Teach Me

Guess I'm gonna trip down memory lane a bit longer...

My thoughts have lately been, for the most part, in the past. I think what started it was that last week was the annual TMEA (Texas Music Educators Association) convention weekend. I had thought that it would be neat to dig up a bunch of old TMEA pics and post them to Facebook throughout the weekend, just to have a little fun. But, like most things, I never got around to doing it (and I couldn't find a ladder...).

So the TMEA thing got me thinking about other past things and my mind has been trapped in the past for a couple of weeks now. (By the way, have you seen the exit ramp? I'd really like to get off this road now.) And tonight I am preparing dinner and it started up all over again.

I was slicing some onions, chopping up garlic and jalapenos and scoring an avocado and suddenly I was back in the early 90's. I could see myself at a kitchen counter, making guacamole for the first time.  Then it occurred to me, Dr. Wayne Barrett, my voice teacher of 6+ years, taught me how to make guacamole.

He held a voice studio get together every year (or was it every semester??I can't remember) and we would meet at his house, eat a bunch of yummy stuff and hang out; Sometimes we'd sing too.  It was always a fun event.  At one of the first gatherings I attended, Dr. Barrett asked me to make the guacamole for him.

I had never made that before. People did that???

I was a HUGE guacamole lover (still am) and I was so impressed by both his knowledge and his expertise on the recipe. He always used fresh tomatillos, which were something I had never even seen at the time, much less cooked with. 

And with this new found knowledge, I soon began making my own guac - and still prefer it to store bought and most restaurant creations. Now that I am thinking about it, it was probably one of the first things I ever learned to make from scratch - and probably the beginning of my love of cooking.

So thank you, Dr. Barrett, for opening my eyes to a world of cooking and baking and...homemade guacamole.

Until,
D :)