Okay, I’m slowly easing into explaining the cooking that goes on here. We have a demo room where we take classes each afternoon and have guest speakers.
It’s here where Darina (and presumably the other teachers) also point out what went wrong earlier in the day in the kitchen — like how different these two brown soda breads were, even though they were from the same recipe.
In the smaller one on the left (see plate below), the cook put in baking powder instead of baking soda. All soda breads must have baking soda!
I love taking photos of the raw ingredients, like all the lovely, fresh ones going into a salad. It looks like this box includes zucchini flowers, nasturtium (bright orange edible flowers. You can also eat the leaves and seeds. They’re a little spicy.), and beetroot leaves.
Or, this bowl of fresh raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries and frozen currents for compote. (By the way, I now know an easy way to make jam!! I made loganberry (similar to raspberry) jam yesterday and filled up a few jars of it.)
What we see in demo one day, we make the next morning. Also, some of our extra duties are cooking duties, like making a big salad for the whole group (gigantic salad spinner!), or baking brown bread, or making homemade lemonade for lunch. We also have a ton of other cleaning duties. I have fed hens, swept floors, done the dishes, set the table. You might think this sounds oppressive, but I can honestly say everyone chipping in is probably why even though I’ve only been here a few days, it feels like I have lived here a month. It’s a great feeling.
I have had some requests to show off my chef’s whites. Well, this is about as close as you are going to get:
Off to eat some breakfast (my loganberry jam on some brown soda bread)…