TAOS Activity #7 - Adult Cupcakes Demo and Wine Tasting

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

6:30 - 9:30pm
Open Kitchen
7115 Leesburg Pike #107
Falls Church, VA 22043

From the website:
"Join Open Kitchen for this delicious demonstration class where Chef Matt will delight and surprise you with a variety of “adult” cupcakes, from his famous Guinness Cupcakes to Red Velvet Chocolate Port Cupcakes. You’ll learn how easy and joyful it is to bake delicious cupcakes from scratch. Once these scrumptious treats are baked and frosted, our Wine Expert Andy Hoyle will step in and share his recommendations for pairing them with an assortment of white, red, and sparkling wines. You will learn which cupcakes pair best with certain wines and why."

This activity was not as hands on as previous ones, but with the holidays right around the corner this demo sounded too fun to pass up. We arrived at Open Kitchen and took our seats at the bar which had an excellent view of the

kitchen. We enjoyed a small appetizer plate of meats and cheeses while the handsome Chef Matt demonstrated how to make the first cupcakes on the menu, Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes with Meyer Lemon Chardonnay Frosting. After he was finished with the demonstration, wine expert Andy explained why he chose each wine to go with the cupcakes. We got to taste each of the cupcakes on the menu and the wines together…and each “taste” of wine was a very generous portion! Wine Expert Andy ended each explanation by saying, “Enjoy…and have fun with it!” in his cheerful southern accent.
The cupcakes tasted better as we drank more wine…was this the reason for the generous pours?

Menu:

Blueberry-Lemon Cupcakes with Meyer Lemon Chardonnay Frosting paired with Osborne Pedro Ximenez Sherry, Santa Maria, Spain

White Chocolate Cupcakes Topped with Fresh Strawberries and Basil paired with Segura Viudas, Aria Pinot Noir Brut, Cava Spain

Lemon-Macadamia Cupcakes with Rosemary paired with Sauvignon Blanc, Vermonte, Casablanca Valley, Chile

Dark Chocolate and Chipotle Cupcakes with Candied Orange Peel paired with Banfi Rosa Regale, Strevi, Italy

Red Velvet Chocolate Port Cupcakes paired with Terra d’Oro Zinfandel Port, Amador County, CA

Guinness Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting paired with Guinness Beer

We enjoyed this activity even though it was a demonstration instead of a hands-on class. I doubt if we will ever make these “adult” cupcakes on our own but it was fun to learn about the wine pairings. Chef Matt was so handsome and fun that some of us are considering signing up for his soufflé class!

Activity #6 - Cheerleading!

October 18, 2010

Oakton, VA
Cost: approx $45 a person included session & lite fare afterwards

http://foxybodyfitness.com

Once a Cheerleader, Always a Cheerleader….

Some of us were thinking that we all might have a similar learning curve on this activity since it had been 15-20 years since the former cheerleaders in the club actually cheered. This was NOT the case. Some members excelled….. so, RAH RAH RAH Kristin & Summer!!!!

To others (okay – maybe just OTHER) the only spirit they were able to capture was the spirit of Club TAOS… by stepping out of their comfort zone to TRY ANYTHING ONCE.

This activity was our first at-home activity and we had Christie from FoxyBodyFitness come to Shana’s house to instruct us. Christie’s company specializes in at-home personal training but Christie was kind enough to customize an hour session for us which focused on cheering. Christie was perfect –she had even created a TAOS cheer for us to learn!

In addition to learning 2 cheers, we learned how to stand and speak terms unfamiliar to some of us such as “just call it.”

We really had a blast – Ashli claimed to never have cheered but was soon teaching the “Victory” move to the hopeless member. Kristin was nominated TAOS Captain because she seemed to bounce right back into her highschool cheerleading days– complete with ponytails… and Summer deserves a big cheer herself for returning to her first post-baby activity with such spirit.

If our enthusiasm is not obvious to you in the video below, please know that we had it in our hearts…

After Christie left, we sat around Shana's kitchen table for some light dinner, drinks, and discussion. We LOVED our cheerleading session and hope to work with Christie again someday!!

Activity #5 - Cupcakes, Actually!

