We had another sold out night at Bridgewater Commons Williams-Sonoma for Giada De Laurentiis’s Happy Cooking.  I made three courses from her brand new book.

Best-selling cookbook author Giada De Laurentiis is picking up where Feel Good Food left off. Filled with even more fresh recipes and day-to-day living strategies, the Food Network superstar shares her year-round approach to living a healthy and happy lifestyle. – From Giada’s Website

Giada has presented a very nice collection of recipes that run from easy to complicated.  Cooking fresh and healthy usually takes a bit more prep time since you are foregoing products that come in a can or jar.  For example, when I made her Wild Rice Dressing, it took nearly 45 minutes just to blanch and peel 20 ounces of pearl onions!  I suppose I could have purchased them frozen. But what fun would that be??  The class ran a bit over the allotted time due to the amount of  steps required to complete the Turkey Breast Porchetta, Wild Rice Dressing and Spiced Apple Walnut Cake.  All three recipes were very labor intensive but not difficult to execute.  Here are some pictures!