After school classes

It turns out that I am taking two classes this month, the OSHA 30 hour safety course for work, then Sonji and I are also taking a cooking class at a community college here in town.  New Orleans-style, Spanish and French style cooking.  This week we cooked chicken and sausage gumbo, fried green tomatoes, BBQ shrimp and bread pudding. It's a 3 hour class that goes by very quickly, then we get to sit down and eat it when we're done!  It's a blast, actually, which I didn't really expect, but it's good to connect with a friend who's a co-worker occasionally to get away from always talking about the madness that is Katrina Recovery.  Her aunt, who is an amazing cook, showed some of us gals how to cook gumbo 2 weeks ago before she left to go back hom to Cali.  This gumbo was similiar, but it had a few differences in the cooking method, although both their roux's looked the same, like crunchy peanut butter, see......

Sonji didn't quite get through the entire recipe before she started cooking so there was still a 1/2 stick of butter left that should have been in this pan.  Shore wuz good tho'!

The below shot is the Gumbo pot from Auntie's recipe.

and Courtney diggin' all up in the Auntie's gumbo.