Betsy is a food lover and all around fun gal who recently joined the Whole Foods integrated media team as their online programs manager. She works on their Whole Story blog and other web content and social marketing.

FoodTouring was actually featured on the “What We’re Reading…” page back in September.

The menu for last night’s class was steak salad with chimichurri and corn and carrot relish; goat cheese and walnut tart with candied garlic and pears; and seared shrimp with collard greens and almond brown butter.

These were paired with wines for each course and was taught by Joan McKern (wine) and Michael Wake (vittles).

Most interesting: goat cheese tart

Meh: steak

This has nothing to do with a character from The Golden Girls. Blanching is a way to keep control of your greens. Add greens to salt water that is rolling towards a boil until they reach the desired softness. Stop the cooking process by shocking them in ice water. You can then put ‘em in the fridge and quickly heat them up before serving.

As Ilyse can attest, sparkling wine is the perfect way to start off a dinner party. It is lower in alcohol than wine. Champagne is classically made of three types of grapes — chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meuniere. It’s fermented a second time (wine is fermented once) — this adds yeast and sugar and makes it all bubbly and fun.

A champagne bottle contains about 58 million bubbles. The original coupe (the saucer-shaped champagne glass at left) is widely believed to have been fashioned by a mould taken of Marie Antoinette’s breast.

The champagne flute commonly used today is a stem glass with a tall, narrow bowl. The bowl is designed to retain bubbles due to less surface area at the mouth.