Thursday, September 12, 2013

Meanwhile, Over on the Wine Side...A Guest Blog by Taste and Savor Intern Michelle


Week three is complete! I experienced the wine side of Taste and Savor, after helping with two wine events. I loved Taste Club! Not only is it wonderful to work with Nancy, Lea, and the Cook’s Warehouse Brookhaven staff but getting to participate at the same time. Nancy takes care of me by providing wine (essential ingredient to intern success)... and, needless to say, provides food too. While tasting wines in the class, I quickly learned I am nowhere near a wine connoisseur. As Nancy was asking the class to smell the wine and tell how what they smelled, my only answer was “GRAPES!”  Meanwhile, the class was more educated on this than me by shouting out words like honeysuckle, plum, blackberry, and pear. Good thing more of these classes are coming! Of the wines I tasted, Cotes Du Rhone red wine was a new wine I really loved. My hope at the end of the internship is that I will be bilingual, adding wine language to my resume, with all credit given to Chef Nancy.

** Side Note: I look 15, but I’m actually 22, so no worries, I can drink the wine :)

We had a cooking demonstration at Piedmont Cancer Wellness for GRILLING. Dietician Shayna and Chef Nancy teamed up and taught about the health benefits of grilling foods. They provided tips to cut down the carcinogenic components that can come from the black grilling marks. Nancy and Lea revealed a way to do that by taking your meat of choice and placing it on the grill only to get slight grill marks, not cooking it all the way through, and then finishing the cooking process in the oven. This way, you get fabulous grill marks and no carcinogenic compounds. Nancy shared a tip to keeping your grill seasoned and oiled by cutting a red onion in half, sticking a fork into the rounded side, dipping the flat side of the onion in olive oil and rubbing it all over your grill. Genius! 


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