Thanks everyone - made it through the first demo! WOOHOO!!!!

music-city-missy

Well-known member
I have so much going on that I let it get me all worked up but I pulled it off with only two close calls - almost setting the fire alarm off and too many little old ladies helping themselves to LARGE samples.

I used Marilyn's one our of dicing to show them how to have things ready for quick meals and told them about getting the pint and quart deli type containers to keep things in to make it easy.

Then I showed them how to make chicken paillards (or cutlets) and freeze them for quick individual meals and I cooked chicken piccata for them and had a grilled romaine chicken caesar and a chicken roulade with hame and cheese with a sherried mushroom sauce there to show and sample along with the veggies and quinoa.

I bought one of the little burners at the sporting goods store and I was preheating my pan thinking it would take a good bit of time for it to heat up - WRONG! Poured in my olive oil and smoke went everywhere - that thing is HOT!

Biggest problem was she booked me doing two demos back to back with no down time. DD ran and washed the pan but I really needed to reset and couldn't and the second group of ladies came in and started helping themselves to the food that I had intended to serve at the end of the demo and bossing me around to slice the chicken roulade and complaining about no piccata. Finally got them all some of everything but the piccata and told them to sit down and be quiet so I could star and show them how to cook - after all this wasn't an eating demo but a cooking demo.

They were supposed to do dinner on their own after that demo - well as I packed up and left, three from the last demo were sitting on a bench - needless to say think they were the ones that were determined to make a meal on the samples so they wouldn't have to go anywhere and eat. So another lesson learned is not to be the demo before they are to go eat dinner on their own!

But the first group also had widows that were a little younger in general so it was just different. The last group had some old crotchety ones (I know one of them from Eastern Star and she is the very definition of crotchety)- never want to spend a dime if you know what I mean.

Anyway, thanks for all your ideas.

 
Glad it went well! How funny, those ladies lurking about for a free meal and demanding samples

before your demo. Amazing how people forget their manners when they hear the word "free," LOL.

 
I know what you mean. I taught a Pasta and sauces class at the local

Night School years back and the students came to depend on eating supper rather than just sampling at the end of the class. Had fun but gave it up after a couple of years. It's alot of work, especially doing the TV thing of have a completed dish to serve "samples"

 
Bravo! You did a good deed, you learned some critical lessons, and you got

to vent Mrs. Crotchety so that, as Darma's New Age mother would say: "Now you can put this in a bubble and let it float away."

Yea, float away, you crotchety old bitc...

(Okay, I'm done venting too)

I'd say it's another job well done...again!!!

PS: And to think I knew you when you were just thinking about taking culinary lessons! Now you're teaching them...I'm so proud of my little missy!

 
On that note Marilyn, you can say you knew me before TV too....

we tape a cooking show from school week after next for our public access channel. Don't know when it will air and I can't even get it since I live in a different county. The head of the program wanted me to be in the first one because he knew he could count on me for one thing. But we'll be doing more of them and I told him I would help with the research and behind the scenes also.

 
Congrats! Our little old ladies up here carry ziplock bags in their purses for these events and

pot lucks.

 
I've never understood why little old ladies think age is an excuse to steal! CONGRATS on hanging in!

 
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