The Creative Connection

Give the gift of healthy food and package it up pretty! Food bloggers, crafty bloggers and their followers unite with this action-packed class brimming with healthy recipe ideas for daily nourishment AND gift giving. Wouldn't it be great to receive or give a gorgeous package of beautiful chocolates or cookies that were actually nutritious and super tasty? We often spend countless hours making and baking, but feel guilty actually eating and enjoying our treats since they’re not nearly as healthy as they could be. This class will focus on gluten-free, “super food,” and vegan goodies. Seasoned health-food blogger Julie Cove will inspire many creative ideas for adapting your favorite recipes. With one hands-on recipe and packaging, and four demo recipes, you’ll learn healthy eating tips and creative packaging ideas to share your homemade healthy goodies. You’ll also glean ideas from Julie's expert design tips for styling your treats—just in case you’d like to create and record some for your own blog. Using the latest crafting mediums and ordinary items, your packages will delight the senses. This workshop is like no other, tapping into your creative genius for whipping up some nourishing delights and presenting them for the WOW factor! Next Holiday Season, your family and friends will be impressed and grateful for your healthy treats!  ..more »

Come learn the basics of making homemade jam. This class covers the basics of the water bath canning method, necessary equipment, ingredient selection, and achieving a set (what makes jam jam). Students will receive hands-on instruction, printed materials, and a jar of homemade jam to take away.

Do you dream about escaping the urban cubicle scene for your own farmstead and country lifestyle? Come for an inspiring jump-start to bring your vision into reality with strategies and ideas for farm-based businesses, from running a bed & breakfast to growing your own food to living off-grid. Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko, co-authors of Rural Renaissance and ECOpreneuring, share an insider’s rural reality check, covering a diversity of approaches to sustainable living in the countryside. Launch the farmstead life of your dreams with a boost from seasoned insiders, the husband-and-wife team of Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko, who left successful corporate careers over a decade ago to launch their farm and B&B in Wisconsin, Inn Serendipity. Learn from their experience as well as case studies of other successful farm start-up stories and leave with a toolkit of business ideas and sustainable living strategies. From B&Bs to selling at farmers’ markets to running your farm on renewable energy, Lisa and John share ideas rooted in the reality that rural living is not all romantic bliss; it’s a lifestyle based on passion, hard work, strong community ties and a good sense of humor when turkeys run away and zucchinis don’t sprout. Lisa and John also share tips for integrating family and children into farm businesses and connecting with community, including homeschooling and hosting lots of potlucks!  ..more »

Registration Closed. Curious about probiotics? Interested in how fermentation delivers better digestion, enhanced nutrition, and a spectrum of tangy and robust flavors? From cultured yogurts to probiotic cheeses to naturally pickled produce to wild yeast sourdoughs to vinegars, fermentation has been treasured over the centuries as a simple food preservation method and an essential for good health. It’s time to taste the difference that live food makes. Let’s Ferment! is a three-hour course that will teach you about the benefits and preparation of home-fermented food. Besides enjoying a wild food-sampling party, you’ll also learn how to make and use yogurt cheese, and discover techniques and recipes for putting up lacto-fermented produce and condiments—no canning required. Genevieve will teach you how to make, maintain, and use a sourdough starter in artisan breads that take just minutes a loaf. You’ll also hear about fermenting your own apple cider vinegar from the fruit scraps you’d normally toss out or compost. Attendees will go home with fermenting goodies and favors, a wealth of recipes, and a fermentation troubleshooting guide. Take Let’s Ferment! and fill your kitchen and your belly with good nutrition gone wild!

The best place to start eating CLEAN is exactly where you are! Join bestselling cookbook author, Terry Walters, for a workshop that will fuel your passion for cooking and inspire you to nourish yourself and your family for a healthy and vibrant life. Whether you’re just bringing awareness to your food choices for the first time, or are far along in your journey, this workshop will give you the inspiration, the motivation and the tools to eat clean and live well! Your CLEAN START will include:

• Setting intention exercise for sustainable good health
• Overview of the basics of eating clean
• Hands-on cooking class
• Group discussion and plenty of Q & A
• Information about the health benefits of the seasonal produce featured
• Five CLEAN recipes
• Complete shopping list

Discover how eating clean can benefit your unique constitution and lifestyle so that together we can enjoy easy, delicious, and sustainable good health for ourselves and our planet. *For those with food sensitivities, this class is vegan and gluten-free.

NOTE: If you want this class make sure to pick Friday TCC handmade. If you have trouble registering, please contact us at tccevent@yahoo.com and we will do it for you with an email.

