thank god it’s over!!

Well, we did it. We gave our first cooking demonstration and book signing. I was very nervous beforehand, but we seem to have pulled it off nicely. I had no idea that I could talk for an entire hour. Go figure! Doc videotaped the whole thing, so now we are going to go back through it and figure out ways to refine our presentation.

Nobody seemed too bored; everyone laughed in the right places (in otherwords, laughing WITH us, not AT us). It probably helped that the audience was mainly people that we knew, but whatever.

We made the Festival Pasta Salad and the Cream Cheese Mints. Everyone loved the samples — they disappeared very quickly. We also had samples of (but didn’t demonstrate) Grandma’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and Nuts & Bolts. Mike, the overexcited store manager, circulated with trays of samples the whole time, and even for a while beforehand.

Mike and the store employees were nice enough to clean up the mess on the demo table so we could go next door to La Madeleine and relax for a while with our friends who stayed until we were completely done (Joel & Valerie, Leslie & Bruce, Brittney, Adam & Stan, Kathryn).

I was so tired when it was over that I came home and took a nap — it was only about an hour long nap, but I slept so hard that I had no idea who I was or where I was when I woke up. I had to force myself to lie still and wake up so I could remember.