Ashamedly, I haven’t written anything for a while. I really haven’t cooked for several days – absolutely no motivation since Christmas break, for whatever reason. It’s been so cold I just don’t even want to go out to get food. Very unusual weather for Virginia to be in a deep freeze for this long. My daughter had a Creative Cooking camp this weekend through Girl Scouts, and I volunteered (yes, glutton for punishment) to help supervise. I was in charge of teaching knife safety. I wanted to teach knife skills as well, but that wasn’t in the cards, as the camp was set up to be more of a ‘figure out what you want to cook, figure out how to cook it’ situation. There were around 60 girls between the ages of 13 and 15 – yikes! – to be taught. I brought all my various knives, but didn’t think in advance to get a case of some kind to carry them in. I’ve never had to cart my stash of knives anywhere. I did take my gorgeous new Misono, and they were duly impressed. But, being the sassy age that they are, they wanted no individual knife instruction, and insisted they knew how to dice an onion, or any of the other various vegetables on hand. We were there for two nights, probably too long, and they had 3 cooking competitions. Two nights in a chilly cabin, no showers, and sleeping on an air mattress that had a slow leak was the not-so-fun part. But at the end of the weekend, my daughter’s group took home the grand culinary prize. I’m so proud!!! Of course they were one of only two groups that asked for my help and asked a lot of questions. That other group came in second place.