I feel like every time I’ve left a big gap in my blogging,
which is a lot lately, I need to apologize, but it’s always for the same thing
these days. I’m not well and mostly living off of rice and fish. Any time I try
to add more food in, it may be okay for a day or two, but then I start getting
unwell again. So with such a limited diet, at the moment, it’s hard to be
creative in the kitchen.
However, that didn’t stop me from signing up for a gluten
free cooking class a few weeks ago. Even though Lady Smith is a good 55 minutes
away from where I live, I love attending the ‘Worldly Gourmet’ cooking classes.
The location is kitchen supply store, with a kitchen in the back of the store
where they hold regular cooking demos. At the end of the class you get to eat
what was made. Most classes you just watch the chef prepare, but some are hands
on. I’ve been to gluten free Christmas Baking class, a sushi making class,
canning class, chocolate making and now this most recent gluten free cooking
class.
The Worldly Gourmet has recently (as of July I believe)
changed hands, and to be honest I was worried the classes might not be so
great, especially since the price has gone up from $50/class to $65/class.
However, I was pleasantly surprised of the quality of the guest chef, the
willingness to please of the host/owner, and the small improvements made to the
kitchen, giving more space for the attendees to put their plates of food and
write their notes.
The guest chef for this class, Christina Acevedo, was
originally from Montreal, lived in Calgary until recently and now lives on
Vancouver Island. She is a Red Seal trained chef who also went to school for holistic
nutrition training. Her day job is
as a personal chef, going to people’s homes and preparing a week worth of food
for them (some fresh, the rest frozen). She is mostly cooking for breast cancer
survivors, Celiac’s and other people who either have dietary restrictions or want
to eat whole, organic, healthy food to improve their health. Because of this,
she is a wealth of information on healthy eating and tips/tricks for Celiac’s
on how to heal their bodies. She suggested that we not only have to eat gluten
free, but we should also be attempting to heal our guts and one way to do that
is to add Glutamine to our diets. Glutamine being an amino acid that can help restore our villous cells. I’m going to try that, once the stuff arrives
in the mail!
Christina demonstrated how to cook Gluten Free Lentil &
Vegetable Patties, Creamy Falafel (no falafels, just tastes like them) Cashew
Dip, and Gluten Free Mint Black Bean Brownies. Although I have heard of black
bean brownies, I’ve never actually made one, and now I would highly recommend
them. They are very tasty. Everything that we were shown was super healthy and
amazingly good. I hope to attend another class with Christina in the future and
if you’re in the Ladysmith area, I highly recommend the Worldly Gourmet for a
variety of cooking classes. Also, check out Christina's website, Honey and Vanilla, which has some yummy looking recipes on it.
