Final activity – What Makes Us Who We Are.

Broiled Pork Belly and Rice I really enjoy Broiled pork the tangy flavours of all the sauces and how the pork belly melts in your mouth. It was hard for me to make this dish because I have never cooked pork belly before so I was confused on how to know if it was cooked or not.

Steamed Egg. The steamed egg turned out better than I expected since when I had tried to make it before it didn’t come out silky smooth like I wanted it to. I feel like I could’ve added some sauces to make the egg taste less bland but, at least I know that for next time.

Chocolate cupcakes I really enjoy sweets so I chose to make chocolate cupcakes, my cupcakes were most and bittersweet which I absolutely loved. I had a bit of trouble with the ingredients because I couldn’t find vegetable oil so I had to use canola oil. It didn’t make any difference to the taste of my cupcakes so I was glad of that.

Cooking option #5 – Working as a team


Meringue cookies This week I wasn’t in much of a mood to make something really hard so, I decided to make meringue cookies with my sister. Meringue cookies are really delicious snacks they’re so airy and the crunch they have is really nice.

My Problems and How I Solved them First off I didn’t have my piping tools to make it so that the meringues looked nice so I had to substitute it with a ziplock bag. Secondly, my sister wasn’t very cooperative so it was really hard in the kitchen but we settles our differences by taking deep breaths

Cooking at Home option #6 – Family traditions

My family tradition. My family tradition Is either my mom or I make a batch of cookies for the family each month. We haven’t been doing this for too long but we thought it would be a fun thing to start as our family tradition. How it goes is we get a recipe for cookies and make them and we have fun during the process. Its a great way for my family to bond.

My success and difficulties As you can tell from the photo my cookies were really flat and hard, I realize that I had over mixed the dough and that’s why my cookies had gone flat next time ill avoid mixing it so much. Other than the flatness I really enjoyed the cookies, they tasted really delicious and my sister also enjoyed them.

Cooking at Home Option #5

Working as a Team This week I’ve been doing a lot to make this quarantine easier on my parents such as doing the dishes, doing the laundry, helping out with dinner and preparing healthy snacks. So far the task I’ve enjoyed most is making fruit salads for my family to eat after dinner as a way to stay healthy. In my fruit salads I don’t add too much incase my family can’t finish it, usually just an apple, banana and 1 teaspoon of chia seeds. Except for the past 3 days I’ve been using strawberries since my parents bought some for me to use.

My success and challenges I feel that it was harder for me to make the fruit salad look tempting to eat especially since my family had only been having apples and bananas with chia seeds for a week straight it was getting boring for them to eat so I was lucky enough to have had my parents buy some strawberries I could add to the mix. I feel like I succeeded with getting my family to eat the fruit salad because I thought it would be harder but they were all really willing to eat it since I had made it for them.

Cooking at home option #2

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My plans and how I changed it Originally I was planning on making chicken broth for my noodles with chicken from the freezer but I realized that my parents cooked some garlic chicken the day before and I still had that left over so I used it and adapted my plan and saved chicken for another meal in the future. I didn’t really have to change much about the recipe I just had to alter the Taste because of the garlic chicken. I also used some spinach that was boiled from my lunch to add some veggies into my meal.

Challenges and successes The challenges I had was coming up on how to create a new meal from leftovers since my family normally eats everything we have on the table so there wasn’t very much I had to add into my broth so, I was really glad that we had leftover chicken and spinach for me to use. Another challenge was the taste. I was really scared that the garlic from the chicken would affect my broth so I was very conflicted if I should’ve used it or not but, I’m glad that I did because it really added to the flavour of my broth. A success I had was that my family had really enjoyed the meal which meant a lot to me so I feel that’s one of my successes.

Where I could improve I feel like I could make a full meal out of leftovers so I’m planning on retrying this all over to see if I can succeed.

Cooking at home option #4

Skill learned Recently, my mom has been baking really often. I’ve been watching her bake several different types of baked goods but so far the on thing I’ve been wanting to learn how to make was bread. I decided to make Nutella bread since it’s my favourite from the variety of bread she has made. The main skill I learned was making the swirls in the bread. It was really hard to create the swirls because you had to make sure the knots you made were tight but I wasn’t making them tight enough so my bread kept unraveling.

Success and challenges A couple challenges for me were rolling out the dough and making perfect swirls. I had realized that I needed to let the dough sit for a bit because it kept bouncing back every time I had rolled it so my mom had to explain that I should’ve let the dough sit before trying to roll it. The Swirls were complicated but once you understand to tighten the knots it will be a lot easier and the bread would look really nice. I feel like my successes were the taste because it tasted really good and I also think the way it came out was really nice.

https://inspiredbycharm.com/braided-nutella-bread/

Cooking at home Option 1

Beef and Broccoli stir-fry While cooking the tangy scent of the sauces in the air hits your nose and makes you salivate. The sound of the meat hitting the wok satisfies your ears. When you take the first bite of the meat it melts in your mouth. The hint of ginger infused into the meat making it a certain type of spicy. The way the sauces glisten off the meat in the light is wonderful to the eye. Thats how I can describe this stirfry

Changes in the dish. If I ever attempt to make this dish again the only thing I’d change is adding a little bit of spice since I enjoy spicy foods.

Challenges I had to overcome First I had to overcome my fear of splashing oils, that was kind of easier to overcome because after a few splashes you get used to it. It still frightens me at times but it’s starting to be less of a problem for me. Another challenge was trying to pour the sauce in while mixing, I fixed that by switching the hand I was mixing with so I could pour in the sauce with my dominant hand.

What I’m most proud of I’m most proud of the overall taste. It ended up tasting exactly how I expected to taste so I was proud of that.

What I can improve on I think I could improve only mixing skills because I felt that some times I wasn’t able to mix a specific spot and the food in that certain spot of the wok was cooked more than others.

here’s the recipe. (:

Communication

For my lab of choice I’m choosing the banana muffins. The banana muffins were really delicious. It was perfectly cooked and the blueberries my partner and I added made really delicious. The downside of the banana muffins were the fact that we forgot our chocolate chips I feel that we would’ve had better muffins if we added chocolate chips. The communication between my partner and I was really good, I feel that if her and I didn’t have a good connection our muffins would’ve gone really wrong. Good communication makes it so that you both know what you’re supposed to do. Thats why communication is really important when working in partners or groups.

Most Memorable Food Experience

https://thewoksoflife.com/instant-pot-pho/

My most memorable food experience was my uncles homemade Phở. The first time I had it was in grade 3. The air of the kitchen was warm and the aroma of the broth was lingering he air. My whole family was there for the party everyone was very hungry, stomachs grumbling and mouths salivating. The time spent on making the broth was worth it because once you start eating you never want to put down your spoon and chopsticks. This meal stands out to me because it was my very first time eating phở in a home setting. Once you see a food that is absolutely eye appealing you start to get hungry and your mouth starts to salivate and once you smell the food your stomach starts growling. Those are the feelings I get whenever I see the phở my uncle makes.