Service Week/ School Picnic

     From the 3rd to the 14th of June we have been testing out recipes for our school picnic. We've been making spanakopita, black bean dip, white been dip, goat cheese crostini, Mexican hot chocolate cookies, and vanilla bean scones.

     Spanakopita is a triangle bread stuffed with feta cheese and spinach. It's simple to make and tasted just fantastic. Phyllo dough was the outside and it was a temperamental thing to work with but once you got the hang of it, everything worked out fine. Find the recipe at http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/18417/spanakopita-greek-spinach-pie

     Black bean dip tastes great and its fairly simple to make as well. It has onions and garlic and cilantro in it and it says to let the water evaporate while cooking the beans but don't because then you can't blend it well. It was easy to make bad tasted great. Recipe at http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/easy-black-bean-dip/

     White bean dip was not my favorite but it did taste good. It worked out well and cooked fairly fast. Recipe at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/white-bean-dip-with-pita-chips-recipe/index.html

     Next was the goat cheese crostini but I can't find the recipe and I don't remember much about it so I'm very sorry.

     Mexican hot chocolate cookies. Absolutely delicious. It was a little spicy because of some chipotle that we included (chili may also work). It was sweet and spicy and just tasted good.

Recipe at http://m.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/spicy-mexican-hot-chocolate-cookies.html

     Vanilla bean scones are fantastic. It was great and sort of plain but that was good because we just covered them in vanilla bean sugar icing. It's amazing. It sweet and sugary but not too much so. Recipe at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/mini-vanilla-scones-with-vanilla-bean-glaze-recipe/index.html

Pies week #2

     On Tuesday (May.28/13) we made gramcracker crust pie. As you can assume, we crushed gramcrackers into crumbs and combined it with butter and sugar and set in as the crust in two pie tins. The filling was a vanilla pudding type filling. We also made marange. Ours didn't turn out too well but it tasted good. We finished the filling and set it in the pie crust and baked it. We put the marange on when the pie was cool enough. I didn't like it much but my partner said it turned out very well
     On Thursday (May.30/13) my group made key lime pie. The other groups made strawberry and rubarb, blurberry, and pistachio pudding pies. We made the gramcracker crust for out pie and baked it for 15 minutes. We made th filling and used about 5 whole sized limes (we would have needed another 2 if we were to make more lime juice). The marange we made came out well, better than the last pies marange. It was ok. It felt like jello in your mouth. I liked it better than the other pies but I wouldn't make it again.

Pies week #1

     On Tuesday (May.21/13) we made apple pie. we chopped up apples, dowsed then in sugars (my group forgot to add the flour to the mixture) and set it aside. We mixed the ingrediants for the crust and layed it into a pie. we kept some extra for the lattice top (criss cross design top). We layered our pie and set it in the fridge to cool. On Wednesday (May.22/13) we cooked the pies for the class period and let them cool for the next period. During lunch when we ate the pie, everyone said the pies were amazing but i didn't like it much at all.
     On Thursday (May.23/13) we made apple tarts. we made pie dough and layed it out in circles for the topping. it was an apple mixture very similar to the apple pie filling. we cooked then and they turned out well, beside excess sugar burnt on the pan. I didn't like it really.

Beans and Rice

     On Tuesday (May.14/13)  we made beans and rice. We used pinto beans and i believe something along the lines of white rice. It was cooked fairly plainly and i can't remember much details but i do remember it tasted good but fairly plain. It probably could have used more salt or other seasonings.
     On Thursday (May.16/13) we made more beans and rice. Jenny's grandmother and mom came to help us make tortias and rice. It was a white rice and we used a spices mixture with tomato spices and other stuff to make the rice red. The beans were  good, we included onion and garlic and some other ingrediants. We also fried tortias. It tasted really good. After everything was cooked we would grab a tortia, put rice on it and then top it of with the beans. it tasted fantastic. I enjoyed learning how to cook the tortias and rice. It was an amaazing experience.

