NE Highlights and Challenges | Week #19

This is a class assignment that I write about at the end of each week called Highlights and Challenges. If you are new to my blog I am enrolled at The Natural Epicurean Culinary Academy in Austin, Texas and this is my online journal (among other things!).

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Describe: What did you find especially exciting, interesting, inspiring, satisfying and/or fun this week in the kitchen?

This week was interesting and fun because I learned about sea vegetables. Yeah, sea vegetables. I never knew of this particular category and this week's macrobiotic class was really good. It felt like a long week, but for me there was a lot of good information. This is my first time learning about macrobiotics and so far so good!

I also appreciated the demonstrations given by Chef Rachel. She made so many good recipes and my favorite was the soups. The red lentil soup! I enjoyed it so much I made it Friday after school. 

Here is what the red lentil soup looked like:

The sea vegetable I liked was dulse. Chef made us dulse tacos!! Here is a photo of the taco:

Here are a few more photos of the food we made as a group:

2. Reflect: In what ways have you begun to apply, develop or incorporate this and/or how does this influence your professional goals?

As I mentioned before, I made the red lentil soup Friday after school. We've got plenty of left overs for the week so I'm happy about that. There are many other recipes that I want to try from this week's class, but I will wait since I've got a final event to get ready for. 

The other part that I might add is our knife skills. Knife skills have been highlighted for me in our macrobiotic class this week. Chef Rachel has demonstrated and requested that our cuts be uniform for even cooking and presentation. I like cutting thin diagnal pieces into matchsticks for some of our recipes we had in lab. Here is a dish that required the matchstick cuts (burdock, carrot, and lotus root kinpira recipe):

Here is our talented chef instructor Chef Rachel showing us how to roll and cut collard wraps (my friend Paula is standing next to her):

At the request of Chef Rachel, she asked us to choose one of the ten options to strengthen for our health approach to macrobiotics. The one that resonated with me is to sit down to regular meals every day.

This sounds easy to accomplish, but I have found myself standing when I'm eating a meal especially when I'm at school. When I'm home I stand in the kitchen while eating so there is room for improvement! 

CHALLENGES

3. Describe: What did you find especially challenging or difficult in the kitchen this week?

I have been slightly distracted by the final event and everything that comes with planning for it. I don't feel that the distraction is serious that it interferes with my day-to-day, but we only have three weeks left. 

This is an interesting situation to be in considering we still have to complete the macrobiotic modality on top of planning the event. 

4. Reflect: What might you do to meet and overcome these challenges or difficulties?

Some of us will be meeting after school on Monday to help each other with our costing and scaling of our recipes. I'm hoping for the best for all of us so that our event will go smoothly. I'd like for all of us to be able to be calm and happy these last few weeks :)

Thanks for stopping by and see you next week!