Co-Chairs:   Ginny Stuart (973-4530)
The Culinary Arts special interest group generally meets on the 1st Friday, every other month. They explore the many facets of food, world cuisines and the culinary arts. It may be researching a particular topic or food, sharing the information, and sampling the chosen food stuff. On the other hand, it might involve a real hands-on experience with it. Not every event will be an eating experience, but our mission is to create, inspire and learn together.

If any of the events below are of interest to you, please contact Ronalee up to 2 months before the event to have her put your name on the list (if room is available).    After that point, contact the hostess to determine if there is room.

December 2nd  Eleven ladies arrived on a very foggy morn on Dec 2nd for the annual Culinary Arts planning session coupled with our 1st ever cookie exchange. The mulled cider aroma was in the air and helped us to quickly get into the spirit of the season. Then it was onto the business at hand of figuring out our schedule for next year which will become more bi-monthly in 2012.  The first event will be a pie/pie crust making event at Dianne Mihocko's on Friday, February 3rd, 2012.   Newcomers are invited to come and find out about our group.

We then proceeded to sample the cookies and all to soon we were loading up our individual containers with 3dz of the most delicious cookies, with accompanying recipes and saying what very fine, cookie makers we were!

November 4th  The Culinary Arts Group held their annual Chef’s Gala. The purpose of this event is to learn more about a chef, their techniques and their philosophy regarding food and cooking. This year’s event featured Chef Michael Chiarello. Vicki Gerber and Linda Haynesworth-Krueger hosted. This is a three part event. At the beginning of the year, the Chef is picked and members start gathering information throughout the year. This is followed by a planning meeting which was held September 30. Courses are randomly drawn and recipes are considered. During the month of October the participants tried recipes and decided what dish they wanted to prepare for the Gala. The next part is a luncheon where participants present their recipes and discuss the dish and things learned. The Gala Luncheon was held Friday, November 4.

October 7th  The Medieval cooking event was a small but successful gathering.  Five culinary members attended.  This event was hosted by Ginny Stuart at her home.  After a cheese and almond milk demonstration, each member was able to customize their cheese with various toppings. We learned historical food facts as we tasted several different dishes covering each food group. Discussions included historical foods from different European regions and how these foods have changed over time to shape the way we currently prepare the foods we eat.

August 5th   Our August Culinary event, "Grilled Bread/Pizza" was attended by twelve Culinary Arts members!    Kathy Lystra and Carolyn Ramsey presented this tasty program at Kathy's home.  They prepared a Grilled Bread lesson that included making the herb bread dough, shaping the dough and then grilling it on a barbeque to perfection.  After the grilling cooked the bread we had a variety of toppings to use on our finished grilled bread or pizzas.   Yet another superior culinary event!

Click here for the yummy pizza sauce recipe.....

April 1st   Members of the Culinary Arts Group attended “A Taste of Oils” event at the home of Vicki Gerber. The afternoon started off with a general discussion of cooking oils. This was followed by a more focused discussion of olive oils which included olive oil tasting.  The group tasted olive oils from a variety of countries made from a variety of olives.  Other tasty treats served during the discussion included an appetizer, crackers and cake; all having olive oil as an ingredient. The co-hostess was Barb Ellis, who recently joined the Culinary Group.