1 point – Cooking Something New – (Barbara) – CHINESE DUMPLINGS

How could I not take advantage of access to someone who can teach me how to make my own Chinese Dumplings? A Meetup group of women met at the home of our teacher, Leigh, who is a foodie and loves cooking with exotic spices and making international food. She was a great teacher, showing us how to create our dumplings and giving tips along the way. As a devotee of the show, Next Food Network Star, I know how important those tips are when doing a food demo so kudos to Leigh. Although my dumplings may not have looked perfect, they tasted pretty darn good for a first effort. It remains to be seen whether I’ll actually do them on my own but the experience was a lot of fun.

1 point – Cooking with a “C” ingredient CARROT MUFFINS

We really enjoy baked goods made with carrots but have never tried our hand at it before. Since muffins are a special temptation for both of us (Barbara loves the muffin top and Laura the whole thing), we thought we’d attempt a Glazed Carrot Muffin recipe. We just love when recipes say that prep time is 20 minutes. Hah! This one was very time consuming but we plugged on and came up with these muffins. Were they worth the mess and fuss? Probably not but not terrible considering we were doing a low fat recipe. Maybe for “D” month we’ll attempt something more Delicious.

1 point – Barbara – LEARNING CENTER – Cakewalk

Ever wonder why something you think is pitifully easy is called a “cakewalk”? I did so I did some research into it and was appalled to learn that it had an origin in racism. Cakewalk originated in the South of the 19^th century. It was a dance where slaves were invited to dress up and put on airs of the white aristocracy. The couple who did the best imitation won a cake, baked I would guess by another slave. Even though the cakewalk was invented to mock the aristocracy, they were allowed to do that and in doing so, the plantation owner was establishing his authority even more strongly. Even worse, it developed into a minstrel show wherein white actors in blackface made fun of the efforts of the slaves to mock them. Now the term means something so easy you can just walk and get rewarded.