A Cooking Club Retrospective (July - November 2008)

At this juncture, I thought it appropraite to provide a retrospective on what we've learned from Cooking Club over the months. Here are but a few of our discoveries:

- With preparation, you can pull off an aggressive menu (more than 5 menu items)
- Without preparation, an aggressive menu results in Jaeger bombs and a heated argument over lip balm.
- Over the first six Cooking Club sessions, Mary Kay has pulled a lot of thyme off the stem.
- Everyone suffers lapses in ingredient integrity. It's up to the group to hold one another accountable when we slip away to things like "Pumpkin Pie Spice" in favor of cinnamon and ginger. Stay true.
- Clean as you go. This is the only way to do it.
- Sister/Brotherhood of the Traveling Box: there are some things that we only need one of (e.g. parchment paper). In order to stop buying these things every time we need it, Cooking Club now has a traveling CC Box (CCB) that will be presented to each host by the previous host. I think we should have an inventory sheet on this for easy use of the box. I'll let Ben take charge of that, since he's trusty with a matrix.
- Everyone needs a mini-food processor.
- Commonly-used, yet surprising, ingredients: cake flour, thyme, whipping cream.
- Commonly-used, not surprising, ingredients: garlic, onion, olive oil, basil, parsley.
- What we still don't have quite figured out: pictoral proof of CC.

This list will likely grow over time. But it's a start. . .

Thanks for your loyal readership.