Last Day of Camp

It's hard the believe that I've been looking forward to my cooking camp for so long, and it's already over. It ended yesterday. For the last day, we made cous-cous with apricots, a Moroccan stew, a fruity dessert salad, and sesame-seed cookies (Which were better then I thought they would be). But I'm happy with the classes. I loved the Chinese noodles one the China day, The meatballs were awesome on the Italian day, and I have never tasted potato pancakes like the ones on the Middle Eastern. I'm excited to do the recipes again, and look forward to the camp next year.

First Day of Camp

So about forty five minutes ago I got back from my cooking camp. I had a lot of fun. We made salad, spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and lemon tarts. They were all really good. It turns out that each day we get a new main chief, who does the food from the county we are doing that day. The Main chief today is from Italy, and has been cooking for PCC for thirteen years. She showed us how to cut an onion (much easier then how I've been doing it) and told us that if you crack an egg on a flat surface, not a corner or an edge, it's just one long crack and not as messy.

Yay!

The week of my cooking camp is here!  I'm doing a kids cooking camp at PCC, and I sighed up in March. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. It's called Around The World In Five Days, because we'll be making Italian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Moroccan, and Cuban food. I'm pretty sure today is Italian. I'll post the details later today.

Flat Fortune Cookies

Fortune cookies are one of those things I can never get enough of. However, they're harder to make than I thought. I thought I would make a really thick dough and roll it flat, then put a paper fortune on it and fold it, then cook. Nope. Nothing like that. You have to make the dough, but it's too thin to roll but too thick to spread easily. Then when you take it out of the oven, you have to fold it while it's still hot, because if it cools it will crack. I just gave up and made most of them flat. They still tasted good, though. Here's the link to the Recipe.

 Here they are! As you can see, most of them are flat.

Tips and Tricks #1

I have decided that once a week, I will post a tip or a trick for cooking. This week's is............(drum roll, please) how to separate an egg! Separating an egg is when an egg white goes in one bowl, and the yolk in the other. It's harder than it sounds. How I used to do it was I cracked an egg and put everything in one bowl, then picked up the yolk with my fingers. It's easy, but I hate the feeling of raw egg, and you have to wash your hands after each egg. So yeah, not the best way. How you do it the 'right' way is you crack the egg and start to pull it open, but slide the yolk into one side of the shell as you break it in half. If you do it right, the egg whites should fall into the bowl and the yolk should still be in the shell. Put the yolk into another bowl if needed, but if not, just put it in the compost or whatever you put eggs in.

A Frozen Treat

If you want a frozen treat on a hot day, make homemade ice cream sandwiches! These were good, but the vanilla didn't turn out like I hoped. The chocolate was good, though.



                                                          Ice Cream Sandwiches

1/2 cup  milk or half & half

1 tablespoon sugar (make it 1 1/2 if you are making chocolate)

1/2 a teaspoon vanilla extract

(If making chocolate) 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

About six cookies

1. Put milk, sugar, vanilla ( or cocoa) in a sandwich baggie.

2. Fill a bigger baggie half full with ice, and pour about half a cup salt over ice.

3. Seal the smaller baggie and put it in the bigger one. Seal the bigger one and shake gently for about 20 minutes.

4. Put some on a cookie and put another cookie on top of the first one. Keep doing that until you run out of ice cream

A Bake Sale.....

 To bring Abaynesh (Aby) home. Our friend Heather is adopting a one and a half year old girl from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is coming home today from her first visit, and will be returning to Addis in the next few weeks to bring Aby home. She has been waiting for more than a year. So we are doing a bake sale to help raise money for her. We are doing it in front of the Star Store on Whidbey Island, Washington. We are making brownies, chocolate chip cookies, chewy molasses spice cookies, two different types of bread, cake pops, and lemonade. I am also making friendship bracelets to sell. We hope to make more than fifty dollars.  I really hope we do well. It is going to be from 11:00 to 2:00, in front of the Star Store in Langley, on Whidbey Island, Washington.