Food presentation workshop

Yesterday I went to a workshop on food presentation at the AWC clubrooms in Lausanne (where Jen and I first met!). A woman called Corinne ran it and a guy did a presentation on wine and food matching. Corinne does cooking classes and catering...I'd heard about her ages ago but never come across her before. Anyway, it was pretty interesting. She showed us some ways to make food look better (ie salads, soups, mains and desserts) then we had the chance to build our own salad. Mine was the model of restraint - I used one of her rings (the exact same type Mum is looking for) to layer proscuitto, Peppadew, mozarella then topped off with some green leaves and finally some alfalfa, then drizzled round the edge of the plate with pumpkin oil. It looked good. I normally would have done the salad some other women did - pile on as much as I could, but that was the opposite to what she taught us! We had two glasses of white with our salads, then a white chocolate gateau on a nut crust. In theory it was divine - smooth creamy richness of the white chocolate contrasted with the crunchy walnut base but in reality there was an after-taste (walnuts?) and the white chocolate top had more texture than flavour. Marie F was there and she came and whispered 'what did you think of the cake?'. As I was saying 'uhhhhh' she laughed and said I thought so and walked off!

Anyway I was sitting next to Debbie, a woman from the UK who I remembered I'd met before (and she'd rung me earlier this year asking for a specific chick-decorated cake for her young daughter's b'day). Anyway we chatted a bit and then yesterday afternoon she sent me an email saying she's wanting to do breakfast as a Xmas treat for her friends. She proposed some dates and asked for my prices. So I sent her the info late last night and am wating to hear back from her.