There are so many herbs and spices out there that it’s hard to know where to start! In the past, I’ve had my students pick an herb or spice to research and present to the rest of the class. While that was okay, I wanted something a little more “spicy” (pardon my pun) and interactive. After wracking my brain for how I was going to do this, I put it aside for a while. Finally, after months of mulling this over in my head, the following activities and labs came to fruition and were worth the wait! I hope your students like it as much as mine did!
Category: Culinary
Meat Unit: Resources & Labs
Reclaiming the Kitchen with Casseroles
When I ask my students what they or their parents typically make for supper, I get a lot of similar responses. Most tell me they make and or eat whatever is easy, comes out of a box, comes out of the freezer, can be made in the microwave or picked up from a fast food restaurant on the way home. It’s so sad that convenience foods are so heavily relied on instead of preparing foods from scratch. This is one of the reasons I like teaching about casseroles! Not only are they easy to make, include a variety of foods and nutrients, but they can be made in advance, put in the freezer for future meals and convenience and because they get us in the kitchen cooking and using a lot of staple ingredients from the pantry. Way to go casseroles!
Whole Grains & Fiber Label Reading Activity
MyPlate encourages us to make half our plates whole and the dietary guidelines also recommend we increase our intake of whole grains. This is all great and seems like it should be relatively easy to do, when in reality it is often difficult to know what is truly a whole grain and what is refined. Because whole grains are typically a good source of fiber, I decided to marry the two topics into one mini-lesson and activity where students become sleuths and decode a variety of grain products in order to determine which are truly excellent sources of both fiber and whole grains and which don’t make the grade (even if their labels are deceiving).
Project Brainstorm: Let us help you! This month’s topic is Nutrition Across the Lifespan
We are going to pose a topic and ask you to “help us help you” by just sharing one thing you did whether it be an activity, a video clip, infographic, reading, TPT product, etc. when teaching that topic. We believe everyone will win in the end as you’ll have a new lesson or at least a lot of new ideas and resources to pull from. Check back often as this page will be updated as resources come in.
Let’s Teach About Eggs
Project Brainstorm: Let us help you! This month’s topic is Regional Cooking in the United States
We are going to pose a topic and ask you to “help us help you” by just sharing one thing you did whether it be an activity, a video clip, infographic, reading, TPT product, etc. when teaching that topic. We believe everyone will win in the end as you’ll have a new lesson or at least a lot of new ideas and resources to pull from. Check back often as this page will be updated as resources come in.
Gifts from the Hands
Some of the most cherished gifts our family has received over the years have been made by the hands of the people we love. In fact we look forward to those gifts every year as they’ve kind of become a tradition. Sometimes those gifts made with love were born out of necessity due to limited resources available to go out and purchase store bought gifts, but many times they were made and given out of love for the recipient(s) of the gift. For example, many years ago, very close friends of ours began making us a delicious candy-like treat that can only be described as “Christmas Crack” because once you start eating it, you can’t stop! We love the candy and our friends and look forward to that gift every year! After all, how can you look at, use or consume that wonderful gift without thinking fond thoughts of the talented person/people who took the time to make it for YOU! Why not teach your students how they can use their talents, time and resources to make gifts of love to give to those in their lives that they cherish most during this Christmas and Holiday season?
Dry & Moist Heat Cooking Methods Lesson & Lab
I find that most students don’t know the difference between dry and moist cooking methods. This lesson and lab help them to understand the difference and explore the various ways that the same food can be prepared using different methods. Students enjoy the interactive activities within the lesson as well as preparing and tasting vegetables as they practice and apply some of the techniques. This lesson also incorporates the vocabulary tool Quizlet which helps students learn their terms in an interactive way. Students actually ask me to use Quizlet on a regular basis to learn and assess terms.
Apples: Web-Activity & Labs
It’s fall, apples are in season and they are relatively inexpensive! Varieties of apples are sold everywhere from roadside stands to grocery stores so why not incorporate them into your foods class? That’s exactly what Jessica Uplinger of Field High School, Ohio did. Jessica created this lesson and lab because she has very large classes and needed a thematic unit where she could divide up her class and have half of them in the kitchen preparing a lab while the other half is engaged with an assignment. The end results? Her students ended up enjoying every aspect of this lesson, especially the labs! Why not give it a try in your foods class?