Wednesday, September 19th - it's going to be an interesting community school session

It's a balmy 16' at 4:30 this morning, heading for a humid 23' that may well feel like 28' later. Just when we thought we could put away the summer clothes, Mother Nature decides it's not time yet. It will be cooler over the next couple of days and we should get some rain later this afternoon (well, more like evening out here on the eastern end of the island - 20 to 30 mm perhaps).

So registration for Community School was last night and I'm once again left shaking my head and wondering what the heck are they thinking? I arrived at 6:25 and there were 10 people registered. I had specifically requested that we limit to no more than 8 but the person who was taking names wasn't told that. Nor were they told to advise all potential students about the $20 material fee. I know that might impact some peoples decisions. We also have two teen aged boys in the mix so not so sure how that's going to work.  But we have some new ladies, and some are from Stratford because they aren't doing Community School this year.  So we'll just have to make the best of it and see how it goes. It's going to be a pretty crowded space and difficult to find enough things to keep everyone busy in that short time but we'll so what we can.

Last night I had the previous students work on a soup while I sat at the other table with the new students and we talked briefly about food safety and did some knife skills. I took a bag of carrots with me that we used to dice using the sharp knives that I have. They were amazed at what a difference it makes to work with a really sharp knife and all went away with a new appreciation for the care and maintenance of their tools.  We took the break with everyone else then went back in to eat our soup, which was delicious, by the way. The recipe came form an email I received from the Ace Bakery site. Once we were cleaned up we sat at the table and tossed around some ideas of what people would like to see covered this year. I have some ideas now that I can build on.

This is the soup we made (but not our picture) - we used green peppers instead of red

I see this morning that the travelers are in Gouda - hope they get to eat lots of yummy cheese! It's hard to believe they will be home this time next week - a little jet lagged perhaps, but at least sleeping in their own beds. Just an FYI for Brenda,  I received an email from Jana Monday evening telling me she and Scott were at the Toronto airport, waiting on their flight to Ireland. They've never been, but are heading there for a couple of weeks. I told her that was on our radar for sometime in the future.