Category: Culinary & Hospitality Professional Development

Cookie Baking Unit!

My students have been practically begging me to let them bake cookies. They have been relentless! Since they were so excited, I gave in! Because I haven’t taught this in many years, I had to update my cookie unit. I decided it was the perfect time to share my Cookie Baking unit with you because it fits so well sandwiched between the holiday breaks!

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Food Safety: Web-Activity & Review

You might wonder why I have so many lessons and/or activities for the same topic. The truth is I teach three different classes where I need to cover “food safety” before I let students go into the lab/kitchen. I don’t want to do the same thing in each of those classes because many of my students I see again for other electives, hence, the need for variety! Even if you don’t teach multiple courses like I do, you may just want to shake up your own lesson or add this Food Safety: Web-Activity & Review to your arsenal of resources for future use!

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Student Led Mini-Lessons for Food PreparationTerms & Kitchen Tools

The trend in education is to create student led activities, projects and presentations! After being inspired by a literary term assignment that my son had to create and teach to his AP Literature class, I thought, why not do this with food preparation terms and kitchen tools, letting students compile the information in a presentation and teach each other the materials!  This easily became a template that I could share with my students via Google Classroom, keeping entire presentations together. Since students had to orally, present their term or tool, I could grade as they presented, making my life easier at the end of the day!  

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Family Dinner Matters

One tradition that my family practiced as I was growing up was eating family dinner together regularly! I have wonderful memories of that dinner table; the fun and laughter as well as difficult conversations that ensued between my sisters and parents. This important tradition continued while raising our own children!  How my husband and I will miss this daily routine as we rapidly approach the empty nest stage of our lives. Below you will find a lesson that promotes eating together as a family and the benefits along with a variety of engaging activities and projects that can be implemented in the FACS classroom. Hopefully, students will carry this concept to their home life so it  becomes a recurring practice and a potential tradition with both their present and future families!

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One “Pot” Pourri Meals with Edible Flowers

Years ago, I took a class on edible flowers with my local extension office. Not only was it pleasing to the eye, but it was tastefully pleasant as well! Recently, I was reminded of edible flowers when meeting up with a former student and dear friend; Ashten Swartz. She shared with me that she developed recipes for GRIT magazine around the theme of edible flowers…you’ll find her recipes linked below! Anyway, one thing led to another, and we ended up getting together to experiment with edible flowers in one-pot meals. Ashten developed the below recipes and I must say they looked and tasted amazing! I plan to share these with my students in hopes that they utilize edible flowers in some of their recipes as they experiment in the kitchen.

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Cooking up International Cuisine: Summer Professional Development

This June, I had the opportunity to take a Foreign Foods class taught by 2008 Chef of the Year, Chef Tom Siegel, CEC. It was a 5 day intensive, beginning at 8 a.m. and ending between 3 and 4 in the afternoon. Each day focused on a different country or region. Monday was Greece, Tuesday was Italy, Wednesday was “The Magreb”: Morocco and Tunisia, Thursday was Southeast Asia: Thailand and Vietnam, and Friday was BBQ through the American South.

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Become a ServSafe Instructor & Proctor

Help your students get a jump start in the restaurant industry by having them become ServSafe certified! To do this you can either have a ServSafe instructor come and teach your class or you can become a certified instructor.

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NYC Chocolate Show

“The Chocolate show is the largest international show exclusively dedicated to the chocolate industry. Celebrating all that is special about chocolate, it provides chocolate professionals with a unique communication platform. All those working in the industry and chocolate lovers of every kind can get together to express their views, share experiences and enjoy their passion for chocolate.”

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Baking & Pastry Summer Educator’s Program

I learned so much at the Johnson & Wales Baking & Pastry Summer Educator’s Program. I described briefly what we did each day of the class. I also have included some products that were discussed and used during the class…

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Fancy Food Show, NYC

I just got back from this year’s Fancy Food Show in the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City. The Fancy Food Show is put on by the NASFT (National Association for the Specialty Food Trade).

“Since 1955, the Fancy Food Shows have been North America’s largest specialty food and beverage marketplace. Between the Winter Show in San Francisco and the Summer Show in New York City, the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade events bring in more than 40,000 attendees from more than 80 countries to see 260,000 innovative specialty food products, such as confections, cheese, coffee, snacks, spices, ethnic, natural, organic and more. Only NASFT Members can exhibit at the Shows, where retailers, restaurateurs, distributors and others discover innovative, new food and beverage products. The Shows are attended by every major food buying channel, influential members of the trade and consumer press and other related businesses.”

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