It is hard to believe that this semester is coming to an end, and to say this semester has been a challenging one would be an understatement.  But, it’s not over yet and there is still some business to finish up.  In this post, I will be summarizing my learning project and discussing my experiences with the assignment. Week 1: The Path to Becoming A Better Chef: Learning Project Blog Post #1 Week 1 was an outline of what skill I wanted to get better at through the learning project.  I chose cooking because of how important of a skill I believe it to be.  It is one of the…

This week for my learning project I decided to try out a new app–Tasty. I’ve used one other app for my learning project, Kitchen Stories, and I wanted to see what else was out there for good cooking apps. While scrolling through the App Store looking for a new app, I came across Tasty. I was familiar with their name as they have a ton of short cooking videos that circulate the web, so I decided to give them a shot. When you go to the search section of the app, it gives you a list of popular tags you can click on to find recipes such as: under 30…

This week, after a recommendation from my classmate Shana, I decided to use Pinterest for my learning project. I had never used Pinterest before, so it was a new experience for me. I started off by simply searching “cooking.” A ton of recipes came up, and I just kept scrolling until I found something that looked appealing. I stumbled upon a recipe titled “Oven Roasted Chicken Thighs: crispy, tender, and juicy,” and I love chicken thighs, so I decided to give it a shot. The first step of the process was to create the seasoning. I mixed 2 tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp onion powder, 2 tsp, paprika, 1 tsp…

This week I found an awesome resource to supplement my learning project: Kitchen Stories, available on the App Store and the Google Play Store. This was the first time I used an app for my learning project, and I honestly think this is the best cooking app that is out there. This app seems to have everything. When you load up the app and go to the search section, you can search specific foods to find recipes or you can try and find recipes by selecting one of the categories. This week I wanted to change things up a little bit so I decided on making a dessert this week…

This week was a bit of a difficult week to do a big meal for my learning project as I have done in previous weeks, but I still managed to get some practice time in the kitchen in. On Thursday, March 4th, me and my girlfriend gained possession of the house we had bought in January.  This past week has been an incredibly busy week of packing, painting, doing home renovations, and moving.  When we finally got somewhat settled on Tuesday, I needed a recipe for my learning project that did not require many kitchen supplies or ingredients (our new kitchen is pretty bare in terms of cooking tools and…

This week’s learning project post was an idea given to me by my lovely girlfriend. Apparently, a type of pasta that has been labelled “Tik Tok Pasta” has been circulating Tik Tok and the rest of the internet lately.  She found this pasta on some social media platform and upon hearing about it, I decided to give it a shot. Lately, I have been wanting to try and eat less meat and this is the perfect recipe to do that. For this recipe, you will need cherry tomatoes, peppers, onions, black olives, your favourite kind of pasta, salt and pepper, basil leaves, garlic, crushed red bell peppers, olive oil, and…

For this week’s blog post, we were required to pick an app/tool from a predetermined list to document our learning project.  For cooking, I decided an instructional cooking video would be best, so I settled on using the program “Animoto” to do this. Animoto is a free video maker/editor that you can use on the web or as an app on your phone.  I first tried to create the video entirely from my phone, but the app kept crashing and it would not save my video when this occurred.  After a few failed attempts, I transitioned to the web version on the computer and I no longer had any issues. …

So this week, I channelled my inner Michael Scott and decided that I needed to get my hands on some baby back ribs. The only problem was that I had never made ribs before and it was -40 degrees outside so barbequing was not an option. I thought I was out of luck until I stumbled across a YouTube video (embedded below) outlining how to make the perfect, oven-baked baby back ribs. I followed the directions almost exactly and they turned out great. To go with the ribs, I looked around online for salad recipes until one caught my eye: dill pickle pasta salad. Ribs are one of my favourite…

This week was my first attempt at actually doing my learning project, and it went great.  I found a great beginner chicken stir-fry video by a Youtuber that goes by the name of “Pro Home Cooks” (full video below).  This video was great because he assumes that the viewers are not very experienced in the kitchen, and because of this, he took the time to fully explain everything he was doing along the way.  I have tried to use YouTube videos before to get more experienced in the kitchen, but a lot of videos do not take the time to fully explain what they are doing and why.  This can…

For my learning project, I have decided that I would like to become a better chef.  Cooking runs pretty strongly through my dad’s side of the family.  My dad and my grandma are both excellent chefs (my dad even owned and operated a restaurant when I was young), but unfortunately, I was not blessed with their skills.  My mother on the other hand is not the best chef, and she has and continues to admit that fact frequently.  I seem to have inherited her skills in the kitchen.  Over the course of this semester, I will use this class as an opportunity to become better versed in the kitchen.    …