the BOX of nice things

Saturday, September 18, 2010, 2:01 PM

converting Imperial to Metric weights

This is a practice to convert imperial measurements to metric measurements...

Recipe for New York Cheesecake
(from: http://www.momswhothink.com/cheesecake-recipes/new-york-cheesecake-recipe.html)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup [~ 75g] butter, melted

1½ cup [~ 300g] cinnamon graham cracker crumbs

26 oz. [~740g] cream cheese, softened

1 can 14 oz. [~400ml or 1¾ cups] sweetened condensed milk

2 tsp. [~10ml] vanilla extract

2 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300°F [~150°C]. Combine graham cracker crumbs and butter; press evenly on bottom of 9 inch pie pan.

2. In large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually add sweetened condensed milk, beating until smooth.

3. Add vanilla and eggs, mix well. Pour into prepared pie pan.

4. Bake for 1 hour, turn off oven but leave cheesecake in oven with door propped slightly open for an additonal hour.

5. Refrigerate at least 6 hours until firm.

conversion calculator: http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/tools.measures/Measures.cfm

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

Friday, September 17, 2010, 12:48 AM

Review 4 & 5

Review 4 - Foodtube.net / YouTube

These websites hosts a collection of video recipes and basic cooking skill demonstrations. These various cooking demonstrations range from very basic dishes/cooking skills, eg cooking of pasta (1st video), to more advanced dishes/cooking skills, eg making of roux(2nd video).

Using of videos for cooking demonstrations is a more efficient way to impart cooking skills to students as compared to traditional cooking demonstration by the teacher during the practical sessions.

Here are some reasons:
1. Can pause/replay steps to emphasize certain important steps
2. The video will have added captions which allow more visual learner to better relate the various steps in the recipe with the actions.
3. In a typical classroom cooking demonstration, only the first row of students can get the best view and the rest who cannot really see will lose their interest in learning. Thus, they miss out on noting down the important steps and proper way to prepare the demonstrated dish.

Therefore, I would search and include cooking demonstrations for the recipes that I would teach for practical and show them to the students taking Food Studies before actually conducting the practical session.

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Review 5 - TeensHealth from Nemours: Food Safety

This article from the site summarizes the various aspects of food safety in an easy to read manner with short paragraphs. Apart from using it when teaching Food Safety, this way of organizing the key points can also be thought to the students so that it helps them in the preparation for the written examination.

In a systematic way, food safety kicks in from choosing:

To storing and cooking:

To cleaning up:

To storing leftovers:

There is still more information available on the site for teens, there is not many articles related to the syllabus of Food Studies. Also, there is not many graphics or interactive activities available that can help to engage the students.

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

Thursday, September 16, 2010, 11:54 PM

web source review 2 & 3

Review 2 - Smart-Mouth.org

This websites uses colourful graphics and is not text-laden, thus I think might engage the students taking Food Studies.

Under the section "choose ur chew", students can select their favourite snack and the counter will show the sum of saturated fat and calories.

This can be used when teaching the topic on balanced diet whereby this can show the students that food should be eaten in moderation. Through this interactive snack counter, there could be discussion on the function of nutrients (mainly fat) in the body and hidden fat in food. When the calories or saturated fat content is too high due to addition of certain food, there will be suggestion given to improve the diet, as well as related readings. This will let the students know the relationship of the diet and their body, enhancing the importance of a balanced diet.

Then there's short video clips that covers health-related issues related to intake of saturated fat, which can be used engage the students.

Other than the above mentioned, there's some food facts and riddles that students can explore on their free time. Overall, I find that this website cover mostly on topics that surrounds saturated fat. It is only useful to a small extend due to the limited content that relates with the Food Studies Syllabus. However, can still be useful if it is used as a tool to engage the students at the start of introducing the topics on "fats and oils" or "balancing diet".

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Review 3 - Steamy Kitchen

Apart from just providing recipes, this website is also useful when used to introduce the students to ways they can present their food in attractive and appropriate manners.

As product and presentation and evaluation made up 10% weightage of coursework A, it is important to have proper presentation of their dishes during execution and include nicely taken photos in the evaluation section. Thus, when introducing students to presentation of food, this website can be used. It can provide students with ideas for their dishes presentation. By visiting the site, they can pick up ideas such as; to make food attractive, they can either work on the plating and/or decorating the food itself.

This website also includes many recipes that involved different methods of cooking. Therefore, while discussing with the students on presentation of food, I can also bring in other components under the topic of food management.

Here's how a recipe post in the website looks:
Super Simple Pate a Choux – Poofy Puffy Pastry! from the Bread category

So bascially, these photos provides visual aid to engage the Food Studies students as many of them would prefer to see photos than wordy descriptions. This example is one of the typical "high skill" dishes that can be executed but many are unable to get the desired outcome when executing the recipe. So, hopefully with photos to guide the step by step making, more students can master the skill of choux pastry.

A negative point is that not all the dishes have detailed recipes/ step by step how-to-do with photos as they merely include links to other sites. Nonetheless, it is one of the many recipe sites that can be used when students are introduced to the concept of food presentation as a picture speaks a thousand words.

