Macaroni and cheese - apparently the only thing more difficult than spelling macaroni is actually cooking it. The irony is that for most of kids the only thing they technically knew how to make when I surveyed them at the beginning of the course was mac&cheese...too bad they very rarely specify that it is with the aid of Kraft.
With that said, even if you have been a cult follower of KD, you should know that the first job whenever making macaroni is to get that water boiling...YIKES! I guess if the blue and yellow ADHD stimulating box isn't in front of you, you throw all previous knowledge out the backdoor. The worst part is that in the three cooking classrooms I have spent my teaching career in, for some reason water takes extra long to boil. I know your thinking water boils at a constant temp, and that should not be influenced by the location, if in fact you are at the same longitude and latitude location...so I don't know if cooking classrooms have a different altitude...or if its just someone up there having their own little laugh at my expense but water really takes longer in my classroom!
Anyways 1 out of 10 groups was 100% successful...so i guess it wasn't a complete failure. Apparently, if anyone was to be blamed, it was me. Yes, me. According to the kids I make recipes too hard. I make recipes too hard? Um, excuse me, all I do is print them, I don't write recipes in my free time...the funnier part is that I went through the recipe and added some paragraphing and numbering to help make it easier! Go figure!
Anyways what was 100% successful, was the number of students who thought this macaroni and cheese really out did Kraft Dinner!
Phillip Morris 0 Sawchuk 10!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
letting it rise
I am going to compare the time away from the site as the "rise" time. We all know good bread needs some serious time to rise, and likewise, so does a good blog. Now with excuses aside, at some point I just decided that I was tired at the end of the day and I guess blogging wasn't my top priority. But remembering the reason I had planned the blog in the first place was as a reflective place to look back on the - a zone where I could put the hectic often unprocessed minutes between 9-3:30 into perspective. So what am I saying...the timer has beeped and I am back.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
At some point I caught up in the job...
Yup it has been exactly two months since I last wrote! This is by no means because I have had nothing to say. Instead, the mayhem and the classroom keeps me from getting anything done in advance while my students are "independently" cooking. What this means, is that my evenings are spent planning rather than blogging.
The mayhem has also officially taken my voice hostage. Today after weeks of painful lessons because my voice just hurt so much I had my surgery on the polyp on my vocal cords and so I think the blog will be a great voice my thoughts, rather than via my mouth! Apparently the way I talk and the way I talk have lead me down this road. Supposedly, all that excitement equals vocal cord misuse! Who knew?
So for the next few posts, I plan on taking you back through the last two months so you have some idea of what we ended up getting so consumed (like the cooking/eating pun)by.
To keep you reading all I will say is that Guns and Roses had the Spaghetti Incident, well Room 14 had the Lasagna Incident!
The mayhem has also officially taken my voice hostage. Today after weeks of painful lessons because my voice just hurt so much I had my surgery on the polyp on my vocal cords and so I think the blog will be a great voice my thoughts, rather than via my mouth! Apparently the way I talk and the way I talk have lead me down this road. Supposedly, all that excitement equals vocal cord misuse! Who knew?
So for the next few posts, I plan on taking you back through the last two months so you have some idea of what we ended up getting so consumed (like the cooking/eating pun)by.
To keep you reading all I will say is that Guns and Roses had the Spaghetti Incident, well Room 14 had the Lasagna Incident!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
final last words
So you never really know what some kids will find easy vs. hard. Although I do a quick questionnaire at the beginning of the course, it still doesn't give you a real grasp of what seems like appropriate recipes for the students, especially because it doesn't access their reading skills (often the main reason things go wrong!).
So...yesterday I stupidly start my teacher speech, the talk I have before every lab (usually explaining what will be happening over the duration of the lesson) by saying that this is a super easy lab and therefore I think they are ready to do it completely unassisted, a good "test" situation - I mean we did already conquer 53 pies! I didn't think chili dogs, something you can buy from a restaurant on wheels, would be too much to ask for.
Well I realized early on when I found myself answering questions (something I said I would not do) like, what and where is the beef OXO (it was with all the other ingredients - see the value of reading), how to cut a frozen hot dog (to which I suggested trying to make it less frozen), which immediately lead to the question how do you defrost a hot dog (yes, this one was asked a few times), and finally how do you know when the hot dog is cooked (love that we are all experienced hot dog roasters via the fire, but you throw in a stove and all previous knowledge stays at the campfire!).
Another great lesson - when there is smoke and no campfire involved this should be a great indication that the heat is just too hot! Aside from the smoke and some silly questions the chili dogs turned out amazingly - I should know considering I couldn't pass up not having a bite!
Lessons learned by me; never say anything is easy, it not only sets them up for disaster, it sets me up for annoyance. Every kid is bringing different knowledge and different experiences to the kitchen and that will certainly affect just how easy something is. Plus, until I help boost that confidence and the power of common sense (a skill that I am coming to see is more valuable than good knife skills) - at the end of the day successful defrosting is still a mark of achievement for some students. Finally, thank god for the genius who installed fire detectors rather than smoke detectors in the cooking room!
So...yesterday I stupidly start my teacher speech, the talk I have before every lab (usually explaining what will be happening over the duration of the lesson) by saying that this is a super easy lab and therefore I think they are ready to do it completely unassisted, a good "test" situation - I mean we did already conquer 53 pies! I didn't think chili dogs, something you can buy from a restaurant on wheels, would be too much to ask for.
