Cooking Clubs
With a title like How To Eat and Drink this blog may draw readers who really want a “how-to” and not be as familiar with cooking methods and procedures as others glued to the food networks. Plus, there is nothing like the real thing—hands-on cooking and sitting down together at a table to share the fruits of your labor.
How do you learn to cook if you have not had the privilege of exposure at home at an early age?
If you live near Longmont, Colorado in the greater Boulder-Denver metro region, you can sign up for a class with the Foodie Friends Cooking Club and share in the expertise and enthusiasm of Denise and Al Milligan. Denise is the culinary force but Al is very much involved as well, as the greeter, host, and by taking beautiful photographs of the festivities—his superpower.
A recent class at their home in a residential neighborhood with a large outdoor kitchen and dining area as well as two Ooni pizza ovens drew three new participants and was led by a team of sisters who are regulars at Denise’s events. Jami Goetz and Pam Hays led the group through a menu that was easy to customize for dietary restrictions--a salad with fresh greens including sorrel from that morning’s Longmont farmers market, a one-pan orzo dish with spinach and feta or beans, and easy fruit tarts based on a flour tortilla that were coming out of a blazing oven when I arrived. Rocket science? No. Easy, fun, and participatory? Yes, yes, and yes.
A lot of the discussion during cooking involved how to cut particular vegetables (pull the seeds pod out of a halved bell pepper for a clean sweep) and how to choose particular oils and vinegars for flavor variations. Also, how to fix things. If the fruit on the tart gets a little too dark, top it with more jam. Done!
With a tech background, recently retired Denise is building her cooking club stats and plans to one day offer online classes. She and Al spend a good part of each year in Spain where she was first enamored twenty years ago of the Spanish lifestyle with leisurely meals around a table with conviviality and excellent food. She had a previous club called Spanish Sunday that brought many folks to the table, often for paella or other Spanish specialties, from 2017 until the pandemic hit. Her new iteration continues her primary focus of “gathering with friends and family on a regular basis” and includes classes on Cajun cooking, regional Mexican specialties hosted by Ximena Castro, and sourdough bread making.
Denise and I met when we both taught cooking classes at Kitchen Company, a subsidiary of Ace Hardware in Longmont. I took her class on paella and was hooked. We became friends and shared many cooking adventures in CO, France, and Spain. She taught me how to make goat cheese and I taught her how to make duck confit. Win win.
If you need a guide for your kitchen adventures, look up Denise. She will convince you that cooking and eating together = the good life.
For a list of upcoming cooking club events, click here