both at 11 AM. I don’t have menus for these classes yet, but follow the link to register, and learn something great about this exotic and spicy cuisine! Selome’s family runs Cafe Colucci, one of the best Ethiopian restaurants in town!
Knife sharpening with our friend Eric E. Weiss returns for its quarterly class on the 19th, a class that will keep you from being frustrated by dull knives ever again. You get a stone, oil, and expert instruction—and even a cuppa tea.
Then, I am teaching a Catering Prep class the 21st, It’s a short, sweet and delicious one—where you will, for the cost of the food you consume and little more, get to learn some great catering techniques, and produce the food for the next night’s event, the annual Chamber of Commerce Mixer that Paulding & Company always hosts. The menu’s still a mystery (to me, too) but it will all be delicious, seasonal and not too hard! I’ll take the first dozen people who sign up, and together we’ll make hors d’oeuvres for ourselves and for the guests the next evening.
Thursday the 22nd, you’re also invited to the Chamber Mixer. Good food, good networking opportunity, and very inexpensive. Register at the Emeryville Chamber website. The event is open to members and non-members too!
Rosetta Costantino returns July 24th, with a new Calabrian cooking class. No doubt with some goodies from her always wonderful garden (do check out her garden blog for inspiration on your own back yard projects!).
Finally, we host Business Sunrise Networking Breakfast, again for the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday the 27th. Starting at 7:30 AM and over by 9, this is a high-powered networking opportunity, always with an informative speaker. It’s our final month hosting this event, we’ve segued through some of our breakfast favorites—the first month, we made omelets to order, and in June, served homemade cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce. This month it’s eggs Benedict (and Florentine). Want to know how to make poached eggs for 25 people? Come see! And, we’ll use our own homemade English muffins!
In the Market
It’s all here! Eggplants, tomatoes, the first peppers, corn, green beans, summer greens, peaches, apricots (don’t miss the fleeting season!) plums, figs, nectarines and cherries. Trying to restrain ourselves is the toughest thing about going to the farmers market these days, besides, of course, parking. Reminder: beware at Grand Lake, the $110 ticket is a rude awakening if you think you can still park at one of the ‘spots’ that aren’t officially striped for that purpose!
Facilities Update
Running a business is fun. You get to pay the rent, property tax, insurance (and a whole lot more on that long list of items) and then pay for repairs and upgrades. These last two are really important. The equipment has to work right, and nothing these days is built to do that without regular attention. Our most recent fix was (at long last) putting in an efficient, on-demand hot water system, something we’ve proudly owned for a whole 2 weeks now. Having hot water at the end of the evening is a luxury we once could barely imagine. And I’m betting that the electric bill will be a whole lot less, as well (hope so, since we have to make up for the cost of installation!)—electric hot water heaters being energy hogs! Next comes a re-working of the walk-in refrigerator and freezer, and fixing the dishwasher-we’ve finally found a facilities guy who knows his stuff, and was able to analyze all the problems we’ve continually faced with our freezer, which is always on the brink of disaster (it’s broken down a bunch of times!). We’ve also acquired, or will shortly do so, a small storage space in our building—so that our tables and chairs can be safely stowed and easily accessed from now on.
Your Event, Our Kitchen
Ok, you don’t feel like attending the classes on the schedule … timing’s wrong, subject matter not quite what you wanted—so how about a class of your own? Gather a bunch of friends, and we’ll do the rest! Set the menu your group wants to make, call it a party, bring something good to drink (or stop in next door at the winery)! Celebrate a special occasion, or just create your own! Want a father-daughter cooking class? Why not? How about a special gift for your college bound kids? Gather a group of them! All we need is 12 or more people, and we’ll start to plan. Contact me and we’ll set your date!
Did you know we offer catered business meetings at our kitchen? We’ll make sure the group is well fed and has plenty of fresh coffee & our special iced tea, then leave you to your private meeting. Contact me to find out the details!
Recipe of the Month
Simple summer food, made all that more easy by the great ingredients at hand! The archives are full of great recipes for summer, like Hungarian Stuffed Peppers, Cookie Crusted Blueberry tart, Orzo and Summer Vegetable salad, Swordfish in Fig Leaves and Cherry and Almond Clafoutis, to name a few. This month, I think I’ll share the recipe for a very refreshing soup, one I used to make all the time, then kind of forgot about, only to rediscover it while looking for something else. It’s served chilled, and makes a great starter, especially on a hot day—something I figure we’ll have a few of, eventually.
See the recipe »
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