COOKING DEMO AT calSTRS

Last Friday I had the opportunity to do a cooking demo at the calSTRS building for my friend's office. Catherine organizes Kranium Dayz where they have speakers or demonstrations of different types. The problem was it was in a conference room and there was no cooking involved. So it was quite a fun challenge to come up with a menu that I could demonstrate without any cooking. Since I've been cooking through Marlena Spieler's Jewish Cooking cookbook of course Jewish food is what I made. The menu was Baba Ghanoush- an eggplant dip/spread with Pita bread, Tabbouleh- a bulgar wheat and herb salad, Chamim- a vegetable soup, and a Tuscan Citrus Sponge cake. Luckily we could use crock pots so the soup was made at home and was kept warm in several crock pots. All the dishes were premade of course and I just demonstrated how to put the Babba Ghanoush and the Tabbouleh together and explained the other two recipes. There were about 18 people in attendance and between demonstrating the recipes, Katherine played some Food TV trivia games and she made the prizes. Aprons with cute embroidered pictures to correspond to the answers to the questions.
I had an hour to do my demonstration and we got it done and everyone got fed and the feedback was positive on all the dishes. It was a great group of participants and we all had a good time.
Here are some pictures of the day.

the set up for the demonstration

The Chamim soup keeping warm

Me with the Tuscan Citrus cake, Tabbouleh, and Baba Ghanoush and Marlena's cookbook

Katherine (and the apron she made) my friend and organizer
the whole group- the winners of the games and their aprons

The recipes for the Chamim, Tabbouleh and Baba Ghanoush can be found on this blog and the Citrus Sponge cake can be found at Sacramento Spice along with other Marlena recipes. Also check out Cooking Schmooking for more recipes.