Last weekend was the end of a beautiful thing.  The main line Viking Culinary School location closed it doors for good, but not before my boyfriend and I had one last culinary binge.  The lesson for today:  Tamales and Sangria.  We chopped.  We blended.  We mixed and muddled and marinated.  Corn husk burritos were rolled like sushi – tightly, and then packed in steamers.  In the end we and our one-time classmates took our seats (aprons still on) and melted into the sweet decadence of our assiduous effort.  

It’s a shame to see a cooking school of Viking’s caliber go, but it was during our brief interlude with this etude that the validation came:  it is good to occasionally attempt a daring new feat and to take a meal with strangers; to be forced to come out of ourselves and enter unfamiliar territory.  It is in the territory of the unfamiliar that the extent of possibility makes itself known.