The Hungry Twenties: Making pasta in South Carolina!

Hey everyone!

I promised I'd keep writing for you guys and although it's been almost a week since I last posted, you are still on my mind. I almost wrote an entry on Saturday both before and then after I ran my longest run in 1/2 marathon training yet -- 6 miles. I also almost wrote an entry after I attended one of my best friend's beautiful and fun baby shower on Sunday. However, both of those entries were sidetracked by the busy week I've had that included flying down to Greenville, South Carolina this past Monday for work meetings. This evening in SC included a team bonding event that took place at The Cook's Station in downtown Greenville.

I didn't know much about what this evening would include besides that we were cooking pasta. I've cooked homemade pasta before and wasn't that much looking forward to the event because I was tired and could very easily have spent the night in my hotel room at 6:00 p.m. However, the session turned out to be so much more fun and more interesting than I possibly thought it could be! I remembered why I love cooking in the first place -- it is such a stress reliever for me!

Our cooking class included preparing three different dishes that all included homemade pasta. The dishes were all a bit unique and included a couple elements that made me say, "Is that really going to work?"

But it all did! The dishes were delicious and fun to prepare. The wine was a flowing throughout the whole night. And we were able to sit down and have a great three course meal. The meal consisted of:

- Butternut squash tortelloni with a brown butter and sage sauce topped with crumbled biscoff cookies and parmesean cheese
- Pasta carbonara with pancetta and onion
- Deep fried chocolate pasta with a berry reduction sauce, homemade whipped cream, white chocolate and fresh strawberries

I helped in making the dessert. Which was incredibly unique to me -- I'd never heard of a chocolate pasta before! But it was fun to make and came out DELICIOUS. Since I love to cook I got involved in the plating of the food and spent a lot of time in the kitchen observing and participating as much as possible. The chef may have called me the "star student" and commented on both my chocolate pasta dough and shaved white chocolate as being "perfect." Go me :)