Happy 2008!
2007 was quite a year for Generous Servings. We opened, we closed, we opened again, we closed again. Our resolution for 2008 is to stay open for four consecutive weeks. Jill and I got back from our sister's wedding in Hawaii on Friday and defied jetlag to get everything ready for our Grand Opening of 2008, which occurred on Saturday.
The cafe was busy, which was great, plus I taught the first day of the two-day Winter Vacation Culinary Camp for Teens. I have six kids in the camp, and it's a young group: the oldest is 14. This camp has the usual mix of personalities, although none of the kids is particularly shy. Lots of people in the cafe watched part of the camp through the window between the kitchen and cafe, plus pedestrians on the street stopped to look through the storefront windows, and one of the kids asked me whether it bothered me to have people watching me all the time. I said that I usually didn't pay attention to the audience, but the kids decided that the best thing to do would be to wave at everyone who stared at them. Over the next few hours this turned into vigorous waving and jumping around, and then into doing the disco "YMCA" letters and bursting into song every time someone walked by. It's an interesting form of advertisement, but better than one of their other ideas, which was to pretend they were tied to the table and motion for help to see if anyone would come rescue them.
When not harassing passersby, we made Asian Crispy Chicken Salad for lunch, and then walked to Sunflower Market for a tour of the meat and produce departments. The guy stocking produce was charmed by my young charges and kept coming over to give us samples of stuff. The cashier asked if they were all my children.
When we got back, we made salsa and guacamole for a snack, and then worked on our dinner of steak fajitas with homemade tortillas and arroz verde. We made brownies for dessert, and we started the most popular recipe: homemade marshmallows. Marshmallows are really fun to make because the mixture goes through several dramatic transformations, and the kids were big fans of eating the marshmallow before it hardened (when it's basically marshmallow fluff).
After the first day of camp, I would trust the kids more than 95% of adults I know to do a good job of mincing garlic, taking brownies out of the oven at the right time, or measuring flour accurately. They also learned tons of cooking trivia: how to tell if a sugar syrup is at the hard ball stage, why some people think cilantro tastes like soap, what the numbers that designate sizes of shrimp mean. And they're getting good at knife skills: by tomorrow evening I'd bet money that any of the kids would be better at chopping than his or her parents. That's one of the most satisfying things for me about these camps: the kids really learn to cook.
The cafe was busy, which was great, plus I taught the first day of the two-day Winter Vacation Culinary Camp for Teens. I have six kids in the camp, and it's a young group: the oldest is 14. This camp has the usual mix of personalities, although none of the kids is particularly shy. Lots of people in the cafe watched part of the camp through the window between the kitchen and cafe, plus pedestrians on the street stopped to look through the storefront windows, and one of the kids asked me whether it bothered me to have people watching me all the time. I said that I usually didn't pay attention to the audience, but the kids decided that the best thing to do would be to wave at everyone who stared at them. Over the next few hours this turned into vigorous waving and jumping around, and then into doing the disco "YMCA" letters and bursting into song every time someone walked by. It's an interesting form of advertisement, but better than one of their other ideas, which was to pretend they were tied to the table and motion for help to see if anyone would come rescue them.
When not harassing passersby, we made Asian Crispy Chicken Salad for lunch, and then walked to Sunflower Market for a tour of the meat and produce departments. The guy stocking produce was charmed by my young charges and kept coming over to give us samples of stuff. The cashier asked if they were all my children.
When we got back, we made salsa and guacamole for a snack, and then worked on our dinner of steak fajitas with homemade tortillas and arroz verde. We made brownies for dessert, and we started the most popular recipe: homemade marshmallows. Marshmallows are really fun to make because the mixture goes through several dramatic transformations, and the kids were big fans of eating the marshmallow before it hardened (when it's basically marshmallow fluff).
After the first day of camp, I would trust the kids more than 95% of adults I know to do a good job of mincing garlic, taking brownies out of the oven at the right time, or measuring flour accurately. They also learned tons of cooking trivia: how to tell if a sugar syrup is at the hard ball stage, why some people think cilantro tastes like soap, what the numbers that designate sizes of shrimp mean. And they're getting good at knife skills: by tomorrow evening I'd bet money that any of the kids would be better at chopping than his or her parents. That's one of the most satisfying things for me about these camps: the kids really learn to cook.
posted by The Cooking Doctor at
1:50 AM
1 Comments:
Sounds wonderful! I'm glad you are at least busy and enjoying yourselves. The kids sounds as though they are having fun.
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