My First Culinary Gig

     I am a believer in "things happen for a reason".  Just when I was dreading my externship, one of my optometry colleagues from Kaiser emailed me about doing a knife demo at her house.  It sounded fun but how qualified am I?  I made sure she advertised it as a class with a culinary student.  Even though the class was a nominal $10 a person, I don't want to mislead.
     Soft snowflakes had begun to fall again that morning. Denver was experiencing record low temperatures.  I was doubtful if many people would show up.  I, for one, would rather be under the covers.  To my surprise, ten people showed up.  Luckily we were able to accommodate everyone in the kitchen.  I made cutting board stabilizers for everyone which they thought was awesome.  Since this was my first class, I didn't know anyone's level of experience.  There were a couple of students who were comfortable with knife work; the rest had no idea even what knife to use.  
     We started with the basics: going over the anatomy of a knife, how to hold it, how to sharpen it, how to hone it.
Then we started dicing onions.  I went around and gave tips and corrected holding patterns.  There were lots of questions.  Some took notes.  There were tears of joy.
     We then moved on to carrots.  I showed them julienne, brunoise, and oblique cuts.  There was a request for how to cut a tomato and a sweet pepper.  
     I was so proud of their progress at the end of two hours.  Everyone was so responsive and inquisitive.  It was fun to share my newfound knowledge with other people.  And I made $90 bucks!  We are already discussing another class in the future.