Cooking with Chef Michelle Bernstein

First off I’d like everyone to know I will be participating in NaPoWriMo once again next month. However my in-laws will be in town this weekend to celebrate Gretchen’s 21st birthday so the first few prompts may be late.

All this month I was writing my #haikuchallenge pieces about cerebral palsy. I managed it every day through Friday March 25 – National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day. But this past weekend I was busy enjoying an online cooking experience with Chef Michelle Bernstein offered by Cocina Corona. It was a fun experience and we made some excellent food, but it was draining. I’m glad it was Saturday so Shawn was here to help with all the prep work and cooking. It even wore him out as he took a nap afterwards before sitting down to enjoy the feast.

First photo is the glass of sangria with the queso dip prep behind the computer. Second photo is Shawn starting on the chicken thighs. The third photo is the queso dip we doubled the chorizo since we bought a package that was 9 oz and I didn’t have anything else planned for chorizo so we cooked it all and added it. Everyone enjoyed it and I was pleasantly surprised it reheated well the next day too. Shawn with his sangria watching over the tomatoes and peppers sauteing. The chicken is finished and ready to serve. They had a plating comparison, but for obvious reasons my plating has never been artistic. Thankfully my children don’t care how their food is presented. Now that they’ve started cooking and see how difficult plating can be, we joke about it. But none of us are overly concerned about presentation as long as the food tastes great. Chef Bernstein and the moderator check out one of the participant’s plate presentation. Selfie after all the hard work. Last but not least serving the chocolate pudding. Yeah we were worn out and not everything was cleaned up yet.

So Sunday was recuperation day. I did get to the clean up too, and we had great leftovers for lunch. Then today I used the #HaikuChallenge word to talk about my fun weekend.

Pudding skin debate
The piece de resistance
Love it or hate it

Okay growing up my mom did not cover pudding while it set. As we were making the pudding Saturday night Chef Bernstein told us to cover it with parchment paper before putting it in the fridge. I was not a fan of pudding skin growing up, so I had no problem letting my sisters grab pudding first. They took the skin and I had the good pudding. As Shawn was covering the pudding, I laughed and told him, You know that’s going to prevent a pudding skin? Thankfully he still covered it. He never told me which way he fell on the pudding skin debate.

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