Come explore the world of healthy baking (and eating!) with Green Market Baking Book author Laura Martin. Using natural sweeteners and whole grains, Laura will share the secrets of substituting healthy ingredients in your favorite recipes. You are encouraged to bring along your own recipes and Laura will show you how to make substitutions that are delicious as well as good for you (including many ideas for gluten-free baking and healthy kid’s snacks). In the workshop, you will make sweet, moist, Mexican chocolate cupcakes with the most creamy, delicious chocolate icing you can imagine—all without refined sugar! Come and learn this new way of baking. You, your family, and your body will appreciate it. Workshop agenda:

1. Exploration of the idea of healthy baking.  Discussion of ingredients:  natural sweeteners, grains, and the use of local and organic produce. Question/answer about “Why local?” “Why organic?” “Why no sugar?”
2. Make the chocolate icing for the cupcakes, put in ‘fridge to thicken.
3. Substitutions: each participant will bring her favorite recipe and Laura will take each one and explain how to make substitutions to make it more healthy by using natural sweeteners, fewer fats, and less gluten.  She’ll also have suggestions for baking things that are vegan. This will include many demonstrations.
4. Make the Mexican chocolate cupcakes. Ice when cool. Discussion of fun and interesting ways to decorate, including the use of edible flowers.
5. Sit and enjoy the sweet results of our labor.

What’s the key ingredient to eating healthy, saving money and stewarding the planet for generations to come? A return to our nation’s organic farmstead roots of independence, self-sufficiency and frugality, blended with the spice of modern living and a passion for transforming our planet. Join Lisa Kivirist, author of Farmstead Chef, and trade in toxins, food additives and fake food for homegrown and homemade cooking, from preserving the harvest to stocking your pantry. Author, farmer and innkeeper Lisa Kivirist will share simple, practical tips for organic eating on a budget, offering strategies that celebrate the homespun frugality spirit of our nation’s farmstead roots. Do you feel overwhelmed by all the expensive organic options there? Lisa simplifies strategies for healthful food purchases and cooking approaches, wrapped in her philosophy that eating should be a celebrated, joyful act that strengthens our families, communities and spirit with every bite. Lisa will share recipes from her new cookbook, Farmstead Chef, that showcase a range of recipes for homemade and healthier pantry staples, like hot cocoa mix, vanilla extract and even maraschino cherries and graham crackers. Value-packed strategies for shopping the supermarket and farmer’s market will be covered as well as buying bulk and creative approaches to preserving your garden harvest.  ..more »

Registration Closed. There’s a reason that pickling with vinegar is one of America’s favorite methods of food preservation—it’s as addictive as it is delicious!  If you think pickling is complicated, mysterious, or limited to cucumbers, you can think again. Pickle It! will show you that preserving and enhancing flavors with brine is easy enough for beginners, but delicious and sophisticated enough for well-seasoned chefs… Pickle It! is a workshop that will give beginning brine-lovers the confidence they need to tackle their garden’s bounty with gusto. As a student in Pickle It!, you’ll learn how to make basic recipes with anything-but-basic flavors. Genevieve will teach you the difference between canned pickles, refrigerator pickles, and freezer pickles, demonstrate a cornucopia of recipes, and teach you how to make the exotic and exciting pickles you just can’t find in grocery stores. You’ll also pick up serving suggestions, experiment with different seasonings, enjoy a pickle sampling party, and go home with pickling goodies, favors, and recipes. Abandon all fear—Pickle It! will have you hitting the brine in no time.

Registration Closed. Alright ladies...it's time to reclaim the backyard barbecue. You can still let your fella fiddle on the grill if you want, but we're taking it to the next level! This 90-minute workshop will show you how using a smoker enhances the flavor and aroma of your food. MaryJane's own food stylist, Alyson Outen, will walk you through basic techniques, offer beginning recipes, and let you taste what all this fuss is about. Once the smoke clears, you'll know how to apply the techniques to not only meats, but also fruits, vegetables, and cheeses. Alyson will inspire and empower you to incorporate this ancient cooking style into your modern-day menus and she'll set you up with home simple smoking recipes to try on your own. Take Smoking Hot! and bring a savory bit of the outdoors to your dinner table!

Carolyn and Sarah's class will demonstrate how a traditional English afternoon tea can be elevated to new levels of elegance, indulgence and enjoyment. Their innovative and creative approach to the intertwining of food and flowers results in food that is beautiful, aromatic and most of all delicious and flowers that are an integral component of the teatime experience as a whole. This is an eclectic mix of 'traditional old English' and contemporary. Both Sarah and Carolyn are passionate about the provenance of the flowers and ingredients that they use. Their simple approach always allows the beauty of the flowers and the flavours of the produce to 'speak for themselves'. This is a class for anyone who loves beautiful, quirky, original presentation and of course delectable teatime treats, with glimpses of some of the great Royal traditions...