Scenes From Girls Night In Italy {Cooking Class}
By admin
Here’s something you might not know about me…
I love throwing a good dinner party.
I would much rather cook for my friends and serve free-flowing glasses of delicious wine than go out to a restaurant.
From our annual holiday dinner party!
The intimacy, the love that goes into prepping and cooking, and the relaxed aura as friends sit talking about life, laughing freely and not having to worry about paying a check or getting up to make room for the next party makes the hours spent in the kitchen worth it.
Aside from the actual cooking part, I also love talking about cooking… what I do, how I make meals healthy while still retaining amazing flavor and showing off how easy it is to navigate the kitchen.
But I don’t get to do that too often.
A Desire To Teach Healthy Cooking
For about a year now, I’ve been wanting to host a cooking class. But trying to find a location that didn’t cost an arm and a leg that still offered plenty of space was hard… really hard!
Luckily, my friend Erin just moved into an amazing home with an amazing kitchen. <— I am in love!
And she shares my passion for healthy cuisine.
So, together we decided to host our first cooking class, with the theme:
“Girls Night In – Healthy Italian Style”
I planned the menu…
And we worked together cooking, teaching and feeding some pretty amazing ladies!
Of course we wanted to make it a wonderful experience for our clients and keep it as intimate as possible, especially for our “official” first class. We had 4 amazing ladies, which we felt was the perfect group…
Everyone got a long, laughed and drank wine for 3 hours as if we were all long time girlfriends.
Here are a few pictures to recap the night.
Girls Night In Italy
We started off by making a vegan tepenade using soaked almonds, olives, garlic, basil… served on fresh, crunchy endive leaves.
With a few caperberries on the side. If you haven’t had a caperberry before, pick some up! The are so good!
This salad was a standout plate!
The marinated melon (in balsamic and champagne vinegar) paired amazingly with the plantain chips and sea scallop, which was just pan seared on the stove top with salt and pepper.
There was also a few slivers of an amazing local cheese!
The dressing? A homemade champagne vinaigrette.
The Alfredo Sauce was my classic, always a hit recipe found here. We roasted the squash and pan seared the shrimp to perfection!
Always a crowd pleaser, served right out of the oven! I based the recipe of my previous lava cake but made quite a few changes to make it completely flour free and even easier… top secret stuff 
Oh The Wine!
Erin and I paired each plate with a different wine! You know how much of a wino I am, so I loved this!
Being that it’s the dead of summer, each was a white wine ranging from a classic Sauvignon Blanc to a sparking champagne to toast the end of a wonderful evening!
We can not wait for September when we will host another cooking class! If you’re in Charleston, make sure to keep checking in so you can jump in!
I would love to be able to do these every few weeks. I adore training, but nutrition is equally a passion and I would love to pursue it more!