Even if you’ve never attended a ‘Lunch and Learn’ meeting, I think you could get the concept – somebody presents, you eat, you learn. Today that’s my pun for learning how to eat lunch at school in the Teaching Kitchen (TK for short).
First a description: if you’ve never been to Greystone (that’s the name of the CIA’s St. Helena campus), Google it. It’s exactly like Hogwarts with stone walls and a center staircase three stories high – that I haven’t yet seen move, but it’s only day three. On the top floor on the north side of the building is the TK. Rows and rows of culinary training kitchens – stoves, sinks, ovens, repeat – an eating area in the middle with tons of tables and chairs, and the bakery kitchen on the other side – more stoves, sinks, ovens, repeat.
Lunch is served from noon until 2:00PM. Yesterday I got up there about 10 minutes after noon because of a stop to the ladies. Holy crap – all the good stuff was gone! As you read yesterday, I still secured some lovely stewed vegetables and salad.
Today, bad move. I turned up about 20 minutes after a ridiculously exciting conversation with the staff of the Strategic Initiatives Group (I’ll have to describe that in another post). This time like nada on the food. Whole buffet tables of empty platters and serving bowls with the remnants of lovely dishes. I scrounged up a whole leaf romaine salad, again with Green Goddess Dressing, a square of a decadent quiche made with gruyere and beet greens (so fattening and delicious!), and a simple, but tasty quinoa salad. It was a less intensive version of my Quinoa Spinach Salad with just walnuts and dried cranberries.
Tomorrow…12 noon sharp…TK buffet table…I’m coming for you!
Leave a Reply