Long Hot Summer is here!

Independence day is now passed and it's time to begin the long hot summer! All winter long, I will yearn for the hot weather, then after monsoons start, things get pretty miserable. For several years we have not used any cooling other than our swamp coolers. They really earn that name this time of year. At last we have finally cracked and gotten a high efficiency AC to replace the antique at the end of the house. Hopefully our tech will be here to hook it up soon. I almost never wish for the "winter". I really hate the cold. Much more time is spent daydreaming about beaches in Mexico, the Caribbean or Meditteranean. Thoughts of tropical beaches and Mardi and me on sailing boat, plying the gentle waves from happy hour to happy hour consumes too much of my time now. This island today, another island tomorrow........hey.....it's gotta be five o'clock somewhere.
It's been a couple of weeks now since we began teaching in the new kitchen. We love it and we are sure our students do too! There is so much more room to work and Mardi can demonstrate ideas and techniques much better. The first real stress test was to put nine little girls around the new work island to make pasta and raviolis. What fun! And, our big, new work area passed the test with flying colors.

I am really excited as we have had quite a bit of interest in our Mexico cooking vacations. I love our destination, Kino Bay, Sonora, so any chance we get to go there, I'll be the first in the car. It looks as if our next group trip will be in October. We are very close to filling that one already!

Our next project is to replace our bbq grill and expand the outdoor kitchen. I am really excited to start on that one. I am going to move part of the north wall about eight feet out to give us far more room in the grilling area. We then, will move the fridge to that portion and install a 3 bay stainless sink. It should give us more prep room for about two more students (and a lot more room to maneuver around the backsides in that skinny space!)

Chow!

The new kitchen......at last!!

We could hardly wait to get started! Our cooking classes are our lifeblood and a favorite part of our lives. Because of this, it was with some reluctance that we gave up classes for two weeks.
At the same time, the excitment had built to a near frenzy! Saturday morning two weeks ago now, I began the demolition. The plan was in place with any changes only to be dictated by unforeseen surprises I might uncover. It didn't take long! A "smile" that had developed over the years in a soffit, turned out to be my worst fear. A little bitty wall that had been removed years ago, turned out to be a bearing wall. The entire ceiling and roof was sagging! Damn, what to do about that? After some thought and consternation and consultation, the decision was made to shore up the roof/ceiling with some recycled and ancient beams that had been salvaged from a job downtown. What a perfect solution! We were able to reuse some great historic lumber, free, and support the construction while creating a beautiful appearance. I love it when a "plan" comes together. Day after day, there would be setbacks, changes and interruptions. To add to the stress, my real job would rear its ugly head and get in the way too. Such audacity! It seemed every day we would delete or defer some portion of the job, It became just like a real construction job. Finally we agreed to break the entire project into seperate pieces. This would allow us to complete the most important elements while holding back on some others. Saturday, June 14, we are ready to paint. It is just about one week late but I think we will be ready for Kid's Camp Monday morning. A couple of planned things are still on the back burner but all in all, it will be beautiful and a huge improvement. Our space is now almost doubled. The floor is tiled to replace that despicable carpet. (who put that stuff there anyway?!!) Next week's "spare" time will be devoted to building a new work island. Of course, that work will be sandwiched between five days of Cooking Camp and five evening classes. We can do it!! The next project will be to re-do the existing countertop and install our new gas cooktop, and then, the wall oven.

We are very excited to begin teaching in the new facility and show it off during our
Grand Re-Opening Party, Sunday June 22. We hope you are able to join us in the celebration. We will have refreshments, prizes and sample food from upcoming classes. Come and take advantage of discounts on future classes and register for our newsletter; BiteMe!
There is plenty of information on our website; http://www.cuisineclassique.com/

Monday the 16th will be a day for rejoicing! Our classes will start again and to add to the fun,
the first ones up will be the kids! Hope we see you in class!

Chow

Dinner at Dawn, again

Good morning...I think. It seems to have come awfully quickly! Our "Basics" class ended late last night and of course, we stayed up till midnight cleaning up and getting ready for this morning's adventure.
Periodically, Mardi is asked to appear on our local CBS Morning Show to prepare a dish live with Co-anchor, Jenny Anchondo. This morning we arrived at the studio at 5 to make a wonderful, healthy and easy Southwestern Capreze Salad with a Lime Vinaigrette. Everything went really well until Jenny, while shaking the bottle of vinaigrette, slung a trail of oil across the studio. She didn't realize that she needed to put her finger over the spout. Hopefully she didn't ruin her beautiful suit!
We left enough portions of the Capreze Salad and some fantastic Cake with Ganache for the crew to assure they will invite us back again.
(actually, Mardi is scheduled to appear again June 18)
Chow!

We must be having fun!

