**Food Friday** Home Cooking

I don't get out much due to the twenty-four hour nature of my job. With Husband only getting one day off, it has to be something I reeaaalllly want to do to go by myself. When Taste of Home Cooking School showed up on our local casino's web site (which I have to check to see which events are going on for work, I promise), I told myself that it would be the perfect way to spend a little quality time with myself. Turned out that was very true and I was accompanied by about five hundred or so people over the age of sixty as well. Apparently, I am an old soul.

I ended up arriving about half hour before the show actually started because I wanted to get my first run on my new 10k training program in. The only bad part about that was I didn't have a chance to eat anything before going to the show. I also had to use the bathroom something fierce but didn't manage to do that until halfway through the show which I'm pretty sure caused some permanent damage. Never again. Because I did show up late, I didn't really get to check out the vendors except for one but from what I could see I didn't really miss much (tried to get the Mary Kay vendor to talk to me but she was working on something and wasn't having it, oh well).

It's no secret that I heart free stuff. The goody bag wasn't too bad, there was just a said lack of snacks (cooking shows and airlines: what do they have against snacks?!). These were my fave items:

 

The food and wine pairing wheel. Now this I might actually use. I do not pretend to have any clue that certain wines taste good with certain things. If I like it, I drink it, whenever and with whatever. Not sure how accurate this is, but if I only invite people over who are also clueless, I shouldn't have a problem.

 

This just made me laugh (as did the two little old ladies at my table who I swear reminded me of these two:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169499/

I'm not sure if I'm going to be extolling the glories of pork from now on (or ever) but it put a smile on my face.

The setup of the cooking show was really great. They had one camera set up directly over what the presenter was making. There were also several giveaways during the show and at the end they gave away everything that was made. Since I did not win any of it, I will be featuring a few of the recipes I thought looked the best over the next couple of weeks.

All in all, I think I would do it again. While I rather enjoyed being by myself (I enjoyed chatting with ladies in my area), I think it would be just as fun with a few girlfriends as well. Learned some new things, got a few (useful) free items and got out of the house on a rainy evening. Definitely a success.

 Have you ever been to Taste of Home Cooking School or other cooking show? Would you do it again?