July 28, 2010
Cupcake Tasting ~ Cupcakes, Actually!
Fairfax, VA
Cost: approx $13 per person for cupcakes and bottled water, plus drinks & dinner at Coastal Flats
http://cupcakesactually.com/

We switched things up a bit this time... meeting first at Coastal Flats for drinks and dinner and debriefing of the "much ado about nothing" experience at Judy Harris' Cooking School (see Activity #4). We quickly moved onto other topics and simply catching up with one another and revisting summer vacations, etc. While three out of four TAOS members were getting their drink on - and someone was spilling her food and John Daly's on the table - our mama-to-be member "allowed" her sistas to indulge in Labor and Delivery talk. Just what every new mom needs/wants to hear 10 days before she's about to give birth, right?!?! This discussion only lasted so long, as we all realized that we'd digressed WAY too far from our original purpose of meeting (TAOS Activity #5)... and more food and drinks were (perhaps?) spilled and our too young and too full of himself waiter had one too many "cute"anecdotes... SO, we paid our bill and headed down the lane of Fairfax Corner to Cupcakes Actually, where our activity was tasting and evaluating a variety of cupcakes. After a rocking, yet somewhat amusing, start to our evening, we thought this sounded pretty fun and delicious!

The Cupcakery's website boasts:

"We are Cupcake Snobs."

"We are not bashful about our feelings for our cupcake beauties. They are made by our chefs … right in our shop kitchen in bustling Fairfax Corner. These gems aren’t your mom’s cupcakes (no offense to your mom)."

"Our weekly cupcake lineup features an exquisite variety of gourmet flavors. Our three exclusive signature cupcakes are dipped – lavishly bathed in top-coats of chocolate and caramel. Using personally-crafted recipes using local and premium ingredients, our cupcakes are made fresh from scratch daily."

This sounded like our kind of place! Indulging in the best of the best - a personal motto for many of us! Also, we had done our pre-activity homework which included: At Cupcakes Actually, we will each select two (yes, two) of their signature cupcakes priced at $3.05-$3.50 each. We will have a set of criteria by which we will conduct our own "tasting" of the cupcakes. Yes, you have to share. Upon selecting your cupcakes, you will need to consider the following:

1) The first selection should be your no-brainer, go-to cupcake -- something that you would pick without thinking twice. The one cupcake that your tummy must have. (Three words for me: Cuckoo for Coconut!)

2) The second cupcake will be a selection of something you *think* you would like, but might be a tad out of your comfort zone.

3) We must all select different cupcakes so there will be discussion. Be prepared to fight for and defend your selection.

4) You will have a "tasting sheet" for us to conduct our own cupcake tasting. Additionally, we will discuss why we chose the cupcakes we did, any emotions it evokes or fond memories that arise from the flavor, appearance and cupcake name.

So we walked up to Cupcakes Actually hoping to taste the top 2 cupcakes on our respective lists... there was a line out the door which we took as a good sign! Upon arriving at Cupcakes Actually, we had limited choices of what cupcakes we could purchase - no fighting or defending of choices here! None of the cupcakes featured on their website were available on this night... so with our mission in mind, we purchased a dozen cupcakes - at least one of each kind offered in the bakery and doubled up on a couple flavors in order to complete our dozen. We sat outside on this steamy July night and began to taste and rate our cupcakes - two different cupcakes a piece - and then we passed our cupcakes around the table so that we actually tasted 8 different cupcakes! (Sidebar: the other 4 out of the dozen were saved for our husbands - aren't we thoughtful?) We shared our reviews and rating sheet for each one we "taste tested." The clear consensus was that most of the cupcakes were dry... most of the icing was too sweet... and most of us wouldn't spend $3.50 on this kind of dessert again if we had to choose between Cupcakes Actually and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream right around the corner. There was ONE cupcake that got rave reviews from all the sistas - the flourless chocolate cupcake with decadent chocolate icing was delish!

All in all, it was a fun, low-key event filled with laughter-induced sugar highs! Wonder what will be next for Activity #6? Stay tuned...

