A Cooking Demo for Free? Fine by Me.

This evening Ryan and I headed to Whole Foods for a free cooking demonstration conducted by two chefs from Disney World’s annual Epcot Food and Wine Festival, an event showcasing cuisine and wines from around the world.

We’ve been to one other demonstration at Whole Foods hosted by Season’s 52, my faaaavorite restaurant in the whole-wide-world, so my hopes for this evening were quite high.

As we entered the Lifestyle Center where the demonstration was held, the fresh produce, herbs and spices adorning the countertops immediately sparked my interest and made my tummy grumble.

Ryan and I took our seats and were handed two different recipes to be covered in the demonstration.

First up was spicy chicken sausage with sweet corn polenta.

The chefs took us through the recipe, and any steps that were hard to see from our seats were showcased on two flat screen televisions. Whole Foods is high tech!

Once the recipe was complete we were more than ready to give it a little taste test!

While the chicken sausage was a little too spicy for my sensitive tongue, the addition of pure maple syrup to the polenta made the corn mixture deliciously sweet. Ryan and I agreed it was the highlight of the evening.  

The next recipe featured was a mushroom soup.

The soup was made using lots of fresh vegetables and sour cream, which I never would have known was in the soup had I not seen the chefs add it myself.

The soup was topped with truffle oil, which I had never tried before. WOW, was that delicious!!! We gobbled our bowls right up!

The cooking events at our local Whole Foods are wonderful and are typically under $10 a person, if not completely free, like tonight’s event. Ryan and I love learning new tricks of the cookin’ trade and sampling delicious eats prepared by expert chefs is just the icing on the cake (or the truffle oil on the mushroom soup 😉 )!

Question: Have you ever attended a cooking demonstration or a cooking class?