You probably know by now that I don’t like mushrooms. Scratch that: I hate mushrooms. So when my cooking instructor told us in the last class that there were no more mushroom dishes, I was ecstatic.

Well, guess what? He lied. Lied! Not only did we have a mushroom dish this week, but there are mushrooms in another dish next week. Ack!

Luckily, my classmates were kind enough to allow me to remove the mushrooms from our chicken dish. And the instructor said I could leave them off next week’s meat dish, too. Were they being nice, or just trying to get me to shut up? You decide…

Anyway, this week we made two meals:

Chicken fricassee:

And baked salmon:

We actually cut up our own whole chicken -- and by we, I mean someone other than me. You all should know me well enough by now to know I’m not going anywhere near chicken innards. That’s what we pay butchers for. And if you think about it, I’m actually helping the economy by keeping the local butchers in business. Yeah, that’s it.

But enough about the meals. Let's get on to what you really want to know about, dessert. We made some truly delectable chocolate fondue:

And what’s fondue without things to dip in it?

Yeah, I pretty much made a pig out of myself. If you can’t make a pig of yourself over chocolate, then what good is it?

All in all, it was a good class. I probably won’t make the chicken dish, even without the mushrooms, because it’s just not my thing (I prefer grilled or baked chicken), but the baked salmon dish was really nice and light. I’ll have recipes up soon.

Next week we tackle Italian cuisine. Ole!