On Friday evening, I rushed to Arkadia to pick up our lovely selection of meat from Zammeats to cook on the morrow: corn-fed and free-range chicken, some huge pieces of Charolais beef t-bone and a few slices of milk-fed veal so pale there was no way the baby cow could have drunk anything but its mummy's milk before it died on our behalf.

'Don't get any fillet', Claude Camilleri, Chef Patron of Palazzo Santa Rosa and Chief Tutor, told me a week before. 'I have a beautiful slab I've been ageing for six weeks to show them.'

So instead I went to a local supermarket and from its never-ending shelves pulled down a 'fresh' 'cheap' chicken, a huge slab of chicken breast, a couple of slices of 'fillet' and some supposed 't-bone', the 't' of which was hardly a letter of the alphabet.

Most students turned up late then spent the first half hour trying to come to, complaining of waking up early - yes, for these people 9.00am is early - and therefore needing half an hour of non-stop capuccino and espresso drinking in order to know what we were on about.

So I started them with something simple: I unwrapped the meat and made them touch it. The disgusting slick on the supermarket stuff was enough to put them off buying, let alone eating, any of it for life.

Claude decided to smoke some salmon. No, of course it had nothing to do with the words 'Meat Workshop' but hey, did we care? Of course not. Moreover, the methods for smoking meat and fish are the same.

Giovanni, who runs the Margo's oven, kept popping in with variations of fruit bread, naturally leavened bread, home-smoked ham and every single thing he could make us eat. It was not even 10.30am and we were already about to burst.

In fact, we got so carried away that I forgot to take photos of everybody so you can see how some of our students are very advanced ITS graduates on work placements out of the country. Some others are setting up their own little cookery schools. Some are just there to eat and learn and have themselves a good time. I was too busy stuffing my face. Sorry about that.

For the next two hours we roasted chickens, wrapped veal around Giovanni's smoked ham ('is it better than Parma?' 'oh yes it is!') and sage, griddled steaks and watched as the 'cheap chicken' and 'cheap steak' shrivelled, shrunk and leaked as much water as they possible could.

At some point Claude vanished. Hardly anybody noticed; we were all too busy doing things to the dead animals.

Then we sat outside in the lovely sun and ate and drank all we had cooked. The 'cheap' stuff went to my Chucky and Ganni the cats.

And on Saturday 12th June, we'll do it all over again with seafood: we shall compare farmed to wild, learn how to choose the really fresh stuff from what has been lying around for days or worse still, has been defrosted, learn how to prepare sashimi, and the most disgusting bit: clean and fillet fish like pros.

There's a lot you can do of a Saturday: wash clothes, sleep in, shout at the neighbours. We just love to spend a few hours cooking and learning. If you can drag yourself out of bed, we'll get you some coffee and you can join us.