Signed up for a cooking lesson which was today it was free and I figured why not I might get to meet some people out here.
It was in one of the club houses in one of the other developments. It was a nice size kitchen they had there and there were maybe 5 people when I got there which grew to maybe 10 total.
The chef was actually a last minute replacement the normal guy being off sick or somesuch so he’d got there on very short notice. It sounded like he had done these classes before but just not recently. He seemed a nice guy and as I found later he was very good cook.
Aparantly there were often much larger groups of 20 or more but this time it was just the 10 of us so we got more food basically rather than a taste I got a full meal out of it.
The bloke showed us how to do barbecue ribs which were basically soaked in brine for a while then boiled with BBQ sauce slathered on every 15 minutes over the course of an hour or so. He also made an excellent potato salad with bacon and eggs and coleslaw with loads of vegetables an mango and all sorts. It was all damn good food the ribs very tender.
it wasn’t like any other cooking lesson I’d had the guy given the late notice was basically working on the fly for most of it. The rib technique seemed something useful using a normal off the shelf sauce then supplementing it with onions and nectarines as you slather it on the ribs.
As for the socializing aspect not sure how well that went I didn’t speak much as is my usual MO in these situations there seemed like a lot of established groups that knew each other and it’s easy to feel the outsider in those situations. There were a couple of older people in their 50-60 few in their 40-50 then a few more around my age. A fair few people were drinking if I go again I might try that tactic bring some beers and let that loosen me up.
Still all in all I got a damn good meal out of it and learnt a bit so I think it was a successful experiment.
