Last week dd17 and I went to the Taste of Home Cooking School. (I mentioned getting the tickets a while back at my old blog.) It wasn’t what I expected, but we still enjoyed the demonstration part of it.

The girl who “taught the class” was young and had a good sense of humor. She worked quickly and prepared nine or ten recipes in about two hours, with several breaks in between. We were given copies of the recipes, which was helpful. She also demonstrated some different techniques that I was aware of but my daughter was not, so I’m glad she had the chance to be there. (Last night she successfully made the chocolate lava cake recipe we saw demonstrated that night…were they good!)

The best thing about the evening was the chance to spend some time alone with my daughter. But the program itself was a bit disappointing. The highly promoted free samples turned out to be a packet of seasoned bread crumbs, another seasoning packet and some plastic bags for steaming veggies in the microwave. There were a few coupons and a lot of ads. There were no samples of the recipes demonstrated. All of the food made that night was given away on serving dishes as door prizes.

Oh, yes, the door prizes. There were many of them, and they were handed out throughout the evening. But it seemed as though quite of few of them went to people sitting together. In fact, my daughter counted five prizes going to people sitting together in one short row, which seemed pretty coincidental in a packed auditorium of about 700 people. Most of the door prize entries were not drawn out of the bin right before being awarded (we couldn’t see most being taken out at all), so we suspected a bit of collusion.

The worst part of the evening was not the fault of the program’s producers. I got there thirty minutes before showtime but the only available seats were way in back. Soon after I sat down, four young adults sat down two rows behind me. They spent the entire first half of the program talking, and were they ever awful. The things they said about our country, certain presidential and vice-presidential candidates and even some of the people in the audience were sickening. I kept giving them the evil eye, but they kept talking. I had to pray for self-control. God answered my prayer in another way: they never came back after intermission. But I’ll tell you, it was depressing to hear how crass and depraved some young people are today. More than ever, we need to pray for our country.