the BOX of nice things

Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 11:22 PM

baked chips!

Was shopping for the resources needed for my Home Ec microteaching last sunday.
At the chips section, I decided to check the difference in calories between baked tidbits and the regular ones that are fried that burns spontaneously!

Regular Doritos and Baked Doritos!

Compared the calories and...

These extra calories comes from FATS!

Labels: something interesting to share

Thursday, October 21, 2010, 1:25 PM

FNN mircoteaching group 3!

I like the table setting! Super sweet and elegant~

This week's FNN microteaching was on Fruits and Vegetables..
Nur and Shijia taught Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting!
Xi Ling and Khaty taught Cabbage Roll!
Angela and Jehan taught Cream of Broccoli, Mushroom & Leek and Fruit Trifle!

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

1:02 PM

New York New York!

Priscilla and I went to Jurong Point on tuesday for lunch and decided to try the lunch promo at New York New York.

The drinks look NICE!

The layout of the NYNY

The way the MASHED POTATO was served

Mexican Cheesy Chicken, served with nacho and salad!

Grilled Dory Fish with Herbs, served with fries and salad!

Overview of the food presentation!

The portion size is huge! I think I can easily meet my Meat and Alternative serving size intake from the meal.

The fish is very tender and its coated with herbs and garlic bread crumbs which adds crispy texture. However, I liked the cheesy chicken better though! The combination of melted cheese, cheese sauce and salsa sauce just went so well with the crispy and succulent chicken!

Apart from the main dish, the lunch promo comes with drinks (we had iced tea) and a scoop of ice cream (choice of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry). The set lunch is $9.80++ and the mashed potato is an add on at only $2.

*NYNY is not Halal~

** I'm not sure if other branches served the same set lunch menu

Labels: DCX 132 Home Economics Curriculum and Evaluation, something interesting to share

Monday, October 18, 2010, 1:20 AM

plating and garnishing

had dinner with cz, wl and friend at Mad Jack sunday night.
and this is how they present their food...

Fish and Chips with apple and peach salad

Char-Grilled Chicken with cream sauce

Turkey Bacon Beef Burger with Chips

basically, the plating very normal and there's no fanciful garnishes..
but can't expect too much cos what you pay is what you'll get.. =)
the cream sauce on the char-grilled chicken is good!!
the fish is a little oily as the batter absorbed too much oil, but other than that it's still OK..
then the burger is better than Carl's Jr, so I'll rather eat here than there.. the size wise is only half of what Carl's Jr serve but why take in extra calories right?! ^___^

*Mad Jack is Halal!

Labels: DCX 132 Home Economics Curriculum and Evaluation

Sunday, October 17, 2010, 3:12 PM

unique looking fruits!

meet these white and unique looking pineberries

image from: http://robotindisguise.tumblr.com/post/484892923/pineberries-and-cream-the-new-summer-fruit-which

I happened to chance upon this while surfing the net..

So I googled and this is the description for the berries:

"The fruit flesh can range from soft white to orange and is very fragrant with a slight pineapple flavor" that's why it's called pineberries..

and....

it a hybrid between strawberry species, which gives it the unique appearance. It is smaller than the usual strawberries we see in the supermarket and the yield is very low. So that's why we don't see it around our supermarkets. =(

I think people just like new stuffs, and this reminded me of the news years back: unique shaped fruits such as apples, pear, and watermelons. The shapes are modified by placing the growing fruits in a mould of the desired shape (ie cube, pyramid). As the fruit grow, it cannot form its original shape due to the mould that restricts its growth, and thus it will take up the shape of the mould. So you get uniquely shaped fruits!

image from: http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-square-fruits-image8721275

Labels: something interesting to share

Saturday, October 16, 2010, 5:40 PM

cheerful yellow woven bag!

currently working on the 2nd coursework for clothing and textile module.
at the sticking the fabric wrapped interfacing into the basic structure of the bag stage.

Dr Mok conducting a demo

Cut the fabric and interfacing into strips

After ironing the interfacing to the fabric

Pattern Number 1 (I don't really liked it)

So this is Pattern Number 2

Glued the strips to the base

1st layer, which is the most tedious and difficult layer.

3 layers up! 5 more to go!

6 layers up! 2 more layers to go!

Making this bag need to be very concise in order to get the nice and neat squares. So, after forming the bag's structure using glue, a inner layer need to be attached, as well as the handles and the bag is completed!

will update again with the end product! =)

Labels: DCX 131 Teaching of Clothing and Textiles

5:26 PM

the second micro teaching!

this week's food commodity is MEAT

menu of the day: CHICKEN SAMBAL, CHAKCHOUKA, & MUTTON MASALA.

This is our chicken sambal garnish with chiffonade cabbage

Chakchouka & poached egg garnish with baguette

Mutton masala (made with yoghurt!)

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

Saturday, October 9, 2010, 10:34 PM

kick start MICRO TEACHING!

Group 1 kick started the micro teaching for F&N module..
Their topic is on staple food and the photo above is their demonstration of how to present the dishes for O level coursework A execution.

So, Hidayah and Farah taught tuna fish quiche.


