Personal Enrichment – Culinary & Hospitality

SOLD OUT! No remaining seats.

Tired of the same old cheese and crackers platter? If you’re tired of it, then imagine what your guests are thinking! We’ve got the solution: throw a tapas party which is a great way to showcase the traditional style of Spanish casual dining based on small portions served on small plates without breaking your back or the bank. In this class, you will learn how to make three different types of tapas: cocas de picar (finger foods), pinchos which require a toothpick or utensil, and cazuelas which are little dishes served in sauce. After you have prepared the recipes, all the participants will sit down together and enjoy them for lunch!

Recipes and a personalized Certificate of Participation will be provided. 

About the Instructor: Mary Kay Gill

Mary Kay Gill has been feeding family, church-goers, neighbors and friends since she made her first batch of chocolate chip cookies.

She started out her professional career as an accountant for Price Waterhouse and Baxter Healthcare.  In 2008, after juggling family and career, she put her long-standing culinary interest on the front burner and earned a Professional Cookery Certificate from Kendall College in Chicago, IL, known for its culinary arts and hospitality management programs. For the last 14 years she has been teaching home chef enthusiasts all levels to learn to select and prepare recipes geared to a healthy lifestyle that are tasty, nutritious and satisfying.

After training in the nutritional needs of seniors, Mary Kay is now the owner/operator of a “Chefs for Seniors” franchise, serving seniors in the Hilton Head and Bluffton communities as a private chef, to improve their lives through food.  Mary Kay’s organizational skills and business acumen from her decades in finance have enabled her to create a successful and well-run business, allowing her to concentrate on her secret sauce: listening to what her clients want and adapting recipes to suit their taste and lifestyle. This combination has proven to be a winning recipe for the customized and reliable service she brings to her clientele. 

The word “brunch”, a portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch,” originated in England in the late 19th century, and became popular in the United States in the 1930s…but in reality, the beauty of brunch is it’s breakfast without an alarm clock. In this class, you will learn how to make delicious Sweet Potato Pancakes, Stuffed French Toast, Classic Eggs Benedict, and Quiche Lorraine. Once you’ve mastered these go-to recipes, serve them alongside fresh fruit, juice, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and/or mimosas and you’ll be raring to go to invite your family and friends over to enjoy them!

After you have prepared the recipes, all the participants will sit down together and enjoy them for brunch!

Recipes and a personalized Certificate of Participation will be provided. 

About the Instructor: Chef Eric Sayers

Chef Sayers started his career in a well-respected Connecticut hotel.  His hard work and hunger for learning got the attention of the European Chef and he encouraged Eric to attend the world-renowned Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.  The school’s rigorous training prepared him for the world of the culinary arts.  

After graduating from culinary school on the Dean’s List with a degree in Culinary Arts, Chef Sayers honed his skills in hotels and restaurants in Connecticut and New York and then was offered an opportunity to cook in Switzerland.  Immersed in Swiss culture and only minutes from the French boarder, Chef Sayers learned about European training, life and cooking.  When he returned to the United States, he landed his first job as an Executive Chef, which led to many other opportunities.

After spending too many cold winters in the North, Chef Sayers turned his sights to South Carolina where he became the Executive Chef at CQ’s restaurant in 1998 on Hilton Head Island where he spent over a decade at CQ’s building it into a destination restaurant. In 2012, Chef Eric Sayers​joined the staff at Beaufort Memorial Hospital/Sodexo as Executive Chef, where he expanded his knowledge of nutrition, changed the view of “hospital food” and expanded the catering department. In 2015, he transitioned to run the fine dining services at The Cypress of Hilton Head Island, a premier retirement community in the Southeast, where he oversaw the kitchen and dining room staff of 150.

Since 2022, Chef Sayers decided to pursue his passion to teach and has served as the Culinary Instructor at the Beaufort-Jasper Academy for Career Excellence (A.C.E.) where high school students are prepared to become qualified workforce members to support current regional and national business needs. He also is a guest chef instructor at The Technical College of the Lowcountry’s newest campus Culinary Institute of the South.

Chef Eric Sayers continues to bring his unique interpretation of American cuisine and belief in using farm fresh, local and sustainable ingredients to share with his family, friends, peers, students and at philanthropic functions.

