Sister Waldron in the "Kitchen."

This past Saturday Sis Waldron conducted a cooking class for a local "school" as a favor to the owner.  We scouted this operation out on referral from the students in one of our classes.  They said, "This school is great!  They teach you housekeeping, hospitality, sanitation and customer service.  The cost is $150 for two weeks, you get a certificate, and the guy finds you a job."  In this environment, that is something.  We drove out and found the guy, the school and kind of hit it off.  He is quite friendly and invited us to come back and cook for his "hospitality" students on Saturday.  We really didn't know what we were getting into but it came out all right and was kind of fun.

When we said we'd bake cookies if he had an oven, he said yes.  This is it.

This is his wife.  She can bake 60 loaves of rolls in this oven in a day.  It is wood frame with a metal lining, has two racks and actually, quite a bit of room.  I'll show you the oven door in a minute.

This is a shot of the pantry.  They call them food safes here and they are meant to keep the critters out of  the open food stuff like flour, rice, etc.

This is the stove top--double burner, no less.  It is also the heat source for the oven.  They just move it over under the oven and light it up when it is time to bake.

These are the kitchen stewards.  They never left the kitchen all morning.  Gave it a real campy atmosphere.

Here is a coffee pot but most importantly it is very handy to the john located just beyond in the background

Complete with cabinets and three (yes 3) sinks.  Did I say this guy was certified?  He got all his training on cruise ships.  So this may be primitive but he kind of knows his stuff.

This is the lemon/lime/orange tree.  He picks the fruit when it is really green so we haven't been able to tell from a truly ripe specimen.

A huge stock of bananas in his tree (he later cut them down and gave them to us).

Here you see the fruit.  See if you can figure out which it is.

As I walked past, I noticed his fuse box.  Well, it is a box (wood) and it does have his fuses in it.

Sister Waldron has begun mixing up the cookie dough.

The students are busily copying the recipes down.

Marie's wife is trying to coax the propane burner under the oven to greater activity.

This shows his daughter opening the oven "door"

Sister Waldron taking a pan of cookies out

Lots of room here for cookie pans.

Here is the cooking/demonstration counter.  It was a bare pine sheet of plywood for a table.  Good thing Sis Waldron brought her plastic rolling pads.  Anyway it was successful.  They loved her while she was showing them how it was done and they thought she was a goddess when they ate the finished goods.

Here is Sister Waldron with the stock of bananas he gave us as we left.  It weighs about 50 lbs.  We'll have to hustle and eat, make banana smoothies and freeze as much as we can for banana bread when they all start to ripen up.