the smoking loon and other news

So, as an early Christmas present I treated Kev to a Gourmet cooking class. One of our really good friends, Melissa, is a classically trained gourmet chef. She studied at the Le Cordon Bleu program in San Francisco then moved back to GR, well RS, and has been treating our homegroup to fabulous dishes for about 6 months now. We recently had a special dinner at church and she was the main attraction and did a wonderful job . . . can you imagine sweet corn ice cream with a poached peach half and kettle corn topping, all drizzled in Basil Oil? Amazing.

Anyway, part of her business that she's started is cooking classes and Kev's always been interested in cooking more than just basic American food so we spent about 4 hours with her last Sunday. She taught us basic knife skills . . . we're still not as fast as her but we don't cut ourselves anymore! . . . and then sauces and seasonings for different dishes and meats. We made a red wine sauce . . . very delicious, even by itself with a spoon . . . and for it she told us to buy a cheapish bottle of red wine. This is what we found, and when Kev brought it out to the car, I just laughed and laughed at the label:

Leave it to Californians to give a loon a cigar! Too funny. A side note . . . the adhesive they used to adhere the label to the bottle was like none other . . . it took me 30 minutes with an X-acto blade to get the stupid thing off . . . NASA should use that on the space shuttle, then the panels would stop falling off!

Now I just have to find a knife set for him to complete the experience. We're going to several kitchen supply stores soon to try and find a good set, with the sharpening steel and all.

In other news, lookey what I got:

It's a Bind-It-All machine! For making small books and mini albums and whatever else may need to be bound with O-wires. Like a spiral binding only not . . . much cleaner looking. I got it on eBay . . . well, two of them actually but that's another story . . . and I can't wait for them to get here. Would you believe it will cut thru license plates!!! Well, all except Oklahoma because they use a different type of metal. I'll show you what I plan to use the license plate for when I get it done!

I read Ali Edwards' blog all the time and she is forever taking mini albums apart and adding stuff then rebinding them with her machine so I decided I just had to get one. I'm also going to use it to bind my senior proof books for all my senior clients . . . a lot cheaper than having my lab do it.

Now I just have to get the kids to let me use it . . . . :)