Genius Hour #2- Reflection

I did my final presentation last Friday and I can say it was a success. I am very proud on how I did on my presentation and I am very thankful I got to do this project. I not only learned a basic life necessity I had fun doing it as well. For my final presentation I shared a slideshow of what i have learned and my ups and downs with this project and to finally conclude my presentation I baked dog treats and brought my dog and my classmates gave her cookies/biscuits that I made. What I liked that i did in this project was that not only did I learn to cook I also learned how to edit and make video which can help me for future project I may do. I enjoyed making my cooking videos and I am sad to see it end. I think my genius hour was a success as I addressed and made lots of food to many peoples liking and now I can help my mom make food for ourselves,party’s, and even my dog and all my families dogs. I also know now what I am feeding my dog and eating healthy is a key component on staying fit and living longer. I do hope my dog lives a long time. I am happy with what I have accomplished but I know that there is always room for improvement. I plan to spend my summer improving and trying new genres of food. Thank you for being part of my progress this genius hour and I hope to see you soon!

-Ruby

Week 9 – Reflection, Progress and News

This week I decided to prepare for my Genius Hour presentation that is on Friday. I am super excited to show what I have learned and I have planned a nice surprise that I think most people will enjoy. I plan to bring in some treats and do a presentation and end it with my surprise plan ( don’t worry I already checked about it with Ms. Englot and she said It was okay). I remember in my first blog post this term I stated that I might not be able to add in everything and I might have to cook twice a week to complete everything on time but I am running out of time and I would like to spend my time making a good presentation and not fully complete my full goal, then to have a bad presentation but have completed my goal. I still plan on making two more items and see if I can squeeze in a blog post or two in before my presentation but only time will tell. I am very proud that I set this goal for myself back in February (?) and have stuck by it as I learned to make so many unique and exquisite food and also learn how to record and edit a video. I have come a long way from when I started and I feel thankful to have been assigned this project. I am kinda sad to see it end but I am sure there will be lots of other fun projects in Grade 9. Good Luck to everyone doing there presentation! Until next time.

– Ruby

Week 8- Tamales

This week I decided to start my new series of cultural food. I am of Salvadorian decent so I have decided to make traditional Hispanic food. I have decided to make tamales. Tamales are a very controversial food as no one knows which country it originated from so due to this many country have adapted it to its unique flavor. I will be making Salvadorian tamales and the difference between these and the other types is that in El Salvador they make them with banana leafs. My mom took me to buy them at H Mart (asian superstore) which is weird as I didn’t know they used them as well. My grandma makes them with chicken and some spicy sauce, and they taste okay, but I like my moms better. She makes them with leafs, masa and potato. They taste amazing with a tomato sauce. Its very silky and tasy. Apparently to my father they taste better the next day as the flavors settle down. The process of making tamales is very long and hard to do and usually if my mom makes them they take up all day ( which is why she makes them rarely). These are probably one of the hardest recipes to make and It was fun to make them and challenging. Here is a picture of how they turned out to be. Enjoy!!!

Week 7- Dog Pretzels

I can now say that making pretzels is hard. I ran into so many problems like the sweet potato was kinda hard to blend and cut as it was either to hard or to chunky. I also had trouble twisting the pretzel into its shape and finally dealing with the dough as it was very sticky. I also had trouble rolling it as I added extra flour to make it less sticky but it made it more stiff making it harder to roll. This recipe challenged me as not only because I have never made dog food but it was so tricky to make. I followed the recipe of a book I found at the library following my experts advice. They might have not as perfect I wanted them to be but my dog seemed to enjoy them ( later on she did at least). Anyways enjoy the video I explain the rest there!!

video: https://www.veed.io/view/ac0fc21f-7cfe-4820-954c-b4d97e24d2e4?panel=share

Week 6 – Contacting an Expert and the start of dog treats

This week I contacted an expert and started to make dog treats. I contacted many people on Instagram (I contacted 15 people, and only 3 replied. One of them was local and the other two were from Ontario and the US. They were very helpful especially the one from Ontario writing me lots of advice and the one from Edmonton. I learned lots of useful tips like what not to use and what to use to make and feed your dog. Below is my conversation with them. I decided to follow the advice of one of the experts and I decided to start by researching at the library and I took the book “Healthy Homemade Dog” by Serena Faber- Nelson. It has a a bunch of recipes and I think I will try to make one this week. I want to make the fresh breath dog treats or the pumpkin and chia biscuits. I will update you this week.

Week 5 – Vegan stuffed peppers

This week I decided to make vegan stuffed peppers. These are cheesy and gooey recipes which I fairly enjoy. I have tried non vegan and vegan options and I must say I prefer the vegan version. The cheese crisps and becomes a golden color which is so melty and cheesy. It’s so good and has an explosion of flavor. The only bad thing is its more of an appetizer and not like a full course meal. I made them without any meat or meat alternatives which means I just made them with pure vegan cheese. I made the vegan cheese out of tofu, basil, and cashews.

