Today I taught a Creole Cooking Class in Houston. It was sold out to a wonderful, lively group of people. It's classes like today that remind me why I love teaching so much.At time, I had questioned this aspect of my business. Should I just cater? Private chef? I've always loved the interaction between myself and my class, but sometimes people are there just to eat. Yes, people actually sign up for cooking classes and just want to eat. It's definitely not a crime by any means. I just love every aspect of cooking classes from creating menus, prepping for the class, the actual hands-on teaching,storytelling and feedback from students. It's weird calling people my parents' age "students," but I guess they really are. I forget sometimes I've been cooking for almost 11 years now. You are never too old to learn! I also love when my students teach me things too.
Back to class today.
One of the Central Market assistants brought to my attention that there was 2 sticks of butter in my ingredient list for Creole BBQ Shrimp,but in the directions I'd typed 2 tablespoons. She asked me," Chef, which one is it?" I paused for a second wondering how I made that blunder! Well, I guess living in Austin has made me a lot more health conscious and I had tried to reduce the amount of butter substantially to cut out the fat, calories and make less gravy. Less gravy equals less french bread you dip, so even fewer calories. What was I thinking? I explained it to her and she was like,"why try and make Creole BBQ shrimp if you can't have it the right way?" Great question.
I can name at least 5 friends off the top of my head who are on a mega mania diet or serious work out regiment. I know we should watch what we eat and moderate portions, but when was it a crime to eat things the way they were meant to ? I still debate in my mind, what the proper balance of "eating healthy" is without purposefully starving oneself. At any rate, the class picked up on the typo in the recipe packet before I could address it and so I explained. It's as if all of them gasp simultaneously at my answer. All of them insisted on the real thing and doing the recipe the way I originally made it. And mind you, these weren't all people that were large and in charge. There were some skinny minnies & average size people. It was a full spectrum of shapes and sizes. One man said to me,"Houston like you and your recipes just the way ya'll are." I was touched. It was really nice to hear. I guess I'm still trying to find that balance in my own food journey as a chef. No matter where I am in my journey through finding a healthy balance in food,it's always nice to hear that my recipes and I are fine. Just they way we are =)
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