Cookie

     On Monday through to Wednesday (May.6-8/13) we'd been baking cookies. We started with a coffee crisp cookie (I can't remember the actual name), chocolate chip cookies, and a type of sugar cookie. We made the coffee crisps and the sugar cookies first. Some of the other groups had really stiff coffee crisp dough. Ours worked fairly well.
     On Tuesday we baked the coffee crisps and the sugar cookies. The coffee crisps turned out in balls but the sugar cookies baked and flattened out. We also made the dough for the chocolate chip cookies
     On Wednesday we baked the chocolate chip cookies. It smelled so good. my group burnt a few of eavery cookie sadly but they still tasted good.

Curry Week #2

     On Tuesday (April.30/13) we made a Sri Lankan curry. This curry had cashews and mixed veggis in it. We burnt the cashews a bit, and the rice was a little under cooked. We also added fri chick. I really like fri chick so it was pretty good on that stand point. I think it taked really good, but it wasn't my favorite curry. I probably wouldn't make it again.

     On Thursday (May.2/13) we made Mattar Paneer. One of the student's older rother came in and taught it to us. It had cheese, and peas, and and a whole large onion. This was my favorite curry. It tasted absolutely amazing. The cheese had no taste at all, so when we cooked it with the curry sauce, it absorbed the curry taste. It was incredible. We didn't use a curry power, we used a bunch of different spices and it tasted very original. Since we had four groups, each batch was slightly different. Some very a little sweeter, some were more spicy, every thing was just a little different.

     Over all the recipies, my favorite was the Mattar Paneer. It was sweet and spicy and just hot enough to be just incredible. I'd definitely make it again.

Curry Week #1

On Tuesday, (April.23/13), we made a British Fusion Curry. It had a lot if veggies and tasted just phenomenal. British curry is a combination with British food and curries from around the world. We burned the rice and the veggies so it was a little crusty but it still tasted amazing.

On Thursday, (April.25/13), we made Tia curry. It had a lot of spices in it. This time we didn't burn anything. It was a lot hotter than the British curry but tasted better, because of more spices and it wasn't burnt. I really loved it and I'd definitely make both curries again.

Fruit Pizza

On Thursday, (April.18/13), we made fruit pizza. We cut up bananas, grapes, straw berries and also had blue berries and black berries. The fruit tasted amazing. The recipe itself worked out well. We made sugar cookie dough for the pizza crust, and cream cheese for the sauce. After it was cooked and we tasted it, I realized I don't really like fruit pizza. It just tasted weird to me. It was a suitable desert. It texture was a little dry, and with the cream cheese, fruit and sugar cookie crust, it just felt weird in my mouth. I probably wouldn't make it again but if I did, I might try a different type of bread for the crust.

Coffee Cake

On Tuesday, (April.16/13), we made coffee cake. It was an apple sauce coffee cake. It was ok, but I probably wouldn't make it again. The taste was fine, it was dry but I did find it suitable. It was crumbly and fell apart fairly easy. I probably wouldn't make it again, but if I did I'd add for apple sauce and make is more moist.

Potato Soup and Veggie Pot Pie

     On Tuesday (April.1/13) we made veggie pot pie. We used mixed veggies, soyasauce and cornstarch, veggie broth, potatoes, garlic, and onions. We made the pie crust, then wroked on the filling. we cooked the indregiants in a saucepan and after the potatoes were tender and the crust was in the tin, we poured the filling into the crust. We cooked it for 10 minutes. It tasted really good. I never had pie much as a kid and never really liked it either, so this was a really good pie. My only problem was we cook have let the sauce thicken a little more.
     On Thursday (April.3/13) we made my family's potato soup.
     1. Dice 1 cup of onions and celery. Cook in a pot until tender.
     2. Peel and cube the potatoes (pick your favorite potatoes). Fill the pot 3/4 the way up with potatoes.
     3. Pour enough chicken stock to cover the potatoes. Boil until the potatoes are soft.
     4. Drain chicken stock into a bowl and put the potatoes back into the pot. Pour cream (pink carton, says whipping cream) into the pot until it's 3/4 the way up the potatoes.
     5.Add chicken stock and fresh dill (preferably, not a problem to use dried dill). Stir to mix the dill and make sure the potatoes are soft.
     6. Eat.
     We made the soup as explained. I liked it but we usually use fresh dill and we only had dried so it didn't have a very strong dill taste.

