Learn to make preserves, bake bread, and make pate. Express the gourmet in me

I still want to do this, but it is in direct opposition with my other goal of lose weight. I will just have to do less baking and more canning. Well, when I actually start that is.

There was a woman that lived next door to us when I was growing up. She is from Denmark and my brother and I used to spend a lot of time playing with her kids. She was an amazing cook, and often made things that I thought were very exotic, like pate. Anyway, I have not seen her since I was about 15 years old and yesterday my mother and I stopped by a small street fair and we ran into her there. I didnt even know it was her at first, I was just drawn to her booth by the stacks of beautiful baked breads and jars of jellies and preserves that looked like jewels. She had the most unusual whole grain bread I have ever had. Full of walnuts, pecans, cranberries, spelt, wheat berries, and seasoned with cardomom, fennel, cumin, and poppy seeds. Anyway, long story short, I was inspired. I want to learn to do all of that myself. We bought a lot of stuff. My Mother spoke to her later and told her that I would really love to learn how to do all of this, and she said she would love to teach me. So now I have to contact her. Slightly awkward for me… I havent really seen her in so many years, should I pay, offer to bring ingredients? Well, I will wait a few days and see how I feel.