Ilike challenges.  I also love to teach.  When several members of my team decided they would enjoy and greatly benefit from learning to cook, I decided this would be a very fun activity to do together.  And from this, my FCKC Cooking Club was born. After just one meeting, it did not disappoint one bit, and I am anxiously awaiting our next cooking date.  I’m not saying that it all went smoothly, but we had such a great time, and in the end made one very delicious meal.  Let me break it down for you…

Cultivating:

• to prepare and use land for crops or gardening…that’s somewhere on the right track.
• to try and acquire or develop a quality, sentiment or skill…that’s probably a bit closer.

Cooking:

• the practice or skill of preparing food by combining, mixing, and heating ingredients…yup, that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Queens:

• a woman or thing regarded as excellent or outstanding of it’s kind…we are working on this part.

And from all of this was formed, ‘The Cultivating Cooking Queens’.  The name itself was an unplanned happening, where in a moment under pressure, some words that sounded great together became our group text name, and before we knew it, this was how we started to refer to ourselves.   Only a little later did we actually learn that the group namer (she shall not be named to protect her identity) actually had no idea what all the words really meant.  Somehow, it all worked out in the end, and this catchy name will be with us forever.

Meet The Queens (in no particular order):

• Alex – organizer/very eager learner
• Des- very determined/excited to learn
• Katelyn – pure entertainment/sad to see her go
• Shea – videographer/eager learner
• Mandy – a late addition.  She couldn’t take all the hype and insisted on joining after our first meeting.
• Myself – I am Chef B.  The leader of the pack.

Some key moments:

• Alex got a cucumber instead of a zucchini.  She claims a zucchini could not be found, and just assumed that a cucumber was similar.
• Katelyn lost a bet and had to take a bite out of an onion.
• Katelyn claiming to not like what we were actually making, only to find out she had it confused with a completely different food.  And in the end enjoyed it so much she had seconds.
• All kinds of antics going on around me and I had no idea until I actually watched the video.

During our first meeting, we made a delicious Thai Green Curry dish.  It was filled with great flavor, and lots of fresh, crispy veggies, all served over some brown rice.  It was quite a success and hit with the group.  We decided to video our adventure.  To see our first Episode, please check out my YouTube channel and be sure to subscribe for future postings.  A big thanks to Shea for editing the piece. Stay tuned for future episodes.  As always…eat well and be merry!!