The tradition we have in our family is to make a Korean seaweed and ground meat soup. We have this soup as a celebratory dish for someone’s birthday or graduation. In Korea, this is the usual meal for when a pregnant woman has just given birth, because it contains a lot of protein and is said to keep your blood clean. This is one of my favourite meals because it’s very healthy while also being really tasty and rich with flavour. It’s also a very simple dish to make, to make it you must first cook the ground meat and roast the seaweed, then filling up a large pot of water and adding in various korean spices and shredded garlic. After letting it boil for about 10 minutes, it’s already ready to enjoy. I really like to make this soup because of how simple it is, and it’s always a tradition to have when celebrating a big accomplishment in one’s life.

For this week’s Cooking at Home salad assignment, I decided to make a chef’s salad. It included lettuce, chopped baby carrots, marble cheese, chopped cucumber and sliced hard-boiled eggs. I didn’t follow a recipe, but just used knowledge from previous salads I had made before. My dad gave me ideas for what to put in it, and helped me chop the vegetables and rip the lettuce. Once it was done, we drizzled the top with some ranch dressing. I think it was pretty good, and I especially enjoyed the eggs with the salad because it gave some extra protein and flavour. I would definitely make this one again, because it was quick and delicious.

For our Cooking at Home assignment, I chose to use what we already had to make a dish. We had leftover tortellini noodles from last night’s dinner, so we decided to make a “tortellini casserole,” which was layered with pork slices, lettuce, noodles, pasta sauce and cheese, parsley and other spices sprinkled on top. My family and I didn’t follow a recipe, but my mom has good experience with cooking so she made it up herself using what we had available in our fridge and pantry. Since it was our first time, it didn’t come out as good as I had wanted. If we were to make it again, we’d probably cut up the pork slices into cubes or thinner strips since it was a little hard to eat with everything else when it was big pieces. Otherwise, I think it was quite good and I wouldn’t mind making it again.

For this weeks Cooking at Home assignment, I made butter chicken using leftovers from last nights dinner! We had some pork in the freezer along with some butter chicken sauce, so I chopped up the pork into cubes, cooked them, and then added it to the sauce. Then I topped it with rice that we had left in the cooker. The recipe wasn’t online, but my mom suggested it when I told her we had leftover sauce and she helped me cook it. I found it difficult to cut up the pork because it was tough and hard to hold it still, but found success in cooking it all to a perfect golden brown. I would probably make this meal again because it was very simple, quick and delicious!

One of my favourite labs so far in Foods class is the egg lab, where you chose out of 4 options how you wanted to cook your egg and had it on a toasted English muffin, topped with a pinch of salt and pepper. I chose to do a sunny side up egg, and I think it turned out really well. The yolk was runny and not cooked all the way through, and the egg white was cooked fully with no browning or burning. I was worried I was going to break the yolk in the pan while cooking or burn the edges, but I think I cooked it really nicely. In the egg lab, some sanitation issues were cracking and cooking the egg. If not fully cooked, there is a risk of salmonella poisoning. If you cracked the egg on the edge of the counter and some raw egg white splattered on the table, the bacteria could still spread and grow if not properly cleaned or disposed. If you then used the counter a few hours later to prepare food and it hadn’t been cleaned up beforehand, you would still be at risk for salmonella.

My most memorable food experience was when I visited the Dark Table in Vancouver with my family. The Dark Table is a restaurant that is completely shrouded in darkness, and all the waiters are blind. The theme of this restaurant is to see the world in a blind person’s eyes. You first order your food outside, and are required to put your phone or other devices that have distracting light away in your bag. Then, a waiter comes and you hold their shoulder as they lead you to your table so you don’t get lost in the darkness. I ordered a spaghetti with marinara sauce, and it was one of the best spaghetti dishes I’ve had. I thought that this experience was really interesting and unforgettable because of the originality of this restaurant, the delicious food and how fun it was to be together with my family.