This has been such a busy week! We have had full classes
every day and some of them last pretty late. It's good we
love what we do. We taught a Team Building class for a
large local business on Monday afternoon. It was a lot of
fun and I think our guests had a great time and learned
something new about each other. Our Team Building classes
are very rewarding for us as we have the opportunity to
affect and help a fairly large group of people each time.
We research new team building methods all the time and see
how some of them might apply to our own team. Then, if we like
the results, we can offer the new "menu items" to our clients!
Cooking together is such a remarkable and effective way to
establish cooperation and get everyone pulling in the same
direction. And........we all get a terrific meal too!
We added a new member to our Tuesday night Basics of Cooking
Course this week so that fun group should be even funner.
Mardi and I have been working on our new schedule for the summer
and how exciting! The new classes we are offering (from Low Fat
and Fast, to the Thrill of the Grill! will be so fun and helpful
that we can hardly wait to start.

There's a lizard in my kitchen!

Ok, we live in the desert so I guess that exclamation point after the title is more hype than truth. The fact is, lizards in our kitchen are not that rare. Besides, I am talking about our outside kitchen so the lizard is more welcome than an intrusion. For the last few years, we have had what seems to be one lizard who likes to hang out near our atrium and one that stays around the outside kitchen.
Hmmmm. I hate to say it but, they all look alike. Only the distance assures us they are not the same reptile in each place.
These aren't your little old skinny lizards that run away at first sight. Ours are those big fat Mountain Bloomers (both with stumpy tails this year) that merely lumber out of the way when we go near them. The kitchen lizard is especially funny because he does seem to get startled once in a while and "peels out" on the concrete floor to run under the stove or out the open door. He looks like one of those cartoon critters, making his getaway while the bongos play as they take off!
While some of you may be very distressed at a lizard cavorting around your kitchen floor, somehow ours seem kind of comforting to us and a constant stream of entertainment.

Wow! Has it been this long?

Geez, we have been so busy with all our pursuits the past year that I just have not taken time to write anything. That is changing right now! There is so much to tell about food and cooking, and we are busting at the seams to spread the word.
We discovered a few days ago that our only real competition in town is closing their doors May 1st. That is too bad as we think some friendly rivalry is a good thing. Before the word came out that they were closing, we had made the decision to just about double our class offerings. We are so excited about the opportunities to share all our great cooking ideas and recipes that two or three classes each week just didn't cut it anymore.
I think our best idea lately was to add our Basics of Cooking course. We have been kicking the idea around for a long time but just hadn't been able to formulate exactly how we wanted to present the information. We are now running two sessions of this class each week and we are having a blast!
I have just finished a little remodel in our outside kitchen. I removed the large sink and its counter then installed a new cabinet a with a larger countertop to give us more prep area. So far, it is wonderful! Now I need to go to the next step which will be enlarging that part of the kitchen so I can install my commercial stainless sinks and move the fridge to that area. Then we will have a lot more room in the main part of the outdoor kitchen.
Last night we taught Four Pastas and Four Sauces. Our class had a lot of fun preparing these great recipes and the food was out of this world! I think it was the best we have cooked in a while. After cleanup, Mardi and i enjoyed a nice glass of Shiraz on the patio to wind down before bed.
Saturday we have a group of "bigs and littles" from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization. Mardi and I are really excited to host this class. The kids should be a real hoot.
Chow!

We arrived home Sunday night, tired but still excited from another wonderful trip to Kino Bay. Our guests all had a great time and some of them are ready to go again in October! We had a few days of uninvited wind and had to teach some of our classes indoors. Kind of a bummer but everyone took it like grownups. (even me) Our day trip to Hermosillo was so interesting and fun, again. I wasn't sure I could easily find every place we wanted to visit but there were no problems. Violetta conducted our tour of the Governor's Palace again. She is so cute and fun because her english is pretty good but far from perfect. A good time is always had trying to fill in the words she doesn't know. (or some we don't know, it goes both ways) Mardi and I always love going to the old traditional Central Market. It is in the heart of old Hermosillo and was built in 1912. Sort of a permanent farmer's market with everything from freshly slaughtered meat to coffee and small restaurants. All variety of Mexican meals are served, cabeza (head) soups and tacos, Menudo, fresh carrot juice, seafood and on and on. From there we always must go to Zazuetas, a kind of restaurant supply, florist supply, curandero supply, pinata store, dime store, ............you get the picture. It is great! After spending a couple of hours downtown, we drove to Mariachisimo, a mexican steakhouse(ish) featuring a 10 piece mariachi band. The food is to die for and the meat will melt in your mouth.
The last night in Kino, we all went to Zanahoria's restaurant, Mariscos Judy. He cooked shrimp and fish and Mardi and I took our big double burner, paella pans and all the "fixins" and cooked Paella in the beach restaurant. Wow! What a meal that was! The girls had fixed a table for us, all beautiful with a white tablecloth and a flower centerpiece. Some other gringos who eat there often, mistook our table to be for them and sat down. Our hosts never blinked and neither did I. When Mardi arrived with our guests we had another table set up just the same and only a little bit in the sun. No one knew any different and of course, we had a wonderful time.