I really hate mopping

My new kitchen.

I taught a cooking class yesterday at our local community center. I was excited about it and now that it is over I can admit that I was nervous about it. Even though, or especially because, I was teaching 6th and 7th grade girls. I attended an all-girls school in 6th and 7th grades and those years were surpassed in awfulness only by sophomore year of high school and 2010.

We made pizza from scratch, which the girls liked, and we made honey gelato, which they did not, and I brought them Italian almond cookies that I had baked out of a Marcella Hazan book to show them what they could do with the egg whites left over from gelato. These, they loved.

Brutti ma Buoni cookies

Altogether, it was interesting, fun, fairly successful, and about 150 times more labor-intensive than I'd expected. I had to bring everything to the community center kitchen -- every spoon and mixing bowl and grain of salt and bag of flour and quart of milk and paper towel -- and take it all away with me when I was through. I'm being paid a small sum by the community center and I'll be lucky if I break even, but I don't care about that at all. It was the time and schlepping that got to me.

Some highlights:

1. I bought both a ball of beautiful fresh mozzarella and a pouch of factory-made Lucerne pre-shredded mozzarella for the young ladies to taste test and compare. It did not occur to me that they would prefer the pre-shredded mozzarella. But they did. I'm not sure if this was herd dynamics at work, or a true preference, but they fought over every last flaccid shred of Lucerne in the classic "nice" girl way: "You guys, that's not exactly fair. . . "  I realized then that I had been aiming way too high with this whole project, and that they would have been psyched to talk among themselves and make English muffin pizzas with jarred ragu and sliced hot dogs. I am adjusting my approach for the next class.

2. Chickens have pecking orders, as do goats, as do middle school girls. I knew this, but had forgotten just how obvious and poignant and nerve-wracking it is, even when you're a bystander. On a couple of occasions, I could feel even my own steely will bending to the charm and power of the alpha girl. It was shameful.

3. Still, kids are fascinating and funny and they get so excited about separating eggs and stirring and eating pizza and watching ice cream machines churn. I like kids and I like watching kids and I like listening to kids, especially now that I am no longer a kid.

4. An hour after the class ended, I finally had the kitchen clean, had washed down the counters with sponges and sanitized them and scrubbed the sinks with Comet and swept assiduously and emptied the trash in the dumpster and carried all my fifty loads of dirty dishes and fresh mozzarella and unused ingredients back out to the car. It was dark and I was late to pick up Owen and I was just giving the room a final look-over when I saw the sign informing kitchen users that they must mop the floors.

Maybe if the floors had been dirtier.

But, you know, maybe not.

I wonder if they're going to fire me.