I’ve learned a lot from the vegetable cookery over the past couple classes. The activity where each group had to cook their differently stored vegetables in various ways was very interesting to me. Since there was no set directions or recipe, many of us made mistakes. However, I felt this taught us that it’s important to dig deeper than a recipe and use your own knowledge of food and cooking to prepare it. When we were cooking carrots, we didn’t think ahead that the canned carrots would be extremely moist and didn’t plan a cooking method to counteract this, resulting in mushy and unappetizing carrots. Although fresh vegetables are the obvious choice, since they are not always practical it’s also important to know how to work with what you have.

Another important aspect we learned is time management. Now, we’re making our vegetarian dish and had an unexpected shortened period due to the early dismissal. We had to decide what to do today in order to ensure we would be able to finish tomorrow. Although we got enough done, we didn’t have time to make a sauce we wanted to have ready for tomorrow. I think learning to deal with shorter times than what you expect is also important because you are forced to alter your plans and work within a time frame. A lot more focus is needed and again, trusting yourself. You can’t spend too long deciding your next move, you need to get the dish done.

Allie H.

As a food fanatic, I will eat pretty much anything you put in front of me, but my favorite food of all time is sushi. Just the texture alone is enough to hook you for life. Every time I have an option to go out for dinner I always suggest Empire Szechuan, my favorite place for sushi. Sometimes I even order the Maki Combination (12pc) take out and eat it for lunch by myself! I'm glad that my friends all like it because that’s where I go out to eat with them. I think the best part though, was when I found “Sushi Cat” (the game) on i-Tunes freshman year. It’s this big blobby cat that bounces around and eats sushi. That got me through a lot of lonely study halls…

I have made my own sushi a couple of times, each time producing a better product than the last. The most recent time I used thin slices of cucumber to wrap the outside of a reverse-roll with avocado, tuna, and cucumber on the inside. It was absolutely delicious and I can’t wait to use the new nori sheets that I picked up a couple weeks ago.

Since I have no life, I decided to do a little research on food blogs, and I found out that sushi was supposed to be the Japanese version of a sandwich.. that doesn’t sound right but if you think about it, it’s meant to be popped into your mouth with no mess. I knew that sushi was created kind of by accident, from trying to preserve fish under rice, but I didn’t know that it actually caused a fermentation process to occur. They then replaced the dried fish with raw, and added sugar and vinegar to create what we know as modern sushi.

PS : sushi does NOT mean raw fish, in fact, there can be no fish at all.

Georgia C.