Ingredients

• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• ⅔ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ cup (packed) dark brown sugar (fine to substitute light)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2½ cups all purpose flour, spooned into measuring cup and leveled off (see note)
• 2 cups (12 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips, best quality such as Ghirardelli

 

Why I chose to make Chocolate Chip Cookies

I chose to make Chocolate Chip Cookies because I want to bake again. I really enjoyed the last time I baked and figured why not. Cookies are also something that I could snack on here or there so it seemed like a good idea to me. To add to that, cookies and milk are one of the best combinations that I can think of. I decided on using this recipe because I like how there are pictures on every step. For someone like me that is new to baking it helped me to have a visual representation of the steps. I chose to make this at my grandma’s house because she had all the equipment needed.

 

What I learned

In a bowl combine both sugars with butter and mix it with an electric mixer. Mix at high speed (using a hand mixer) for three minutes. After this I added the vanilla extract and eggs and beat for two more minutes. After this add the baking soda and salt and mix till evenly combined. After this I added the flour and mixed on low speed till it looked like it did in the pictures on the recipe.Once it looked like the pictures I added the chocolate chips. The next part that I did was covering the bowl in plastic wrap and putting it in the fridge overnight. The next morning I showed up to my grandmas and preheated the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Next we made small balls out of the dough leaving a bit of space between every one of them. We let them bake for about 12 minutes then we took the cookies out. We repeated this step till we had no dough left. After this me and my grandma split the cookies and I took half of the cookies to Regina and shared them with my roommates. 

 

The results

I gotta say… These Cookies SMACKED. They were really good. I think the pictures helped me a lot. It made it easier for me to see that I was ready or not ready to move onto the next step. I let my roommates have some and they had nothing bad to say about the results so I can’t complain. Overall, having the pictures really helped my process, I still prefer videos but this was a definite win.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 4 walleye fillets
• 16 Ritz crackers
• ⅔ cup panko breadcrumbs
• ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. blackened seasoning
• 2 cups shredded green cabbage
• 3 tbsp. mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp. lime juice
• Pinch of salt
• ⅛ tsp. celery seed
• Frying oil
• Stack of taco-size flour tortillas
• Sliced ripe avocado
• Fresh cilantro
• Pickled sliced jalapeños
• Hot sauce or salsa

Why I chose to make Fish Tacos

I chose to make fish tacos because I already have a lot of walleye in the freezer that is ready to be eaten.  Walleye is one of my favourite things to eat and is super healthy. This is the main species of fish that I target when I fish because they are easy to fillet and have white meat. I caught these fish in the South Saskatchewan River near the Saskatchewan Landing and Duncairn Dam. The MeatEater website stood out to me because it is an outdoor lifestyle company. MeatEater has a show on Netflix that has six seasons that I found interesting to watch. Overall this website just stood out to me.

What I learned

In a bowl I combined coleslaw (instead of shredded cabbage) with mayo lime juice, salt and celery seed. I got coleslaw instead just because of personal preference. This was a pretty simple step to making fish tacos so I didn’t have any problems with it. The next step was to get crackers in a ziplock bag and crush it. I’ve never used crackers so this was definitely an interesting step. I’ve done this with chips so it wasn’t too big of a learning curve. I then added this to panko breadcrumbs and blackened seasoning. In another bowl I beat eggs and in a third bowl I had flour. The next part was to “In a frying pan, heat 1 inch of oil to 325°F. To bread the walleye, first lightly coat with flour, then dip in the egg wash, and finish in the Ritz mixture, gently pressing the coating into the meat.”. I usually deep fry my fish so this was a little bit different but still had the same idea. Other than that the process of what I know when cooking fish was similar. After both sides of the walleye was golden I had a plate with paper towel on it to put the fish on.The next step was to break the fish in small pieces and put on the tortillas with the rest of the ingredients then eat.

Results

Overall the fish tacos were good. I’m usually not a big fan of spicy foods but every once in a while it is okay. This recipe gave me a different fish batter that I could use. I still prefer the one I usually use but this is still good. I really like the website that I did get this recipe from. It is not only a place to get recipes but also order ingredients, equipment, etc. I think I’ll keep this website in my back pocket. I also am friends with a bunch of people that hunt and fish and will recommend this website to them.