Joining Satori here for her first year Sharon Wucherpfennig is the instructor of the Midday Class "Gourmet Cooking".

The class is supposed to give the students a taste of five-star dining and also help the students learn to cook five-star dishes. Opening the class, Wucherpfennig said “We want to give you an idea of what a fancy restaurant serves.”

The first day of class didn’t involve the instructor standing in front of a classroom of bored students while talking about what she hoped to give the kids during their week here. Instead, campers walked into the class and learned that they would be cooking Salmon Pinot Gris and making vegetarian sushi.

Getting right to work, Zachary Cleary and Reed Jessen began by poaching the salmon in a mixture of Pinot Gris, water, celery, carrots, and onions. While they were cooking the salmon most of the other students in the class were learning to make vegetarian sushi with Nori, or seaweed, sweet rice, celery, and carrots.

The sushi got mixed reactions. Some students enjoyed eating it while others were revolted by the Nori. Lily Dobiel responded to the sushi enthusiastically. “I love the sushi; I can’t understand why everyone cringes at the seaweed,” she said. When asked what she thought of the class so far, Lily said, “Makes me really hungry. It smells good.”

While Dobiel was enjoying her sushi, Kaitlynn Knol was doing quite the opposite, “The sushi was pretty gross, but the salmon was outstanding.” The salmon was a big hit with the students who actually tried it. Some even went back for seconds and thirds. With all the salmon and seaweed around that day Aaron Wennhold left the class saying, “If the building was swaying, I’d be seasick.”

Wucherpfennig said the point of the class is, “To give you kids an idea of different cooking recipe methods, give you a little taste of high end cooking, what’s done ... Cooking, teaching how to cook different things.”

The second day began with Sharon handing out bread dough to each student to knead and mold into any shape that they wanted. Then the dough was placed on baking sheets and left to rise for a few minutes while the cookie dough was being made.

Just as the class began to make the cookie dough, all of the stacked mattresses in the hallway fell over and blocked the hall, so campers had to restack all of the mattresses to allow the students in the café to gain access to the kitchen.

Then the class began the cookie dough, while some of the students made some more bread dough. “Believe it or not I was in my right mind when I added all that flour,” Chelsea Momany said after she added some flour to the bread dough. Then, as she was mixing the bread dough by hand Lauren Stover said “Its just gooey, but its fun gooey.”

As the cookie dough was being made the first tray of bread was in the oven, and the bread finished just in time to stick a tray of cookies in with the second tray of bread. While eating her bread, Jeri Kopet said “Its extreme bread.” Dobiel had a different thought on the bread, “It’s puffy and warm and the outside is crunchy. It would be good with cheese and garlic.”

The cookies were done cooking right as the class ended, so only the few students still in the kitchen were able to get a few cookies. The rest of the bread was not yet done cooking, so the students were able to come back after lunch to grab their bread if they wanted, though it didn’t appear many of the students did.

All together, both days have been a success, and in the words of Jeri Kopet “It’s extreme! Extreme cooking!”