Activity # 4 – Herbs & Edible Flowers Cooking Class

Tuesday, June 8
Judy Harris Cooking School
Alexandria, VA
Cost: $65 per person, included dinner on premises
http://www.judyharris.com/

New TAOS rule: While on premises of an activity, please refrain from mentioning that there is a blog.

From the Judy Harris Cooking School website: "Everyone raves about our herb classes. Spring is the perfect time to explore growing, cooking and decorating with fresh herbs from your garden, pots, or market! Students visit our garden and pick a variety of fragrant herbs and colorful edible flowers. We will prepare and serve a light spring dinner. Explore how to start or enhance your herb garden, selecting the best varieties, discover top local herb markets, fun cooking techniques, pretty presentations and much more. Take home five popular herbs and a practical herb-growing guide."

Those of us who had never been to a cooking class might have expected a large kitchen and were a bit surprised when we pulled up to the modest home of Judy Harris. However, Judy greeted us with a warm welcome (as did Inge, the lovely assistant) and directed us to wash our hands and take a seat so that we could get started. A look around the kitchen let us know that Judy wasn’t one for fancy or flashy modern cooking appliances - except, of course, for the prized Vitamix 5000.

The class began with some explanation about herbs and then a stroll through Judy’s herb garden, carefully cultivated over the past few decades. We spent a lot of time in this garden learning how to smell herbs, grow them and use them. Hmmm…did we see another kind of “herb” in the very back of her garden? We would not have been surprised given Judy’s “retro” (polite way of saying stuck in 1970)
lifestyle.

The first recipe to make and enjoy was the banana mint daiquiris. How deliciously different… and the class certainly got a bit louder from this point on. We divided into groups to make the rest of the recipes and made the wise decision of including our new friend Ruth so that we didn’t have to work quite as hard. Ruth was fun and knew everybody that was anybody in the DC metropolitan area.

Our group had the apple muffins and the sage butter. The other group had the lovage soup. You might think that is a typo – it’s not – it is lovage and if you have never tried it, you probably never will. We prepared our recipes in the food processor and did not get to use the prized Vitamix 5000 - that was for the lovage soup group.

Judy’s somewhat small kitchen got much smaller and louder during the cooking time. The groups were trying to quickly prepare their recipes with little instruction on empty stomachs after a daiquiri. This part of the class reminded us of 7th grade Home Economics - Judy would not let anyone talk while she was talking, and told us we were measuring the flour wrong because we did not “fluff” it first. It quickly got much later and was pitch dark by the time the lemon-thyme chicken was thrown onto the grill. Some students appeared a bit cranky – maybe even one or two members of TAOS - but eventually we all sat down to a delicious meal in Judy’s 1970s decorated dining room. When we say delicious, we mean it! Dessert was rosemary sorbet made in an interesting antique ice cream machine…definitely a 1972 original model!

It seemed as though we had all been through a lot to prepare this meal together and it showed. We spent dinner time getting to know each other even more and at some point we spilled the beans on the blog. Judy (& Ruth) quickly wanted all of the club & website information “this is going to be on the internet!!!??" Uh oh. We tried to remain politely tightlipped and said our goodbyes. This was a great activity – a wonderful adventure & certainly a night we will never forget.

Activity # 3 - Bottling Beer

March 11, 2010

Shenandoah Brewing Company

Alexandria, VA
Cost: $32 per person, included dinner on premises
http://www.shenandoahbrewing.com/ From their website: You will make an appointment for bottling at the time you brew. When you come to bottle, your beer will be carbonated and ready to drink. You will put lables on your bottles, wash bottles in your bottle washer and fill the bottles with beer in our automatic fillers. You can sample your own beer while you are bottling. Bottling will take you about 2 hours.

Alright, let’s re-write this for them. First, a sentence needs to be added about NOT changing the scheduled beer bottling date. (We had a few things come up including a broken limb.) This place is closed MOST days of the week - making it quite difficult to cancel in advance. Second, we did not get to label our beers on this night because of the condensation. We did get to see how they cute they turned out - misspellings and all! Third, we feel that the term “automatic filler” is perhaps a bit misleading!!! And 2 hours? Ha!

