Nicole & Kelsey's Cooking Class Begin

Did anyone watch this last season of Next Food Network Star? Remember Kelsey? She was our favorite. Well, she made it to the final 4 and was cut in Vegas. She is now back in Utah and living around here, newly married and she and long time friend Nicole (who also went to the French Institute of culinary School) have started doing these cooking classes/demonstrations.


So I brought my nice big camera to take lots of pictures of the food (and Kelsey) because we were obsessed with the show. Even our husbands would watch on Sunday nights up at Dave's parents after dinner. We had our opinions on everyone, we would tell Lisa to open her eyes and chill out. It was fun to watch together. Anyway, I left the big camera in the car so I wouldn't be a stalker again. You read it right. Last year while we were all in the Hamptons on vacation (Dave's family) we had an Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa) day. We went and visited different places that were mentioned in her cookbooks. One of them being Iacono Farm, were she buys her organic fresh chicken. The chicken lady gave up Ina's home address (and told us to tell Ina that she sent us), where her show is filmed, and we went to spy and hopefully get a glimpse of Miss Barefoot herself. We did find her house, here is my proof.



The next day I took Dave back to show him where she lived and somehow, don't ask me how, we ended up driving up her driveway! Then I guess Dave can talk me into anything, he convinced me that we are only here once and that I will always regret not doing this, that I need to walk up to her door and see if she was home. Ya right! But I did. It must be the crazy Newman in me. As I approached the front door, she was coming down her stairs inside and saw me, so she opened the door, she looked awful. She asked if there was something she could help me with. I basically told her we are a crazy family from Utah and other states that came to the Hamptons just so we could have a Barefoot Contessa day and make all her yummy recipes that we needed to get the ingredients from her local stores. She thought that was really neat. She told me how she was very sick, but still stuck her hand out to shake mine (I am a total germaphobe now that Brooke was in the hospital from being sick so young with RSV). She said it was very nice to meet you. And I couldn't wait to go and put GermX on my hand to get it clean or at least think it was clean. So now I am the family stalker...



Now back to the cooking class.

Meet Kelsey and Nicole. They make great food. If you want to go to one of their classes here in the valley, go to their blog at Nicole and Kelsey's Cooking Classes.

These are the champagne grapes that were grilled and go with the grilled flat iron steak with blue cheese butter. Delicious.

Kelsey is grilling the peaches for the skillet scones with homemade vanilla bean ice cream. So good, I wanted seconds.


Oh look. I had to take another self-portrait of Holly (my sister-in-law) and I for my family. The tradition lives on. (Man do I look short or what?!)

Ok, let me explain. We could eat more, I had just eaten quite a bit of the appetizer of grilled pita with pesto, white bean puree, and olive tapenade. So my plate wasn't very full. It was more like a very expensive restaurant. Here we have a sampling of the steak with the butter and grapes, and the grilled asparagus with lemon. I didn't want to eat too much, I still had dessert coming.

It was so good. I have to thank Kay for taking all of us to this. I had such a blast talking to Kelsey and getting to know both of them. She was great answering all of our silly questions.