“Have you lost weight?” my partner asks.
Now if that didn’t sell me on the Harvest Cuisine Cooking Classes, nothing will.
The five course dinners of Cornucopia and one week with more wine and cheese than I probably consume the rest of the year was finally being put behind me. Still a ways to go, but not only are my jeans finally begining to fit again, but that pesky flu I’ve been fighting for the past two months finally called “mercy”.
What I needed was my mom to wag her finger at me, telling me to eat my vegetables, but instead it was Karen Kay of Kaytering Whistler doing so, only instead of preaching she let her fresh and flavourful recipes do the talking for her.
Kay hosts cooking classes two nights a week, from 6 to 8 p.m., at her studio kitchen in Alpine Meadows. A $50 class includes recipes and a meal. Classes are $40 each if participants sign up for all four classes.
Beans, grains and vegetables are the stars of her cooking classes, morphing into everything from hearty soups to Indian cuisine.
As I munched on carrot sticks dipped in thick, rich humus, I was reminded of how good healthy eating can taste, and best of all how cheap it can be — all of this, plus I could also control the amount of vampires or coworkers I was going to scare off that day.
Making homemade humus, you can add as much or as little garlic as you like, and you can experiment by adding your own flare with roasted red peppers or different kind of oils (if you want to use oil at all).
For someone on the run, Kay’s recipes are fantastic: beans and rice can be easily stored for last minute dinners, dishes can be made on Sunday and run the course of the work week until Friday. And the recipes I tried required very few dishes — a great concern for those of us who don’t have the luxury of a dishwasher.
Using dried beans and grains easily bought in bulk also cut down on grocery bills, as well as my waistline. Vegetables are relatively cheap and, if bought in season, cheaper yet and easier on the environment.
Along with learning how to cook with earth-friendly foods, Kay’s classes also cover ethnic dishes (Thai, Crete, Indian and Southwestern), cooking skills (I finally learned the secret behind effectively chopping up cilantro without the stems) and recipes that aid ailments (arthritis, inflammatory diseases, diabetes and even PMS and menopause) — apparently there is more to hormone balancing than just chocolate.
Kay is a holistic nutritionist, Red Seal Chef, Slow Food member and Whistler Community Kitchen Coordinator, but what really impressed me about this recipe goddess is that she is mother to grown children who eat vegetables willingly and turn their noses up at fast food.
Start them young and they’ll never look back and for the rest of us, we’ve got some catching up to do — and there has never been a tastier way to do it than pulling up a mixing bowl alongside Kay.
For more information, contact Karen at [email protected] .
Getting some pirate booty
Potato chips will never be the same.
It was like I died and went to couch potato heaven.
The finest executive chefs in Whistler dueled with their best dressed spuds at the Pick the Chips Contest at LUNA’s Moist pirate pool party at Meadow Park Sports Centre earlier this month, and the only thing missing was some sporting event on a big screen with one of those couches with cushions so big that you could lose a small child in it for months and never be the wiser.
I settled for standing and watching the pool volleyball taking place only a splash away as I made my way around a table with potato chip samples fit for a pirate king.
Instead of gold coins, the seven treasure chests presented by seven Slow Food chefs produced a bounty of salty, and even sometimes sweet, golden chips.
Polly wants a potato chip was my mantra for the winning potato pirate. Hilton executive chef Jay Lynn won best in show for his “Salty Pirate Ships” with organic parsnips fashionably bejeweled with pink Himalayan salt — very trendy right now. However, it was his light rippling red sun choke chips with fleur de sel that would have me joining his crew.
Like all pirates, we can’t be trusted. I cast two votes: one for Lynn’s sun choke chips and the other for Neil Harkin, executive chef of the Telus Conference Centre, and his Walk the Plank chip curled with sweetness and seaweed. However, it was Harkin’s Natural Vinegar Doubloon Purple Chips that followed Lynn in a near tie.
Other highlights included a beach of blackened sesame seeds representing Davey Jones’s Underwater Chip Garden, presented by Four Seasons’ Scott Dolby, which packed a cannon ball punch of spices. No one would starve on Ryan Liebrecht’s Cio Thyme Bistro ship with his thickly sliced Sea-Lantro Black Pepper Argh chips. James Walt of Araxi presented a more refined bounty with desiree potatoes with dried seaweed salt — no gaudy gold for him, just costly jewels. Darren Brown from the Aubergine Grille may not have won over taste buds for a first place finish, but his Captain Cortez’s Potato Parsnip Plunder marked X on the map for “xtraordinary”, not to mention best alliteration of the night.
Slow Food captain Astrid Cameron made all of these great chefs walk the plank for the night while the rest of us ransacked their loot.
So yo ho ho, a potato’s life for me.
