Week Seven: Chicken Stir Fry

Hello fellow bloggers, we reaching the end of this session of our genius hours. The ted talk is coming up soon and if you are like me, you have no idea what you are doing for it. Well that's in the future so let's just focus on week seven of our blog. For this weeks blog on cooking, I made chicken stir fry for the first time.

Chicken stir fry has to be made into its three separate parts before you can combine them. I had to thaw the chicken to be able to sear the chicken for a nice brown color. While searing the chicken, into a nice brown color, the vegetables were being cut and sautéed the vegetables with seasonings and soy sauce, and the water was boiling to be able to cook the noodles. For the chicken and the vegetables, I used garlic salt, seasoning salt, and chili pepper flakes. I had to test and see if I had enough seasoning to know if I had enough. After all three individual items were done, I was able to put them all together and mix them up and more soy sauce and other sauces. I was very proud of making this meal and it turned out delicious. I'm looking forward to being able to practice these skills on my own.

Week Six: Steak and Potatoes

This past week has been a blast for me as I was able to cook one of my favorite meals. I love steak and potatoes, especially the  way my parents make them and so I'm glad I have them to follow as a guide and can ask help from them when I need it. My parents have been very useful in the cooking process as they are always there to supervise and my mom takes pictures of me doing what I need to do.

I have really enjoyed cooking, like getting everything prepared and then just knowing that wow I accomplished this task. It gives me a feeling of accomplishment. I cooked five steaks with eight potatoes cut up into smaller pieces. I put seasoning salt, garlic salt, salt, and pepper on my steaks before I put them into the oven to broil. I chose to broil the steaks because it was cold outside and I didn't want to stand there and grill. I put the steaks in to broil and while they were cooking, I started to fry the potatoes, onions, and jalapeños. Onions and jalapenos were to help give me flavor and a little spice, as my dad told me to only use like eight jalapenos but I used roughly twelve of them. While both of these were cooking, I got my asparagus ready to broil as well. This meal was successful for me as I learned how to cook steak and pay attention to my food so it didn't burn. The steaks had to be watched closely to make sure they didn't burn, as well as the potatoes. I was busy in the kitchen but it was all worth it in the end, to be able to enjoy a meal knowing that you cooked it yourself.

Week Five: Chicken Bacon Ranch

Well, these past two weeks have been a blur for me. I was busy every weekend and almost every weekday. I had three birthdays and a wedding these last two weeks that brought a lot of family into town. With my genius hour being that I'm learning how to cook, I have to be able to have the time to sit down and make my meal. We go out to eat for birthdays so those days I wasn't able to cook, and then with the wedding, we had meals planned out everyday family was in town so we could all catch up and have fun. I was really panicking because I still haven't made a meal these weeks for blogger, so on Monday when my mom said she was gonna make Chicken Bacon Ranch pasta I told her I was gonna make it and it was one of my meals I had planned on cooking. The only issue was I wasn't supposed to make this until next week so I had to move my schedule around.

This week I made Chicken Bacon Ranch pasta. First, I started with getting the chicken ready by getting a pot of water and boiling the chicken until it was cooked throughout. After the chicken was cooked, I drained the water and and got out a bigger pan and put water in it to boil so I could put the noodles in it. I also put oil in the water that was gonna have the noodles inside of it. While the noodles were cooking, I used a knife and cut the chicken into a ton of smaller pieces. After I was done cutting the chicken, the noodles were still being cooked, I grabbed another pan to saute some mushrooms. I was putting red chili peppers into the mushrooms to give them a little spice and when I went to pour them in, I accidentally screwed the whole lid off and a ton of chili peppers ended up in the mushrooms. Let’s just say the mushrooms in the pasta made it a little to spicy. After the noodles were done, I strained the noodles and put them back into their pan where I cut up cream cheese and dump it into the pasta to melt and stir it around. I also added milk and a half packet of hidden valley ranch to give it some taste. I then added the cut up pieces of chicken into the pasta. After I added the chicken, I also added shredded cheese and some bacon bits to give  it a different taste with cheese. I just added cheese as I felt it needed. My family were the testers for my meal and they enjoyed it, except my mom said it was to spicy, so lesson learned is check the lid to see if it’s a screw off lid or if you just lift the top off.

Week Four: First Meal

My first meal went very well in my opinion. I did more than I even planned I was going to. My meal I made this last week was Spaghetti with a salad and a version of French bread, I even made a desert for my family. My family was able to eat my meal as I didn't burn the noodles or the mess up the seasoning.

During my first meal, I started with making the desert first because it had to settle in the fridge for an hour. The desert I made was a jello no-bake strawberry cheesecake out of a box. I wasn't going to make a desert but I saw this box on the counter and I thought it would be fun to cook. The box had three separate packages, the first being the crust which I had to mix together and then press into the bottom of the pan evenly. The second package was the middle where I had to use a mixer to get the cream to a thick paste and be able to fill the pan. After those two steps I had to refrigerate the desert to allow it to harden before I had to spread the strawberry topping. The plan was to allow my whole family to eat the cheesecake but my dad and I ended up eating all eight pieces.

