Before I get on with the cooking class – look how pretty my breakfast was!  1 cup cooked quinoa, 1/2 chopped apple, 1 ounce chopped almonds with 1 tablespoon of agave nectar – I am loving the agave nectar!  If you haven’t tried it yet, you can get it at Trader Joe’s for I think $2.99 a bottle.

Lunch didn’t work out as well.  I had leftover uncooked flank steak, so I cooked it up yesterday morning before work with red pepper.  I warmed it up in the microwave, big mistake, so the meat was like eating rubber bands – I ended up chopping it up, which helped a little, but it was mostly a refried bean red pepper taco!

My cooking class didn’t start until 6:00 – and I get off or work at 5:00.  It didn’t make sense to go back home, so I had plans to hit up Moe’s Southwest Grill for dinner before hand.  I knew I was going to be eating something at the demonstration, but I wasn’t sure about the timing.

One great thing about Moe’s Southwest Grill?  You can build your own taco and get the nutrition!   I ended up getting a tofu black bean taco with jalapeno peppers – 196 calories for this baby!

I still had time to take a 20 minute walk before the class – then I headed inside!

I was wondering how they would do a cooking class because the store is kind of small – somehow they were able to cram 20 chairs in!    While the demonstrator was cooking, of course there was talk about all the products that you could buy.  They actually used one of their sauces for a dish – a Lemon Artichoke sauce.  It was pretty lame on the taste though – not much flavor at all!  

Then they demonstrated the stock pot they were boiling water in – it was only $385 so I bought two.  NOT!  Pretty sure I can strain my pasta into my $5 colindar!!  Each of the recipes had a list of things you “needed” to make the dish – kind of annoying.

I was sitting in the back, but I could see everything that was going on in the mirror above the stove.

One product they used wasn’t even available – a $179 attachment to a Kitchen Aid mixer that is on back order for an unknown amount of time.  However, that didn’t prevent the demonstrator to go on and on about how great this attachment was, how she wished she had one at home. 

Another annoying thing she did was everytime she cut the rigatoni off of the attachment she kept on saying “how cool is that?”   After the tenth exclamation of “how cool is that” the woman I sat next to and I just rolled our eyes.

She made gnocci ahead of time, but showed us how to make it.  Even though she proclaimed she was Italian, she kept pronouncing it “gnacki” instead of “gnoooci” with a long O.  I asked the woman next to me if she liked gnocci and she said “thank God you said it correctly, it’s been driving me nuts!”

In case you are wondering, you can buy pasta flour at WS – just $6 a box to make 1 pound of pasta!

This was my favorite by far, and a recipe I will make over the weekend – it was a spinach fettucini with a lemon pesto sauce – so light and fresh – but seriously, all the dishes were lacking salt!  Once I added salt to this, it really brightened the dish.

So all in all I had a good time.  I did realize that I didn’t roll my dough out nearly enough – you have to run it through about 10 times at the widest setting – and each time it goes through, you fold it in thirds and run it through again.

The rolling actually helps knead the dough – then you can make it thinner for whatever dish you are making.

Don’t know my exact stats for the day, but I think I did pretty good.  I did a 35 minute sculpting ball DVD at lunch and walked for 20 minutes – and I got my water in too!

Gotta scoot to work – happy Hump Day! 😀