Well I realized early on when I found myself answering questions (something I said I would not do) like, what and where is the beef OXO (it was with all the other ingredients - see the value of reading), how to cut a frozen hot dog (to which I suggested trying to make it less frozen), which immediately lead to the question how do you defrost a hot dog (yes, this one was asked a few times), and finally how do you know when the hot dog is cooked (love that we are all experienced hot dog roasters via the fire, but you throw in a stove and all previous knowledge stays at the campfire!).
Another great lesson - when there is smoke and no campfire involved this should be a great indication that the heat is just too hot! Aside from the smoke and some silly questions the chili dogs turned out amazingly - I should know considering I couldn't pass up not having a bite!
Lessons learned by me; never say anything is easy, it not only sets them up for disaster, it sets me up for annoyance. Every kid is bringing different knowledge and different experiences to the kitchen and that will certainly affect just how easy something is. Plus, until I help boost that confidence and the power of common sense (a skill that I am coming to see is more valuable than good knife skills) - at the end of the day successful defrosting is still a mark of achievement for some students. Finally, thank god for the genius who installed fire detectors rather than smoke detectors in the cooking room!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
from fluting to cutting-in...
So what is the best way to have students learn how to make a home-made pie from beginning to end?? How about making 53 pies in 3 days for fellow staff members! Well that is what we did!
From pails of apples (many of which were rotten - sadly one student even found one of the hungry worms!), to pounds of rhubarb, and trays of blueberries (which I stocked all summer long) we learned many skills like dicing, coring, and most importance patience and co-operation.
It is certainly not the easiest thing to manage 25 students at a time, the main goal to ensure that they are all working! And on top playing a general in an apron I also had to try to ensure that the pies were edible!
In the end success is what we baked. Of the 53 pies I received two complaints, too salty (what can I say within three weeks of school I wasn't able to ensure that every student really understood the difference between a big T and a little t) and finally a slightly burnt sugar in the chocolate pie (but for crying out loud they also had to temper eggs!).
So what did I get out of it? Headache? Yes. Physical exhaustion and the sweating that comes with it? Yes. Stress? Yes. One of my greatest teaching moments of all time? YES!! To watch all 25 students so actively involved in the learning process; only looking for more work to do, and helping each other whenever I couldn't get to them first...as easy as apple pie!
From pails of apples (many of which were rotten - sadly one student even found one of the hungry worms!), to pounds of rhubarb, and trays of blueberries (which I stocked all summer long) we learned many skills like dicing, coring, and most importance patience and co-operation.
It is certainly not the easiest thing to manage 25 students at a time, the main goal to ensure that they are all working! And on top playing a general in an apron I also had to try to ensure that the pies were edible!
In the end success is what we baked. Of the 53 pies I received two complaints, too salty (what can I say within three weeks of school I wasn't able to ensure that every student really understood the difference between a big T and a little t) and finally a slightly burnt sugar in the chocolate pie (but for crying out loud they also had to temper eggs!).
So what did I get out of it? Headache? Yes. Physical exhaustion and the sweating that comes with it? Yes. Stress? Yes. One of my greatest teaching moments of all time? YES!! To watch all 25 students so actively involved in the learning process; only looking for more work to do, and helping each other whenever I couldn't get to them first...as easy as apple pie!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
have you ever truly minced?
So often as a teacher, and in this case a Home Ec. teacher, we spend our time teaching definitions, terms, and rules, hoping that on tests our students will regurgitate (no pun intended) things word for word what we have been spewing.
At some point over this third year of teaching I have just come to terms with the fact that this is not learning and this is not helping anyone really learn to cook. Although I have tried to teach cooking techniques that I learned in a restaurant job - the small window of an hour a day just didn't seem to be really sending the message home. So, this where a 2.2 lb bag of garlic comes into play.
You know, those industrial sized bags of garlic where there is a least 30 heads, tightly packed waiting for their trip to a restaurant. Well, this one lucky bag found its way into the hands of 40 inexperienced 16 and 17 year olds.
Over the course of 2 hours, my students took turns learning the true definition of mincing. The room and hallway all smelt of garlic despite the fact that no garlic was ever cooked. A surprise assembly also dragged the smell of garlic into the theater as each and everyone of us wreaked.
But in the end, if you could see through the smell in the classroom, there were 40 students mincing as well as any cook on the cooking network!
At last I saw the definition of MINCING!
At some point over this third year of teaching I have just come to terms with the fact that this is not learning and this is not helping anyone really learn to cook. Although I have tried to teach cooking techniques that I learned in a restaurant job - the small window of an hour a day just didn't seem to be really sending the message home. So, this where a 2.2 lb bag of garlic comes into play.
You know, those industrial sized bags of garlic where there is a least 30 heads, tightly packed waiting for their trip to a restaurant. Well, this one lucky bag found its way into the hands of 40 inexperienced 16 and 17 year olds.
Over the course of 2 hours, my students took turns learning the true definition of mincing. The room and hallway all smelt of garlic despite the fact that no garlic was ever cooked. A surprise assembly also dragged the smell of garlic into the theater as each and everyone of us wreaked.
But in the end, if you could see through the smell in the classroom, there were 40 students mincing as well as any cook on the cooking network!
At last I saw the definition of MINCING!
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