READ THE RECIPE CAREFULLY

When baking or cooking something you would figure directions would be the easiest thing to do, just read the sheet and copy as it says... NOPE. My gingerbread group and I along with every other group in our class did not read out gingerbread dough instructions correctly and ruined our dough. We did not add the butter in properly causing the dough to harden like a rock every time it went into the fridge. We had to roll is and warm the dough up with our hands, microwave, and even add water to it because of that one little mistake. It really set us back for time to build our house because a whole extra day was spent on rolling the dough back soft again, only to put it BACK in the fridge again for the next day. :( This taught us a very valuable lesson, no matter how small the instructions says it is a big deal and it does make a drastic difference in our overall product. I found that groups that properly mixed their dough had tasty, solid dough good for building where as my group's dough was hard to roll due to it breaking and it was not good quality taste. Lesson learned.. don't wing it and think that it will be okay because in most cases the directions are specific for a reason.

Half priced cakes are the best priced cakes

        I have never been one to enjoy cake. Since I was young I never liked eating birthday cakes because I found the icing either to sugary or the cake to dry. My alternative to birthday cakes was ice cream cakes which I love. For years I've been getting an ice cream cake on my birthday and you know what makes it even better according to my mom is the half price. Dairy Queen has this deal during the month of December that their birthday cakes are 50 percent off regular price. I think the fact that my birthday is in this month and I will only eat ice cream cakes makes my mom a little too happy. This year she picked out a Christmas themed cake and I think she was more excited about the entire thing more than I actually was. There was a big fake Santa head on it with holy and "snow" My birthday is on December 24th hence the Christmas themed cake!  Till this day I can always count on getting my Dairy Queen birthday cake, it's my tradition. The yummy fudge center with cookie crumble is what makes the cake that much better :D Even though sometimes i wish for something different, i love that i can always count on that ice cream cake!

Gingerbread House

During the last week of school before the Christmas break we had a gingerbread house contest and who ever won got an extra 10% bonus at the end of the semester. My group and I hoped for this win! Creating our own layout for our house was fun because we were completely in charge of everything. We were able to decide the image of the house and what type of decorations to put on it. A few days before the due date of our gingerbread houses another team ended up joining our group to combined houses and better all of our chances of winning . It was different to be able to work with people that i hadn't really worked with in the kitchen all semester. It was beneficial to our house when it came to ideas because there were more of us to help give unique ideas. It was quite nerve racking on the final day of building because we weren't sure if we would have the house decorations done in time. My teacher even counted down after the last 30 seconds.. it felt like we were on a food television show where we had to have our product finished and ready to eat on a specific timer. The group cracked under pressure because we were almost out of time and still had bare gingerbread walls so we decided to smear blue icing all over the sides of the house WITH OUR HANDS. We were disappointed in what we had rushed but realized there wasn't much to do. We didn't end up winning first, second, or third but we still had a fun time making it, it made the class more interesting, and the houses tasted pretty good! Way to shake up the course a bit in a fun, tasty way.

Spanakopita Spanakopita Spanakopita Spanakopita

      Recently one of my close friends ordered a spanakopita from Jimmy the Greek. I had never heard of this type of food so she offered me a piece... and that's when it starter...my obsession with spanakopita's!! If you are unaware of what a Spanakopita it is simply "A phyllo pastry stuffed with spinach and feta cheese." and it is amazing. If you haven't tried this wonderful Greek food i recommend all to try it! Lately i have had them a lot and even when i go out with friends we have them. We have all become addicted to them. The other day a few of my friends and i went over to M&M's after school to pick some up! Once you've tried one you can't help but crave for more. This is by far my favorite snack at the moment. You can buy them as small triangles OR in a big round swirl of pastry, spinach, and YUMMY cheese. My favorite would have to be the large ring of spanakopita! I have even gotten my aunt and mom loving it, and i bet anyone who tries it will love them too!

Fact: Being Vegan can be really hard to do!

That meal does not look very appetizing..

We recently as a class went to this volunteer program that makes vegan meals for the community. We were lucky enough to get the chance to cook one of the vegan lunches. For lunch that day we ate kale with sesame oil as the dressing, squash, and black bean brownies. I'm not going to sugar coat it most of it did not taste very good. The squash was okay because it actually had sweet flavor to it but the brownies were soft to the point it tasted like batter and it was very bitter form the black beans. The kale was not soft enough and was far to bitter for my taste. It was interesting to learn how to make a vegan meal. I didn't know there was such thing as black bean brownies! After eating this I realized how hard the transition must be from eating a meat based diet to eating vegan. The flavoring of meals is completely different and if you ask me being vegan makes your meal blan and boring! I think it would be difficult for vegans to have a wide variety of meal choices because it's so limited without any meat products or products that come from animals. You would definitely be eating much healthier than the regular meat dieted person. You would not have to worry as much about certain health problems that come with eating too much diary, or meat. I believe that being vegan could be healthier for you but at the same time there are facts proven that you need meat as a protein and some dairy products to help build and keep bones strong. All though it has even been said that milk and the calcium in it actually weakens our bones over time due! SHOCKER! There are many apposing arguments to both sides but i think anyone who is a vegan eat much more healthy products compared to others. It would be really difficult to become a vegan and you must be really committed. Applause to all those vegans out there!