Thai Cooking Class

On Thursday, Jeff and I went to a cooking class I got through Living Social Deals. It's a great site for deals in your community at great prices!

Anyway, we went to Satay restaurant in Austin, and were taught by the most amazing woman, Dr. Foo, who is a Food Scientist with a doctorate and everything! She is quite the entertainer, as well. Here's a link to her site http://satayusa.com/index.htm.

At first, Jeff seemed a little hesitant because he thought he would be the only man there. He almost was. But we got there, and the restaurant was beautiful and Dr.Foo was very sweet, funny, and you could tell she was incredibly knowledgeable in her field. Not only does she own Satay, she also owns one of our favorite places to get Dim Sum, Get Sum Dim Sum. It's good stuff... always fresh and never off the cart... I digress.

Anyway, we sat in a class of about 14 people, and all had a seat with a plate and utensils and wine and water glasses. She was set up at the front of the class with a slide show projector showing photos of Thailand and many different dishes from Thailand. She taught us how to make spring rolls (delicious spring rolls) and emphasized that all of her dishes are carefully created to include as many nutrients as possible, because, as a food scientist, that is the most important. She also emphasizes texture, making sure you include many textures in a dish makes it more satisfying. The spring rolls were easy enough to learn and we did some hands-on training.

Then she taught us how to make a beef-tip salad, pad Thai, a dish called the DWI, which is a spicy version of pad see ew. I may not be spelling these correctly. Lastly, we learned how to make a dessert smoothie from Thai tea leaves. We got to eat all of the dishes she taught us to make and took home the recipes and instructions to recreate them at home. I am so happy with what I learned, and Jeff LOVED the class! We had a lot of fun in there together. I wish I had taken some photos, but I was too enraptured to do anything but listen and take notes.

I am really proud of myself for making sure that Jeff and I continue getting out of the house and learning and doing new things. I think it's very important for us to do that, especially because we are inclined to stay home and just be lazy. I don't want to waste my life sitting at home and doing nothing every single day. Even though we don't have a lot of money, there are always ways you can get creative and get out of the house. Which is why I want to share with you guys my favorite sites that help me get out on a budget, Living Social and Groupon, they are in almost every large city and many small ones as well.

Yes, there is something in it for me if you join, mostly just credits towards my next daily deal, but that's not why I'm sharing it with you. I know a lot of my friends are in the same boat, and everyone is looking for a good deal! They have half off at delicious restaurants, they have fun outings (like my flying trapeze class, horseback riding, etc). You never know what deal is coming next!

Not much else going on. Next week we have our Taste of Austin event, which should be fun, and then I start my 30 day balanced oxidizer diet to take off 5 of the 10 lbs I gained recently. I only meant to gain 5. Ugh. It's for the best, it's an eating plan that helps you eat for your body type, and you get to regulate the calories. I'm going to do that through the free website, www.caloriesperhour.com which is SUPER helpful for those of you who want to count calories.