Learning to Cook
Because I am getting married at the end of the semester, I decided for my 10-hour project that it would be of benefit to learn to cook. This included some baking as well. This experience really caused me to stretch myself and go beyond Macaroni and Cheese and Ramen to making actual meals. I learned a lot about my personal learning style.
I just wanted to share one of the successes and one of what I would consider the failures. One day I had finished all my homework and decided to look through my roommate’s cookbook, The Lion House Cookbook. This was the first meal I would work on for my project and I was excited to make such a tasty dinner. I picked chicken bake. Can I just tell you how amazing my first meal turned out? It consisted of chopped vegetables, cream of chicken soup, lots of seasonings, stuffing, and Parmesan cheese sprinkled and melted on top. It was amazing! For dessert I made a cherry cheesecake. This consisted of cream cheese, lemon, vanilla, graham crackers, and cherry pie filling. This pie turned out so perfectly and tasted delicious! The first experience went extremely well! I thought this project would be a breeze. Then one day I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. For me this was a big step. I thought I was doing everything perfectly and then when I took the cookies out of the oven they were more like biscuits than they were cookies. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong and finally it hit me; I forgot to include white sugar in the recipe. I had put all the ingredients in, even the brown sugar but forgot the white sugar. It was a disaster. They tasted horrible!
One final thing I learned is that I am the type of learner that has to follow directions exactly. I felt like I was constantly looking at the recipe and that is how I am when I doing schoolwork. I am constantly looking at the requirements and feeling the need to read them through over and over. This is just the way I learn. I like someone to tell me exactly how to do something and I need to have guidelines and requirements otherwise I am lost and do not know what is expected of me. This helped me to realize that I am a very particular learner and that everything has to be perfect. If something doesn’t turn out perfect, I feel like I have failed.
10-Hour Log
February 9, 2009 – 2 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked chicken bake and cheesecake
February 14, 2009 – 3 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked steak, roasted potatoes, & fruit salad
March 27, 2009 – 3 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked chicken potpie and chocolate chip cookies
April 1, 2009 – 2 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked stir-fry and made dragon salad
Total time in the kitchen – 10 hours
February 9, 2009 – 2 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked chicken bake and cheesecake
February 14, 2009 – 3 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked steak, roasted potatoes, & fruit salad
March 27, 2009 – 3 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked chicken potpie and chocolate chip cookies
April 1, 2009 – 2 hrs, bought ingredients, prep time, cooked stir-fry and made dragon salad
Total time in the kitchen – 10 hours
That's funny, I just had chicken bake yesterday. Yummy stuff. Your 1st cookie-baking experience sounds similar to mine. I was 6 or 7 and wanted to make cookies on my own (we used to make them every Sunday afternoon). I confused tablespoon with teaspoon and let's just say there was a little too much salt for everyone's taste.
ReplyDeleteOn the learning side, I'm glad you were able to observe yourself as a learner. It sounds like your first experience, a mastery experience, increased your self-efficacy for baking. What other learning principles that we've discussed in this class did you see in your own learning?