Cooking Class at Jungle Jim's

For my birthday, Justin got the both of us a cooking class at Jungle Jim's. This was the Whole Grain Cooking class with Stephen Lee (the HerbMiester). Jungle Jim's has some great cooking classes. I would recommend them to anyone. This was Justin's first class and my fourth. We got there and sat down in our seats and noticed that the average age seemed to be slightly high. I think all the whole grains talk appealed to the older crowd and the health concience. Little did they know...

So, Stephen Lee is a great cooking teacher. He was funny and quirky. His claim to fame was that he developed the current KFC green bean recipe. That's kind of cool, n'est pas? Anyway, we started with the Forest Mushroom and Millet Soup. It was pretty good. Needed more salt. You know what millet is? Bird seed. Seriously. Our "salad" was Barley, Corn, and Brown Rice Salad. This had a simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing and was actually very good. I was surprised. Not my normal good eats, but I liked it.

The main course was Shrimp and Broccoli in a Cream Sauce over .... get ready for it .... you're not going to believe it .... .... waffles. Yes, over waffles. Buckwheat waffles. I know, weird. But, very good. On the side we had some rye cornbread that was excellent. The best thing of the night. Simple to make, just buttermilk, rye, cornmeal, eggs and shortening. Oh, yeah. Shortening. He used lots of shortening. I think a lot of the people in there thought it would be a "low fat" class. They were wrong. He used lots of the good stuff.

Finally, we made it to the best course. Dessert! We had Steamed Oatmeal Pudding with a Hard Cider Sauce. Very good. The sauce was more of a whipped cream and the pudding was more of a fruit cake, but they were tasty.

Overall, a very good class. Thanks Justin. I will have to go back. :-)

P.S. Oh, and I got Stephen Lee's signed cookbook "Go Withs". Excellent.