Disclosure: I received compensation from Feast for writing this post. All opinions are most definitely my own.

Do you cook?

Well.  Bully for you.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m not much of a chef.

I’ve tried. Really, I have.  Years ago, I took a series of cooking classes that were taught by a woman that looked like so:

Source

Who, when I asked the most basic of questions, gave me answers like so:

Source

Yeah.  You can probably guess how those classes went over.  And I’ve had an irrational fear of organized cooking lessons {referred to in culinary therapy circles as IFOOCL} ever since.

All the same, I was intrigued when introduced to Feast, an online cooking resource that claims that anyone can learn to cook.

Anyone?

Online?

In the privacy of my own home?

I furtively agreed to give Feast a test run, knowing that if things went awry, I could always drown my sorrows with a glass or four of  Cabernet and an evening of Feast bashing on Twitter.

It was my intent to have Twin A help me on this little project.  She? Is a little chef in the making. Remember?

But alas, Twin A has been away at camp this week.  Without my little Betty Crocker, I looked around the homestead and fixed my attention upon the boys.

“Guys! Let’s cook!” I exhorted in the most enthusiastic intonation I could muster.

They made themselves scarce until I hog tied coaxed them back to the kitchen with the promise that we would be using my laptop to learn.  I’ve found that my Cherubs can be talked into anything with the allure of a keyboard and wifi dangling in front of them like a proverbial carrot.

We began with Feast’s seven day crash course.  It’s free when you sign up…why not, right?

Day One was entitled “How to Use Your Tongue.” There were no R-rated shenanigans…just a brief lesson in trusting your instincts and playing with flavors in your spice drawer.

After some blind taste-testing, The Small One found that he had an affinity for Mexican spices…

…paired with ginger. My IFOOCL flared up a bit when I saw this, but the lesson was about trusting our palates, so I rolled with it.

So far, so good.

We then moved on to Day Two, where the most basic of basics was covered:  How to Hold and Use a Knife.

This is the point at which I began to fall in love with Feast.  Within minutes, My twelve year-old Twin B was wielding a knife like a pro and chopping up vegetables for in preparation for Day Three.

Am I the only person on the planet that didn’t know that this is the correct way to chop? Fingers and thumb of the non-cutting hand behind the blade serving as a guide.

Purty. Or as purty as raw diced spuds can be, anyway.

On Days Three and Four, entitled “How to Cook Everything” and “Order of Operations,” we were challenged to use our preferred spice combinations along with the veggies that we had chopped and saved in order to prepare a simple dish.

You are now so smitten with this image of cute puppies that you have completely forgotten that there was to be a picture of spicy sauteed potatoes here. Let’s just say that Gwen the rescued Foxhound-Beagle Mix kept me away from the stove for 15 minutes, during which time the poor potatoes had our smoke alarm singing. This is no fault of Feast’s.

Day Four’s lesson was about How to Fix Broken Dishes.  And no, it did not involve superglue…it was a series of quick-fixes for food disasters.

Chili too spicy?  Feast has an answer for that.

Sauce too runny?  They’ve got that covered, too.

Unburning diced potatoes?  Dude.  They’re not magicians.  But still…I have printed out these fixes and tucked them into my recipe box for quick reference.  I love how Feast readily admits that things can and very well may go awry. Such is the nature of the cooking beast.

The rest of the series was equally applicable:  Sexy Food and The Final Project challenged us to create palatable looking dishes as well as to take on one of the recipes from their online recipe book.

Feast’s crash course put my mind at ease and made my tragic case of IFOOCL nothing but an unpleasant memory and an unsavory acronym.

Now…if you’re a bit more advanced than I? Feast has online recipe tutorials that would impress even the snobbiest of food snobs.

Fire Roasting

Searing the Perfect Steak

All presented in an extremely palatable, non-threatening, often hilarious format.

Want to get your Feast on?

Of course you do.  Sign up for the free Crash Course here…

And use the following code to receive an enrollment discount  on any of their already modestly priced recipe lessons:  spincycle50

Before you go, tell me in a comment, please:  Have you taken cooking classes before? If so, how did they go over?