Sugar cookies

     On Tuesday (Mar.5/13) we made sugar cookies. My group had a revised recipe. Instead of sugar we used Splenda. it looked like regular supar cookies and it smelled great but was really dry. It took us a long time to get it to stick together in a ball.
     On Thursday (Mar.7/13) we made more sugar cookies. This time we replaced the white flour for half whole wheat and half white. It was just noticably darker because of the whole wheat flour. We also baked the cookies from Tuesday.
     On Tuesday (Mar.12/13) we made the normal sugar cookie recipe. It was easy to roll out and smelled great. after they were baked they smelled even better.
     On Thursday (Mar.14/13) we substituted  2 eggs with 1 cup of applesauce. That dough was ridiculously sticky. We couldn't even roll it out to bake it. we had to add a lot of flour.
    After tasting all the cookies the ones I like most were the half whole wheat half white flour cookies. they had a nutty taste and smelled fantastic. The Splenda cookies tasted the worst. The applesauce and regular recipe cookies I tied for second. They were both really good but weren't my favorites.

Gnocchi and Tomato Sauce

     On Feb.26/13 (Tuesday) we made gnocchi. Gnocchi is made from 2 cups of flour, 1 1/2 cups of mash potatoes and 1 egg. We mixed it all together. We rolled it out into long, half inch thick strips and cut them into lengths of 1 inch. My group used a fork and pressed in into the dough flat.

     On Feb.28/13 (Thursday) we made the tomato sauce. A whole can of tomatoes, a whole can of tomato paste, an onion, 2 cloves of garlic, basil and oregano. We cooked the onions and garlic, then added everything else. After the gnocchi was done boiling and the sauce done cooking, we cooked them together in a sauce. We decided not to puree them and kept them whole.We cooked them for only 10 minutes then ate them. I thought it tasted great. We had a lot extra and gave some to other students and they also said it was good. I would definitely make it again.

Lental Soup and Curry Lental Rice

     On Tuesday (Feb.19/13) we made lental soup. It tasted alright but we evaporated all the water and had to pour more so it turned out more like paste than soup. It looked pretty gross but it still tasted alright. On Thursday (Feb.21/13) we made curry lental rice. This looked much better, tasted better and came out the way it was supposed to.

Biscotti

     On Tuesday (Feb.12/13) we made biscotti. It tatsed almost bland. It didnt taste bad but I didn't really like it. It looked ok and smelled delicious. On Thursday (Feb.14/13) we made hazelnut biscotti. Personally, I think it tasted, looked, and smelled better than the vanilla biscotti. Both times our biscotti came out almost burnt but it still tasted pretty good.

Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

   On Tuesday (Feb.4/13) we made our first meal for foods class. We made tomato soup and grilled cheese. We used Campbell's tomato soup, Melt's processed cheese slices and regular whole wheat bread. On Wednesday we made homemade tomato soup, real cheddar cheese and sourdough bread.
   On Tuesday, since it was our first class, we did the most simple possible recipe of grilled cheese and tomato soup. I am in a group with Sabrina Fedosenko and Nicole Hubley. It was very basic and didn't take us too long. I didn't really enjoy the tomato soup, but I dipped my grilled cheese into my tomato soup and it tasted better than I thought it would but it still wasn't very good.
   On Wednesday our tomato soup was from canned whole tomatoes, half of one large onion, one clove of garlic, bay leaves, light cream, salt and pepper, butter and vegetarian chicken broth. We pureed our soup to take out any big clumps of tomato or onions. Our grilled cheese was made using sourdough bread, jalapenio peppers, fresh basil leaves,real cheddar, tomato.
   Personally I liked our second meal better. It tasted so much more fresh. For convenience the Campbells soup and processed cheese grilled cheese would be easier. By looks and taste the second was so much better. It tasted and looked better. The tomato and basil and jalapenios on the sandwich really made it look better than just bread and cheese.