Henry Miller said it best: “It takes a lifetime to discover Greece, but it only takes an instant to fall in love with her.” Do you dream of dining alfresco in the sundrenched Greek Isles? Until you’ve booked your cruise, transforming your kitchen into a Greek taverna is the next best thing… Greek cuisine is founded on the triad of wheat, olive oil and wine so we know we’re on the right track.  For the most part, the basic ingredients in Greek cuisine are found in a well-stocked pantry with readily available ingredients. Tasty dips like melitzanosalata, spanikopita, and tzatziki are easy to make. Transform fresh produce like potatoes, green peppers and onions into unctuous vegetarian and side dishes. The most-loved dessert is baklava which incorporates honey, walnuts, cinnamon and layered into phyllo dough goodness and is a labor of love. In this class, you will learn how to make some classic Greek dishes including babaganouche, lamb meatballs with tzatziki and apple baklava and then you can train for a Marathon (which of course originated in Greece!) and sprint up Mt. Olympus for bragging rights. After you have prepared the recipes, all the participants will sit down together and enjoy them for lunch!

Recipes and a personalized Certificate of Participation will be provided. 

About the Instructor: Mary Kay Gill

Mary Kay Gill has been feeding family, church-goers, neighbors and friends since she made her first batch of chocolate chip cookies.

She started out her professional career as an accountant for Price Waterhouse and Baxter Healthcare.  In 2008, after juggling family and career, she put her long-standing culinary interest on the front burner and earned a Professional Cookery Certificate from Kendall College in Chicago, IL, known for its culinary arts and hospitality management programs. For the last 14 years she has been teaching home chef enthusiasts all levels to learn to select and prepare recipes geared to a healthy lifestyle that are tasty, nutritious and satisfying.

After training in the nutritional needs of seniors, Mary Kay is now the owner/operator of a “Chefs for Seniors” franchise, serving seniors in the Hilton Head and Bluffton communities as a private chef, to improve their lives through food.  Mary Kay’s organizational skills and business acumen from her decades in finance have enabled her to create a successful and well-run business, allowing her to concentrate on her secret sauce: listening to what her clients want and adapting recipes to suit their taste and lifestyle. This combination has proven to be a winning recipe for the customized and reliable service she brings to her clientele. 

In this class, tweens will learn to make delicious after-school snacks, a hearty soup with pesto (helps with peeling, slicing and dicing skills,) a tasty green vegetable, and a special dessert.

Carrie Hirsch believes that tweens need to be part of the process of providing daily sustenance – from making the shopping list, to accompanying parents to grocery stores, farmers markets, butchers, and fish mongers, unpacking the groceries and cooking for themselves and the family, under supervision as needed. If parents instill the idea that cooking “makes a mess”, that will only discourage their children’s interest in being creative and proactive in the kitchen. All the tweens will sit down together at 1:00 pm to taste the recipes– one parent/caretaker will be invited to join each child in the tasting!

Recipes and a personalized Certificate of Participation will be provided.

About the Instructor: Carrie Hirsch

Cookbook author and food writer Carrie Hirsch has food on the brain most of the time and is usually planning out three meals ahead. She loves to cook with people of all ages, but especially with children! If taught the basics of cooking at an impressionable age, children will have the skills in place to be independent in the kitchen through high school, college and when starting out in the world on their own.  Carrie firmly believes that knowledge about food and how to prepare it well is an important social tool in connecting with others and can be beneficial in a multitude of ways.

Carrie creates recipes for various magazines and publications based on what strikes her fancy – from Mexican flautas to cheesy French onion soup to a decadent chocolate lava cake. She and her son, George, Jr., started co-writing cookbooks prompted by his call one day from college where he was living off-campus with 5 roommates and reported that none of these roommates knew how to boil water or make a grilled cheese, proving once again that necessity is the mother of invention. George explains his love of scratch cooking was greatly influenced by the women in his family and “was born with a wooden spoon in his mouth.” After he suggested they co-write a cookbook, they launched The College Man’s Cookbook with their first mother-and-son 100-recipe collection. After demand grew, The College Woman’s Cookbook and The College Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook followed.

Our parents’ mantra Eat Your Vegetables! may have had us rolling our eyes but vegetables have never gone out of style and for good reason – when prepared the right way, they can steal the show! More and more real-estate on a typical plate these days houses vegetables. Forget baked potatoes and mushy green peas…Cowboy caviar made with black eyed peas (and no real caviar), squash-based pastas, and mushrooms are showing up everywhere – and let’s not forget about rhubarb, because it is a vegetable. This class will feature different vegetable cooking techniques, and processes designed to accentuate vegetables as well as be stand-alone entree options. We will be cooking vegetables from the landscape of the Lowcountry focusing on “fresh is a flavor” including stand-alone vegetable main courses as well as side dishes.
After you have prepared the recipes, all the participants will sit down together and enjoy them for lunch!

Recipes and a personalized Certificate of Participation will be provided.