A Girlhood Dream Realized...

There was a totally cool TV show on PBS in the 1970s called Zoom. These groovy kids ran around in striped shirts and bare feet and did all kinds of outasite activities made you want to go out and create. There were lots of artsy crafts like making a giant trashbag balloon-person and filling it with air to float over your backyard, writing plays, cooking and drawing elaborate Aquarian murals on the sidewalk with chalk. I used to pretend I was a cast member and would spend lots of time at the sink re-creating recipes using water as a main ingredient for my audience, sometimes some salt and pepper, old eggshells, and cinnamon, if my mother wasn't looking.

So, when a hole came up in the Bushel&Peck cooking class schedule, I decided it was time for my close-up. I've had lots of teaching experience with other subjects, surely I could lead a class on some of my favorite food topics. So, last week, I did a class on sandwiches, which was really an excuse to demo my favorite no-knead bread recipe and zip up a bunch of spreads in the food processor (who can't use a good recipe for Hummus?). We passed chopped veggies and a plate of cheese and coldcuts and made Dagwood-esque creations (altho not so tall). It was a lot of fun, I wasn't too nervous, and everyone got excited about chickpeas and tahini.

Now, I'm researching an egg-dying class for Easter. There are a lot of tantalizing recipes for natural dyes out there, but they are very slow to work. I'm trying to figure out the timing for everything, but we may have to resort to sending eggs home in jars of dye. I'm back at the sink, again, messing around with water; at least this time I can sprinkle ingredients with abandon. Tumeric makes an awesome yellow-orange, btw.

Zoom-a-zoom-a-zoom!