The Chopping Block

Early lunch snacks. "Summer One Dish Dinners" class:

From salads to stir-frys to pastas, everyone needs some quick and easy ideas for cool summer meals! Cucumber and Tomato Salad, Broccoli Chow Fun with Black Bean Sauce, Fettucine with Mushrooms and Peas, Pan-Roasted Salmon with Spinach and White Beans

Salad was great, chow fun was OK, fettucine was great (but I didn't like the shrooms), the salmon was great (and the beans were OK).

The food was pretty good, but the class was a small letdown. It was a bit like Emeril Live, only you're right there in front. A lot of her teachings were stuff we already knew, from Good Eats and Cook's Illustrated's books and TV show. So it was kind of just like paying for the recipes. The whole thing seemed a bit like a marketing push for stuff they sell at the store, so I kind of resented paying money to attend a commercial for their store's stuff. And the other folks in the class were either older Lincoln Park housewives or ditsy Lincoln Park trixies -- not my crowd -- and most of them didn't seem serious about learning to cook; OK, I'm a cooking school snob. Maybe the hands-on classes at Lincoln Square are different.