Problem

The problem that needs to be solved is that a family including Parent A, Parent B, Teen #1, and Teen #2 needs to have a meal plan. They need to figure out who’s going to be cooking dinner from Monday through Friday, what their dinner is going to be, and when it’s going to be cooked and served. The main problem in this is that each of the family members have different activities they need to get done at different times and days of the week. They’ll need to make sure the person cooking on that specific day is completly free and that they serve it when the entire family comes back. Now to be fair, each person of the family needs to cook at least once so they all have a specific task they need to be completed, and Teen #2, the youngest, should have the easier meals to cook.

Solution

My group has found a solution for this problem by making a meal plan for them based off of all the information given.

So first we have each other jobs to do that they would stick with until the meal plan is complete.

Zoe: Portion of Recipe 

Olivia: Dinner time 

Alexis: Cook 

Ethan: recipe 

We then did our parts and put it together to create a meal plan. We later looked at it together as a group and edited it.

Justification

Why I think our meal plan will work perfectly is because we decided that teen #2 should cook black bean tacos on Monday because it’s easier and takes less time to cook then any of the other complicated meals, chose teen #1 to cook spinach and beef lasagna with parent A on Tuesday because it’s a little more complicated for teen #1 and parent A has enough time to help teen #2 that day. 

We also decided parent A should make vegetable pad Thai on Wednesday because it’s more complicated and takes more time to make but also because there would be enough for leftovers on Thursday, so every family member cooks just once. 

On Thursday we decided that the family would have the leftover lasagna from Tuesday, and that Teen #2 would reheat it because they had the least amount of cooking to do and we chose parent B to be the one to cook the biggest meal for Friday which is Teriyaki chicken.

Our plan was to basically have a smaller meal at the beginning of the week leading to bigger meals towards the end of the week. We also decided to give teen #1 and #2 smaller meals to cook as the parents were assigned to the bigger meals. 

I think this meal plan is great because we went with logical things like teen #2, the youngest, cooking smaller meals, and there being bigger meals at the end of the week because that’s when you would need more energy after a long week. We also decided that 6:30 should be the time dinner is served every day because that’s when everyones free and it’s less complicated.

References

Monday: https://www.acouplecooks.com/black-bean-tacos/#tasty-recipes-88691-jump-target    

Tuesday: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/beef-and-spinach-lasagna/  

Wednesday: https://www.foodnetwork.com/fnk/recipes/vegetable-pad-thai-8897677 

Friday: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/easy-teriyaki-chicken  

Collaboration Reflection

The way me and my group communicated and shared information with each other was by having a conversation about how we would put the meal plan together. Another thing we did was have a shared document which helped us put all of our ideas on one document and then edit it as a group together.

A situation where technology was helpful to us was when we had a shared document and were putting all our ideas together. Having technology also helped us find recipes we wanted to use for our meal plan, and organize it so much better and easier then writing it on paper. Something that technology did that made MY work a little harder was when i was typing this out and this website didn’t let me put a table for our meal plan.

How the tasks were distributed between us in our group was we would all look at the assignments and we would tell each other what we thought would be easy for us.

The specific task i completed was looking at the family’s schedule and choosing who was going to cook when. There isn’t any exact “evidence” that i did this task but we each assigned ourselves a task and completed it in creating this meal plan.

Self Assesment: Collaboration and Critical Thinking

Collaboration:

Some things i think about before dividing tasks among group members include, making sure the group member wants to do that specific task, knowing that they will be good at their task, and making sure no one else wants that specific task.

I know the group is working well together when i see communication and work on our shared document.

Critical Thinking:

I remain open minded as i explore viable options or alternative aproaches, like when we were choosing an actual meal for Thursday then realized having left overs would be better and it would save the family more time.

I use evidence to make judgements of decisions as demenstarted when we had Teen #2 cook black bean tacos for Monday because their the youngest and the meal was small and took the least amount of time.