Cooking for the Holidays

On Friday, my office had our holiday party at a cooking class at Paulding & Co. I did a work cooking class with Terry Paulding back in 2008 and it was a lot of fun. This time was great, too!

We made a great meal of a Harvest Salad, home made pasta with shrimp & vegetables, and profiteroles. 

Terry Paulding (the Chef in the red jacket) is really awesome. Very down to earth and helpful. Top Chef Season 1 was filmed in her kitchen and she also taught the Pixar staff how to cook in order to animate the movie, Ratatouille.

 Making Profiteroles

 Making Pasta! Using the KitchenAid attachment was sooooooooooo easy. We made spaghetti in minutes.

 Here is our lovely Harvest salad with lettuce, persimmons, pomegrante seeds, and walnuts. I don't think I've ever had a persimmon before but it was very good. Tasted almost like a tomato.

Here is our homemade pasta with snap peas and shrimp. We made a light tomato, white wine sauce to go along with it. 

I haven't eaten shrimp in awhile because I think it tastes like chlorine sometimes. I asked Terry why this is and she said she only buys shrimp from the Gulf Coast, never from Asia. She said that for some reason shrimp from Asia tastes that way - it could be too much iodine in the shrimp or a preservant used on the shrimp before shipping. Ick! I will definitely only be buying Gulf shrimp from now on. 

We had a great lunch! It was a nice alternative from a regular happy hour or going out to lunch. 

Later in the day, I took Evie to Vet to get a simple Bortadella shot that she was due for. That turned into an ordeal with me trying to hold her along with another Vet Tech while the other one gave her the shot. What a baby!!! I had to feed her squirt cheese the entire time. Ughhhh. 

Erik and I also went to look at an apartment in Tiburon yesterday. It is twice the size of our current place in a much quieter area so we'll see....

We went to Waypoint Pizza afterwards. Cute little pizza place that had fun, nautical salads on the menu including "Block Island" salad. We headed home after the pizza and called it a night. Quite the busy & emotional day...