Next, I made a salad to have with the spaghetti. In my salad, I cut up cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, carrots, and I added in shredded cheese and bacon bits. My family eats a lot of salad and I love salad so it was easy to make something I love. I was trying to be fancy with the chopping like a chef would and I almost stabbed my finger, so I'm going to be sticking to the basics from now on. With the salad, I was going to have a French bread but my mom informed me we didn't have any of that so I had to improvise and use hot dog buns as the French bread. On the bread, I first put butter on it then followed with the garlic seasoning and parmesan cheese. All I had to do next was put it in the oven to broil to a nice crispy bread.

The spaghetti was my favorite part to make. I used two pounds of hamburger and a big box of noodles to make sure I had enough for my family. I started by browning the hamburger and boiling water with oil in it. Waiting for the water to boil was boring but luckily I was able to stay busy with making the sauce. The sauce included a can of tomato paste, two cans of tomato sauce, one can of diced tomatoes with green peppers, onions, and many types of seasoning. I was planning on using jalapeños in my sauce to give it an extra spice but I didn't have any so I used so hot chili peppers instead. After the noodles were done, my meal was ready to be served. I was really proud of myself to be able to accomplish my first meal, with just some advice from my mom who watched so she could take photos of me.

Week Three: Decide what to cook

These past two weeks I have decided on what my meals are that I am going to be cooking. My schedule of what I am going to be cooking is going to be based off of my moms schedule to make sure we don't cook meals that are the same or similar to close to each other. I am really looking forward on starting the cooking process of my genius hour to know how I do and if I can redo my meals and mistakes when and if I make them.

My first meal is going to be Spaghetti with a salad and french bread. I really like spaghetti and salad together and it will be fun to make more then just the entree. I am looking forward to making this meal. I have planned out the other weeks on what I'm planning to be cooking. My second meal, I'm planning for it to be steak and fried potatoes. My third meal is going to be chicken bacon ranch pasta. My fourth meal is going to be pot luck potatoes, and lastly my fifth meal is going to be stir fry.

Some meals will have appetizer and others may not. I really want to learn how yo make spinach and artichoke dip but I have no idea what meal to make it with. I am going to learn how to make it, I just don't know what meal to make it with. I am really looking forward to starting to cook now that I have decided on what to make and when I'm going to make it. These past two weeks have really helped me to decide and think about what my favorite meals are and what would be easy to make when I am by myself. I don't plan on just cooking little portions but making a lot of the meal and saving it for the week so I don't have to cook everyday. I'm excited to jump into the kitchen and begin cooking.

Week Two: Terms

This past week for my genius hour was laid back for me. I have been trying to study and learn terminology for the cooking terms. Learning the terminology isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. I didn't realize how many terms there actually are for cooking so for now I'm trying to keep my vocabulary simple and learn the words like mince, simmer and etc.

Doing this project has been really hard for me. I always find myself telling myself "oh I have time, I can do that another time", the problem is I don't have time and I just keep pushing it off. I find myself procrastinating this project all the time and I can't help it. I've always put off my homework because I don't wanna do it, and putting off this project has been hurting me as I'm almost falling behind because I didn't get to learn all the terminology I wanted to for this project. Luckily I'm gonna learn them as I keep going forward with my plan so I can learn as I go. I need advice on how to help my procrastinating so I can stay focused and get my work done when I need to. My biggest concern when we started this genius hour project was that I would put off my homework and now that we've started it, I find myself putting of my work and its hurting my productivity.

Week One: The Plan

Hello everyone! Our advanced English class has finally began our genius hour ideas. My goal for this eight week segment is going to learn the basics of cooking. The basics of cooking will include learning the correct terminology, knowing the correct utensils to use and being able to cook five simple meals. I came up with the idea to cook as my Grandpa is a chef and cooking teacher and because I will be living on my own here after high school. Cooking is a good trait to have and by the end of these eight weeks I am hoping to have mastered the basics of cooking and can make myself some meals.

This first week of genius hour is all about planing. However planning is not as simple as it sounds it should be. I struggled with being able to sit down and just plan something out for eight weeks. I like to procrastinate my homework and just go with the flow on a lot of things and this project, I'm not able to do that. I have no idea what this project in store for me, but if I'm able to stick to the plan and keep on my work I will be just fine.

I'm planning to research and study the cooking terms by using cookbooks and using the internet. My dad has been helping me as well my talking me through some of the things he has cooked and how to cook them. Using my parents cookbooks and the knowledge of my parents and grandparents will help me get through this project.

Our shark tank pitch was very difficult I thought. Well I didn't think it was hard it was that I was more confused on how it had to be. I had no idea how much information to put down on each slide or just not even know how many slides to have for the presentation. To me my presentation went well as I was able to get the information across that I wanted to.