Our quiche with garnishing =)

Jay and Mavi taught us how to make Cous Cous (an Egyptian dish).

Cous Cous we made and garnished!

Lastly, Mei Zhu and Gmah taught us how to make penne pasta with grilled chicken.

Serving for 1 ;)

The 3 dishes we made for the day!

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition

9:59 PM

nicely presented!

How much will you give for the presentation of doughnut(s) in each plate?
Total is upon 3 marks; 1m for colourful presentation, 1m for garnishing, 1 mark for using appropriate plate.

This is what we'd done as a practice for grading students' work based on a rubric. The trick is to use "positive marking", which means every students' work are supposed to be awarded 3 marks. However, if they missed out any of the criteria in the rubric, then marks will be deducted for that component.

Apart from learning how to mark presentation based on rubric, we also learn more about garnishing.

For instance, doughnuts or other sweet snacks should be garnished with fruits, which complements the sweet taste with a tangy note. Also, the rule of thumb for plating is that no food and garnish should be protruding out of the plate and left "hanging" there. Last but not least, if there's no appropriate garnish available, then do not garnish! No garnish is better than Wrong garnish! Use of folk/spoon can also be a garnish =)

For sec 4 students taking food and nutrition, we have to constantly remind them of these food presentation teachniques to prepare them for their coursework A execution; eg always serve for 1, use the right plate with the correct size, how to garnish various food with different flavours and colour with common ingredients such as tomato, carrot, parsley, candie cherries etc.

Labels: DCX 132 Home Economics Curriculum and Evaluation

Tuesday, October 5, 2010, 1:08 PM

the bag of CHIPS!

i guess some of you'll have seen similar video like this before, or may have even tried burning some chips.. Do you see how much oil a piece of potato chip contain?!

I'm a fan of Ruffles! And I tried to burn the chips before and it combust like the chip in the video. You might be wandering where the oil come from and how come chips are so OILY?!

Potatochips is one of the food items that have a lot of hidden fat. You don't see it there as it's hidden (all absorbed) in the chips. So as you munch on them (we don't stop at one, do we?), we eat all the fats! And this is why you gain weight! =(

So, alternative will be baked chips and crackers. As baking process do not require oil as a medium for heat transfer, the crispy texture but there is minimal added fat to the chips. However, even though manufacture tried to make it as tasty as the fried counterparts, baked chips are more dry as compared.

Labels: something interesting to share

Monday, October 4, 2010, 3:01 PM

the journey so far

Another week went by and we'd done so much in class!!

for DCX 130 Teaching of food & Nutrition,
we had done SOW and coursework B report..
This is what happened during the lab session last week,
each group have to set up a station to collect data for our report...

Group 1 (the group I'm in ^-^) - The Pepsi Challenge!

Basically, we would like to determine if the perceived preference will tally with the preference after tasting.
Results collected shows that more subjects prefers Coke to Pepsi both before and after tasting..

Group 2 - I smell a Rat!
this station, we have to smell 5 different test tubes and try to identify the ingredients in the test tubes.
didnt have sensitive nose so all the test tubes smell bad to me.
there's this pungent smell which i think it's from vinegar..

Group 3 - Let them eat cake!
At this station, we are given 2 chocolate cake samples and were asked to evaluate the samples based on sweetness, buttery mouthfeel and colour.

Group 4 - There's a spy among us!
This station uses the classic triangular test, where we have to taste 3 sugar solution and identify the odd one out. There is very little difference in the sweetness and I couldn't really tell which one is the odd one out.

Group 5 - Smell Checkpoint!

I like this station best as I really couldn't tell the flavour of the 4 baby food samples without my sense of smell. I realized I'm so dependent on my sense of smell and without it, food just tasted weird and the texture feels wrong.

Group 6 - Who moved my cheese?!
We need to evaluate the 2 cheese sample by colour, milkiness and smoothness to decide which sample is the low fat variation. I find that both tasted very similar, thus I guess I must really give credit to the food manufacturer for making low fat cheese taste just as great as the full fat ones. Save me some calories without compromising the taste! =)

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And for our home economics lesson, we'd prepared a coursework for lower secondary..
Now, we're moving on to setting an examination paper..

The first step is to map up all the topics to be covered and start to allocate the marks for each topic.. So we have to come up with the table of specification (TOS) before the actual setting of paper can begin.

This is the sample TOS Ms Chin showed us in class

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Lastly for our clothing and textile module, apart from learning how to use the embroidery machines, and preparing samples for my competency profile, I'd made a draw string bag that's super cute as Dr Mok provided us with very sweet looking fabrics!

Labels: DCX 130 Teaching Food and Nutrition, DCX 131 Teaching of Clothing and Textiles, DCX 132 Home Economics Curriculum and Evaluation

Saturday, October 2, 2010, 4:37 PM

my cravings for FRIES!

Do you love french fries?
I love fries!!
it's one fried food that I can't resist and constantly crave for!
But.. view the 2 videos below..

Both videos above show that Mcdonald's fries aren't rotting or grow mouldy!
These are what we're eating when we order our set meals in mac..
Will you give a second thought before visiting McDonald's now?

Labels: something interesting to share