29th
I took a flower arranging class at Saipua in Red Hook, Brooklyn tonight. I’d tweeted a few weeks before that I was taking a $275 flower arranging class, and “have I gone nuts?” and got a few confirmations. I knew it was nutty and was proud of that decision before even experiencing the class. When you consider that the cost of a dinner at Per Se is probably more than that, and appreciating food is what I do every day, then… I can’t cook as good as the cooks underneath Thomas Keller, but I don’t know the first thing about flower arranging. None. Oddly enough, it all came back to food. When I asked Sarah and Nicolette, my teachers, about how they’d learned floral arrangement and whether there was a school of thought behind it, they said yes, but at formal schools you’ll learn all the basics about flowers, how to make a funeral arrangement, a bride’s bouquet, etc. Their classes are more free-form, allowing the students to find their own art, and sharing theirs. I thought about the differences between formal culinary education and the type of “cooking classes” I’ve been known to teach, where I have half-formed recipes usually untested and let an intimate group roll up their sleeves right with me in them. They even drew parallels between cooking with a little experience and adaptation to what’s in season, to making floral arrangements. In any case, at the end of the night, I made this. At no calories.