G #2 Week 4 – Oyster Mushroom Burgers

This week I made oyster mushroom burgers. Honestly this recipe is so good, it tastes like real fried chicken and I absolutely loved it. I followed the recipe of this guy on YouTube who makes really good vegan food called eat more plants. I was really skeptical of making this because I hate mushrooms but this was honestly so good I think I am reconsidering if I ever actually disliked mushrooms. The oyster mushroom chicken has such a crunchy crispy light batter, that makes it taste exquisite.The process in which this made consisted of these steps. First I dipped the oyster in the seasoned flour and then dipped it into the soya milk and repeated the process 2 more times. I then added it into the pan with oil at medium heat ( careful not to burn it). I waited until they turned a nice gold brown to take them out and assembled the sandwich part. I made the sauce/ spread this consists of mayonnaise (vegan), ketchup, sliced onions and pickles. I mixed it together keeping the mixture still thick because I like it that way. Once completed I spread it on the bread, I added lots since this is what partially makes the taste of this burger so good. Then I placed the fried oyster mushroom and topped it with more pickles. It was so simple yet so good(but very time consuming), I think this has to be the best recipe so far I have done.

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16DEXPy9V01aNJEUjBIKWKcec9IaRDfa5/view?usp=sharing

Photos:

G#2 Week 3 – Vegetable Rolls

This week I made vegetable rolls, they are not entirely my favorite food but I think they turned out all right. I made something similar like this in Foods (option class) at school and I really liked them so I wanted to try and remake them. This is a familiar food that my mom made a lot when I was younger and I didn’t quite like it because of its peanut butter sauce. It didn’t make sense to me how something like vegetables can be eaten with something sweet like peanut butter. I always liked the roll though because of the yummy soft texture of the rice paper. I decided to not include the peanut butter sauce this time but I added vegetable fish sauce because it seemed appropriate and obviously tasted better to me. This recipe is fairly simple to make and I feel like has been the easiest so far, but I am working in baby steps getting confidence to make harder and time consuming recipes like the tamales I plan to do in the future (April 27). I was going through my plan and I think there will be a week that I will have to cook 2 times to complete all that I have planned to make in time and still give me time to prepare for my final presentation in June. I have started to look for a couple of experts and so far I have come up with an Edmontonian vegan chef named Nick and this wonderful pet shop called Mandy’s Little Bark Shop for tips on making dog treats. I will contact my experts as I go and hope to improve on there tips. Last week I discovered this really good app to edit my videos and it has been most helpful. My videos now look very neat, organized and creative. I hope to cut down my time making my video as it is time consuming to edit them and the videos are to long so I want to shorten them and highlight the peak moments in my cooking. So far this has been such a good couple of weeks and I hope that you enjoy watching my video and seeing my content as much as I like making it.

– Ruby

Video: my video didnt save and got deleted 🙁

G#2 Week 2- Sushi

This week I decided to attempt to make sushi. Sushi is high on my list of favourite food because of its yummy texture and exquisite flavours. I decided to make a vegan sushi (with vegan salmon) and vegetables. I ran in to trouble while cutting my sushi and it turned at bit mushy and deformed, but I tried using other methods to cut and they seemed to work better but not necessarily perfect. Even though my sushi might not have looked spot on my editing skills have gotten way better in just one week. I was using shotcut to edit my videos but this week I decided to use capcut which is so much simpler and easier to utilize. Overall I must admit I had lots of fun cooking and filming this video. Until next week, see you there.

Information:

Sushi origins from china which may be a surprise, as many people think it comes from Japan. While Japan is the sushi capital of the world, and has introduced its dish to the world, sushi traces its origins back to a Chinese dish called narezushi. This dish consisted of ferment rice and salted fish. The dish spread from China to Japan were it was adapted and slightly tweaked up. Sushi was fist recored a dish in Japan in the 8th century as seen in some writers work. In the 18th the dish spread to Edo ( former name of Tokyo) were many local restaurants started making sushi. In 1852 there were for every 100×100 meter square block in Edo, there were 1-2 sushi restaurants. Thats a lot of restaurants! Even thought it was quite popular it was not the same as it was today as it was usually cooked due to the lack of refrigerating. When sushi was first introduced to the Americas was in the early 1900s it was a delicacy for the upper class and it became less common as the Japanese population declined in the late 1900s. After World War II, Japan was starting its economy up and began doing business, tourism, and trade and with America (1960s) was when sushi was exposed to the american society. Many middle class started trying sushi and loving it as a result. This is when the food industry exploded with this new food and exposed and exploited it to our modern day society. This is how one of americas most loved foods came to be.

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dhX70ngFWCIS-b1frVO7Agdi-JA9-riI/view

Photos:

fails:

Genius hour #2- Week 1

This week I made Acai bowls. They turned out pretty good and I got to experiment and make a video. That was harder than making the food itself. I am not terrific at making videos but I hope to improve. I want to edit the videos but for this video I just stitched a bunch of videos together. Okay, but now let me give you some information of what I made. Acai bowls are a Brazilian dessert made of frozen and mashed berries or fruit. It is served as a smoothie in a bowl or glass and is commonly topped with granola and bananas, and then if the consumer prefers it is mixed with other fruits and gurana syrup. The Acai berry (the original fruit Acai bowls were made with) has a granular texture, but when it’s blended it changes flavor . Pureed Acai berry is very smooth and creamy so it takes like sorbet or ice-cream because of its thick texture. The Acai bowl originated from Brazil but now is widely consumed around the world. Surprisingly most people think it came from Hawaii but Hawaii only adopted it. The Acai bowl is now viewed as a tropical beach treat for hot climates and it also became a super food lover. It originally peaked its hype in the 90s and it has lived up to its expectations throughout the years. It is truly a beautiful and delicious treat to enjoy.

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cXDCKKijdbn6VJvnpyobcj1xFh1feAFW/view?usp=sharing