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

1:27 PM

web sources review 1

Health Promotion Board, Singapore

This website is very useful for the students in their coursework as the tools, data-based and articles are tailored to the Singapore context.

As the website not only covers food and nutrition related topic and resources, but also on other health concerned issues, it is also suitable for all that are health conscious or wanted to find out more about health-related issues to visit!

Since the focus of the review will be on the suitability of the website for teaching food studies, I'll be discussing on the food and nutrition related resource. (Do explore the other sections!)

Here we go!

Apart from articles where students can read up for information, they can also find the Singapore Recommended Daily Dietary Allowance from this website.

As the students need to plan the menu for their coursework, they need to know the RDDA for their target group before the actually planning can be done.

The HPB website also provide a variety of useful health tools for the students to choose and use.

The tool to highlight here will be the Energy and Nutrient Composition of Food.
When teaching the students meal planning, this tool can be introduced.
After the students planned their menu, they can check if their menu meets the RDDA for their target group by selecting the foods and tabulating the data.
One plus point of this is that students can find the energy and nutrient composition of local dishes and delicacies, unlike other food composition data-based by other countries.

Apart from the above tools, there's this section on Educational Materials where booklets and other materials can found.

The above are examples of educational materials (information booklets). Such booklets like All About Fruits and Vegetable can be used to supplement their reading when I'm teaching about the different food commodities. These booklets are colourful and thus might attract the students attention better than the textbooks. Some of these booklets also have recipes, which gives students ideas on dishes that certain commodities are the main ingredients.

The last part of my review is on the DigiTools available.
This section provide resources consisting of videos, games, and others. Something useful for teaching will be the cooking demo found in the Video category, which can be showed to students before their practicals. The negative point is that there's only cooking demonstrations for 3 dishes.

Shall end this review with a cooking demo from HPB DigiTools:

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 12:15 AM

what you see might not be what you think they are.


Chewy sea cucumber in Buddha jump over the wall

Herbal duck soup

Crispy chicken cutlet!


Succulent braised pork belly!

Why am I sharing photos of these yummy food?

The inspiration comes from a small incident......

Last thursday, I packed food from the NIE canteen.
This was what I ordered - 1 serving of cabbage, braised tofu, and lemon chicken.
So, I started eating while I'm in a conversation with my friend.
The cabbage tasted like normal cabbage, and so is the tofu.
Just as I paid a closer attention to my food.....
I saw a half eaten chunk of pork belly!
At that split second, I'm stunned!
The exterior looks just the real thing!
The "skin" is actually a thick layer of beancurd skin, and the manufacturer even considered the texture of the fatty layers! There's this irregular bumps on the surface and I swear if I didn't cut the chunk open and see the white and soft tofu, I wouldn't have know that is a piece of mock meat!

And.. All the while up till this point, I did not realise that I actually bought my lunch from the vegetarian stall!

Look at all the mock dishes prepared now-a-days (photos above).
They have such fine details that you can hardly guess they aren't the real ones!

Boring and plain looking vegetarian meal?
Think again!
Tofu doesn't even look like tofu and you'll never realise what it is until you take a bite!

Images from: http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/xiamen-info-476.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wheat_gluten_%28vegetarian_mock_duck%29_2007.jpg, http://www.foodblog.sg/vegetarian/go-east-for-good-fusion-greens/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/avegancalledbacon/2646159686/sizes/m/in/photostream/.

PS. Si Ni's comment reminded me that I did not reveal the real identity of the 4 dishes above!

I only know that the mock duck is made of gluten as it is mention in the website I found the photo.

As for the rest, I'd done some research..

Usually, mock meat/seafood can be made from beancurd, beancurd skin, gluten, koniyaku powder and texturized vegetable protein. (Chen, 2009, p. 115)

So for the mock sea cumcumber, I guessed it's made of koniyaku powder (a blend of carrageenans, which are extracts from sea weeds) since carrageenans can give the chewy mouthful that imitates the real counterpart.

As for the chicken cutlet, I think it can be made of gluten (gluten can be made into a hundred and one mock items!) or textured vegetable protein (to give those who wanted a break from gluten-based mock meat another option.)

Then for the mock pork belly, I'd tried similar ones made of beancurd (tofu!) but it can also be made with gluten or textured vegetable protein.

Reference:

Chen, T.M. (2009). A tradition of soup: flavors from China's Pearl River Delta. California, U.S.A: North Atlantic Books.

Labels: something interesting to share

Saturday, September 11, 2010, 2:54 PM

home ec is more than you can imagine!

HOME ECONOMICS = COOKING!

This is the common mindset/perception of most people.

Majority of them did not even associate sewing with it, let alone the other aspects that home ec actually covers.

BUT, home economics is not just about cooking and sewing!

it's Family and Consumer Sciences!

So, it's time for those who perceive home ec as insignificant subject to start think out of the box and broaden their mindset.

Labels: DCX 132 Home Economics Curriculum and Evaluation