Culinary Parent Appreciation Night

Lorien has really enjoyed both her culinary class & the culinary club at her high school.  She's the one that stepped up & organized a culinary club & the culinary teacher absolutely loved having some extracurricular for these kids to do that involved their culinary skills.

They've been working hard all year & ended up doing a fun parent appreciation night for the parents of the culinary club kids.  Lorien was so excited to cook for me & show off what she's learned.

(She also wanted to watch me try to eat a bunch of food I don't normally like/eat regularly just to see if I'd throw up. . . she's a stinker!  But she also knew I was a lot more adventurous than Trek is when it comes to food.)

They started us off with non-alcoholic mimosas which were AMAZING.  I want her to make these at home more often.  They were delicious.

I enjoyed every minute of watching her work around the kitchen.  She's SO good.  I'm excited for her to go to culinary school.

Our first dish was crab cakes.  They were HUGE.  So, I don't eat a lot of seafood.  I don't enjoy it & I know I should, but I don't.  But I will admit, these were pretty good.  They weren't too fishy & they were very well made.  The pineapple relish on top was to die for.  I could have eaten that with a spoon.  It balance out the crab quite nicely & I found that I liked it a lot.  I ate the entire thing.

Each time a new course came out, Lorien (who is the sous chef) would explain what the dish was & why they chose it.

Our main course was chimchurri lambchops served with seafood paella.  I'm not a huge fan of lamb & again with the seafood (shrimp, mussels).  My eyes started to water the second I saw those mussels.  I thought I might die because I'm scared to death of them.

But, once again, I was pleasantly surprised.  The lamb chops were cooked to perfection.  I guess I just haven't had GOOD lamb before.  These were tender, flavorful, & delicious.  The seafood paella was totally palatable in my book which really surprised me.  The rice was delicious with the hot sausage & chicken bits.  I absolutely loved the shrimp, & the mussels, though not my favorite, were fine.  I ate them.  I wouldn't choose mussels as a meal EVER, but mixed with the rice, they were ok.  The lamb chops were my favorite part.  I can't even begin to tell you how good they were.

For dessert we had freshly made macarons (one of the girls in the club specializes in macarons so she made these & they were incredible.)

And we also got warm chocolate raspberry lava cakes & homemade ice cream.  It was to DIE for.  This is what I want to eat every day for the rest of my life.  The hint of raspberry with the chocolate was divine & homemade ice cream is my favorite.

Lorien & her friends knocked it out of the ballpark.  It was incredible.  Best dinner I've had in a long time.

I'm so proud of my little chef.  She is going to go off & do amazing things.  I love her so much.