I did a cooking demo the other night at East West Bookshop, in the Roosevelt district. It presented some interesting challenges, not least because there was no cooking equipment. Also, they billed the event as "A Vegan Guide to Seattle's Farmers' Markets", so I needed to come up with something appropriate to that title.
I decided to do Rice Paper Spring Rolls, because I could cook the noodles in advance and the rest of the process involves no cooking. The recipe calls for salad greens mixed in with the noodles, so I went looking for some local salad greens at the University District on Saturday, but there were none to be had. It's been a really rough year for local produce. I did manage to find a hearty mix on Sunday at the Ballard Market, grown by Colinwood Farms. It had a number of varieties of seasonal greens I could recognize as well as quite a few that I couldn't, and that gave me a great entry point. I talked about the different leaves, passed some around, and encouraged folks to taste them
The event was scheduled for an hour and a half and that seemed daunting to me. Most cooking demos last about 40 minutes. The folks at the bookstore said it was okay to end early, but it ended up running almost the entire time. I realized that I can talk about farmers' markets and local foods all day, as long as the audience seems halfway engaged.
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