Stephanie Martinez ’20 shares a day of learning how to cook French desserts.
Our day was centered around food. From the early morning we all gathered together for our morning classes in the city of Tours, but to our surprise we would be doing a lot of the learning outdoors instead of in a classroom. Our teachers had decided that the best way to learn is to actually go out and speak to the people living in the city, so they took us to a food market. We spent the morning searching for fruits, vegetables, any sort of food we didn’t know the French name of, and then asked the workers questions, not only to gain further knowledge about the names of these different foods, but to learn more about French culture and their jobs.
After our morning classes, it was time for our group afternoon activity, which today was a French cooking class. Walking into the building you could feel the excitement radiating from everyone as Nick made another ratatouille joke, and we all hoped to be learning to make one of the great French delicacies. After washing our hands, and putting on an apron, a little disappointed we wouldn’t get to wear the tall chef hats, we learned we would make two desserts: chocolate lava cake, and gluten free macaroons.
We were split into two groups, and everyone did everything: cracking open eggs, stirring batter, and measuring and melting a specific amount of chocolate. After the first ten minutes in these two groups, a small competition started as Elliot was convinced his group had made the better batter for the lava cake. Everyone was working hard and working together. The cooking class did a great job of bringing everyone together, and filled everyone up with delicious desserts.
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