Since this is was second trip to Shenandoah Brewing Company (See Activity #2 – Making, Mixing & Brewing Beer), we strolled in like we knew everything, instantly recognizing the lovely beer smell and familiar cafeteria-like lighting! This time we were assigned to Joe. As soon as he opened his mouth we realized he was a bit irritated that we had to reschedule our bottling date… (twice, but who is counting?) However, once he chatted with us a few minutes and noticed Summer’s cast, he kindly waived our no-show fee and became our friend. I guess people have been rescheduling and over-using the broken limb excuse.

After some brief instruction, we were hard at work – quickly realizing that this bottling process was not going to be as “fun” as brewing the beer. We had 5 cases of beer to sanitize… luckily, there was a user-friendly machine for this and Summer was able to help us push the button. After our bottles were clean, we listened to more instruction from Joe on how to fill and cap our bottles. He described what would happen if we failed to WIPE the bottom (butt) of our beer bottles “it will smell like ___” or how if we didn’t correctly line up the neck of the beer in the filling machine we would be “fighting a losing battle.”

The next few hours were work! We had to individually fill each bottle of beer, and then cap (not easy, clearly a “capping elbow” hazard) and then wipe the butt of the beer. We sampled our beer (thanks Kristin!) while rotating stations (since there were four of us) and soon it seemed completely appropriate for Ashli to turn to Shana and ask loudly “Did you wipe?” after Shana handed her a beer. What? Just hours before we were so lady-like, weren’t we? Here the four of us stood with sticky hands in the back of a terribly lit beer factory asking each other about wiping butts… This must be what this club is all about!

Joe explained that our beer needed to stay in the bottle for 2 weeks before we drank it so that the carbonation would settle and the full flavor would come through. Our expert opinion was that our beer tasted delicious, but was missing that “nutty” taste… oh, right, it needs to “NUT UP!”
After a tired recap - “I liked this activity” - over microwaved chili & sandwiches, we headed home with our 28-29 bottles of beer each to enjoy – and label - at our convenience.
We really did enjoy this activity - and most of us have been enjoying the beer too! One of us will need to wait until mid-August...

Activity #2 – Making, Mixing & Brewing Beer

January 16, 2010
Shenandoah Brewing Company
Alexandria, VA

Cost: $50 pp, plus flight of beers and lunch on premises

http://www.shenandoahbrewing.com/

Shenandoah Brewing Company is the DC area's one and only brew-on-premise -- a Do-It-Yourself brewery. And it totally rocks. We definitely kicked things up from the somber-December-volunteering event with this gig. With steam kettles, wort chillers, temperature-controlled fermentation and aging rooms, automatic bottle washers and fillers, Club TAOS was totally set to chef up a mean batch (aka 5 cases) of our very own brew: Nutty TAOS Ale (a light nut brown ale… not too girly, not too lame, and tasty enough to impress our husbands – we hope).

While we did all the brewing, Andrew was there to help. And help, he did. It was 10 AM on a sunny, frigid Saturday and we were sipping samples of beer as soon as we got in the door. Helpful. He helped us with the recipe, ingredients, and guidance. But, he left us quite alone a bit too so we had plenty of guidance and knowledge-sharing from the older gentlemen who have been brewing together for nearly 10 years at Shenandoah. The ingredients we used were the same ingredients used by our commercial brewing operation - fresh grains, pellet hops, and yeast appropriate to the beer style.

Brewing is definitely a social activity. We made a few friends during the 3+ hours it took to brew. They helped us understand that we needed to scrape the bubbles off the sides of the boilers, stir slowly, watch the heat temp and repeat. While this activity was a bit labor intensive, super scientific and a bit stinky at moments, there were several periods of idle time too, making it easy for us to sip, brew, eat, sip, brew, stir, eat… Waiting time can be filled with darts (we did not), foosball (we did not), and checking out the old school beer can collection that lines the bathroom walls (we did – many times). Let’s not forget the time we spent creating our custom labels for our bottles, our little Nutty TAOS Ale.

Enter Chemistry 101: We made alcohol!

Recipe for a successful Nut Brown Ale

Sing along: "Roll out the barrell..." (yes, there is a reason this song exists -- we had to kick our beer down the alley, rolling it to 'stir' it all up!)