Taste of Home Cooking School

Last night, I participated in the Taste Of Home Cooking School in Woods Cross, Utah. The day was long but so much fun and it was a really great experience. I picked up my mom at 7:45 am and we drove the 20 minutes to Woods Cross, High School. When we got there we were introduced the the other women who were there helping for the day. Then we were given instructions and we set to work. I was given the manicotti recipe, and a very detailed instruction sheet. This was a behind the scenes look for me, how it is done on television and on stage. It was completely planned out from how many prep containers and what size, along with how many lids. To each item that needed to be prepped and how. It was a stretch for me because I know how I cook and even following a recipe is fine but I tend to improvise and want to do things my way. This was different because it had to be done in stages. Some of it was to be done now, and refrigerated while other parts would be done on stage. Everything was numbered and very organized.

The lady here is Becky. She was the other Taste of Home Field Editor, that would be helping prepare a dish on stage that night. She has been published in every annual cook book from TOH since 2000. She was a very nice lady and thought that it was very nice that TOH would diversify and not just choose mormon cooks to be in their cook books. I didn't have the heart to tell her that TOH was not a mormon publication!

After the food prep the instruction said we needed to assemble our trays which corresponded to the recipe we were doing for the evening show. This is my tray just about assembled, I still had a few items to be put on. This was after I had prepared my marinara sauce and let it cook for an hour.

After everything was all said and done we had to wash our dishes and clean up our areas. My mom set herself up as the dishwasher, for the most part. We had 3 bins to wash, rinse, and sanitize; back stage in the woods cross high school auditorium. That was a challenge. The water we were getting, was from and ancient sink so encrusted with all colors of paint you could barely get the water to turn on.

There were 6 women helping backstage that morning, we had 10 recipes to prep.

This is a behind the scenes look... all of the appliances were brought in by a local appliane store and donated for the night. The audience was told that night that if they were interested in the 2 stoves, the fridge or microwave you could go to the store the next day and they would give you a really great deal on the ones that were used for the show. After all the prep work was done I decided I wanted to take a few before and after shots. Here is the one shot of my mom stage right that I got. It just happened randomly, she was at the right place at the right time!!! We were done with the prep and were ready to go by noon. The shows Hostess Christy gave us all a gift certificate for a TOH 1 year magazine subscription. I thought that was way cool.

I was not feeling well and decided that we needed to go back home and rest for awhile instead of going to hang out at the nearest mall.

This is a pile of some of the door prizes. TOH gave away a ton of door prizes. Also the national sponsors gave away alot of door prizes and the local sponsors gave away phenomenal door prizes.

These are more door prizes. The blue package on the bottom was the Ziplock gift pack it was given away during my recipe. On to of that is the Gallo wines ift basket, it had an apron, hot pads, cookbooks, kitchen towels and other goodies. They gave away the frying pan, it is Royal Prestige brand. And the white box was a set of knives. In this photo the leather love seat to the left, was beautiful and it was one of the grand prizes donated by the local sponsors. The other grand prizes were $250 gift certificates from local florists. After shot of the stage right before the show. My mom and got back to the show about 4:30 that evening and they had alot of local vendors giving out things and prize drawings etc. The best part is that when we checked in at the ticket booth they gave you an orange paper (with tape) that said reserved so that we coud go get our seats and then roam the vendor booths! That was a nice touch. Winegars had boxes of little sandwhiches and and eclairs and brownies for everyone to sample. And at one of the vendor booths I found a cookbook. It has 30 weeks of weekly menus and all of the recipes to go with it. It got to come home with me! I was recipe #2 Manicotti, I was a bit nervous but I was thankful that I did not have to go last. I think being first for something like this is great. I was able to enjoy the rest of the show, without any anxiety. This is the new TOH cookbook! Our church ladies are featured on pg. 311. I got my first look today, I was a bit dissapointed in a few aspects but not too badly. Here is why, First of all I submitted the photo of all the women in our group and they reduced it to about 1"x 1" and only left half of the women in it. Secondly the photo is in black and white and it is hard to tell what is going on in the photo. Lastly our recipe is not even in the book! but you can get it online.Those are my 3 complaints. I have consoled myself with the knowledge that it is not about us. It doesn't matter if our pic is perfect or if our recipe wasn't included. What matters is our story, our ministry to others! We ar servants not celebrities! We all got goodie bags when we checked in and we got 2 magazines and tons of things and samples also everyone who attended the show got a free 1 yr. subscription to TOH as well.

The last pic I am sharing is my manicotti! Isn't the pan cool! The manicotti will be gone very soon, but every time I use this pan I will remember my experience at the Taste Of Home Cooking School.

Thanks for dropping by ~S