Success!

Koori Kitchen session was awesome yesterday... for the first time since we started I felt that the possibility of the programs success really showed through. Despite the maxi taxi not turning up to pick up the supervisors and students from the school, thanx to Jem's quick thinking and decisive action, we managed to get the students to the hotel almost on time. By the time the students arrived the kitchen was set up, the chef was there, supervisors had been briefed and Joe Williams for the South Sydney Rabittohs, was ready and rearin to go. Despite his recent shoulder reconstruction Joe integrated himself into the class whole heartedly, demonstrating to the students how to prepare many of the ingredients, while the chef was in the kitchen helping out the students with the hot food prep. Students were guided in their making of pancakes with lots and lots and lots of strawberiies... all very nicely chopped ( excluding the ones which were "ugly") by the the budding chefs. Also we added ice cream, woried by the lmited quantity of ice cream, and the keeness of the students to eat lots andlots of ice cream... we sent poor Mark and Shams off to fetch some more.... all the way down at Broadway. By the time they got back, of course, the pancakes had been well and truly eaten and we were on to the next recipe. An awesomely colourful salad, with oranges, snow peas, avocado and some other apparently starnge items... surprisingly tasty though.... Only problem with making the salad was the general student belief that avocados are "chatty" and also possiby scary.... nonethe less we didmanage to cajole one student to take on the task of mastering the technique of preparing avocado! Next on the menu were baked potatoes... funnily enough cooked in the microwave (due to time constraints)... to the potatos the students added all sports of ingredients including cheese, sour cream, tomatoe, baked beans and salad.... while the health theme seemed to have gone assundry somewhat... the students were there, and they seemed to enjoy themselves very much. We got a rave review from both Fiona, the chef (who offered to fill in for any of the other chefs if they were unable to make it), and from Joe, who offered to be interviewd in one of the Koori Fm visits. All in all I was overjoyed by the partial fruiton of my dream for the project and I only hope that the students will be back next week and the week after.. to learn the skills to be able to pull off the gala dinner! All the supervisors deserve a cheer as well... you rock guys... hopefully we'll see you another time in the Koori Kitchen.