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Hello everyone, I hope you all have been good, today I come to you with my progress on how I tried to be vegetarian for a week. This is a huge challenge because I eat meat almost everyday, and I buy lots of take out food, so staying vegetarian for a whole week is definitely going to be challenging.

The allergen on this menu is tree nuts.

Day 1: Lucky Charms Cereal (Breakfast), Vegetable wrap (Dinner)

Day 2: All bran bar, Milk (Breakfast), Rice and vegetables (Dinner)

Day 3: Pani Puri (Breakfast)This contains tree nuts and the substitute is called for pumpkin seeds, Ceaser salad (Dinner)

Day 4: From right to left a typical meal is Kobi chi bhajii (Curry cabbage and potatoes), Spinch chi pattal bhaji(Curry spinach stew style), Apple and onion salad, beet and yogurt raita, 2 rotti on the side (Dinner). This dish contains nuts in the Curry cabbage and potatoes, and a substitute would be sunflower seeds.

Day 5: Milk and cookies (Breakfast), Minnistrone soup (Lunch), Pizza (Dinner)

Day 6: Chocolate banana (Breakfast), Nacho platter (Dinner)

Day 7: Cornflakes Cereal (Breakfast), Grilled cheese sandwich (Lunch), Mushroom risotto (Dinner)

I will also share the recipe on making of Kobi chi bhajii.

1 tbsp oil

Mustard seeds

Cumin Seeds

2-3 finely minced garlic cloves

2-3 green chillii peppers

Curry leaves

2 cups finely chopped cabbage

2 potatoes medium dice

1/2 cup soaked chana dal

Salt to taste

-Heat up oil in a pan. Add mustard and cumin seed and let the cook for a bit, add garlic, add turmeric powder, green chillies and curry leaves. Mix well. Add cabbage and soaked chana dal and salt. Cook and cover for 10 to 15 minutes.

To be completely honest, looking back on this experience, I would not do this again, It was hard to find things to eat and I missed eating meat too much. Finding vegetarian outside food was not that hard to find to my suprise, I thought it would be hard to find vegetarian fast food.

#theory2

Hug a farmer

Greetings my fellow foodies, I hope you have all been well, since the weather has been so nice these past few days, I figured it was time to go the farmers market with a few friends and explore! To be completely honest, most of the farmers there were not to happy about us interviewing them and taking pictures so I just wanted to give huge shout out to these two for letting me interview them.

Chris (left) and Jennie (right) are both full time employees of Wheelbarrow Farm, and both have just completed one year of working with the company. They go from putting the seeds into the ground themselves, to harvesting and selling themselves, so they know the whole process of how that food was made from beginning to end, so they are confident when they say everything they grow is organic. They believe it is important for people to source their food locally because it builds a better sustainable community, sure you can go to the super market and buy organic grapes for example, but they would most likely come from out of country. Next I asked them about their pricing, and they said their prices very close if not a few cents off of what you find in the supermarket.

I had a few more questions for them and that included, what kind of nutrients do they use because I grow chilli pepper plants as a hobby and I am always lacking in yield. They suggested using both time release nutrients and water soluble nutrients, focus on feeding the plants mainly nitrogen rich nutrients during the vegetative state, and then slowly switch over to lower nitrogen and higher phosphorus, and potassium nutrients. They also recommended added some Calmag nutrients to my feedings for my plants.

Hello everyone! Today I went to my store and picked me up a pork shoulder chop. I chose pork because I eat chicken and beef way too much, so I thought pork would be nice for a change, plus it was on sale as well.

Pigs are essential for farmers to have back in the day because pigs ate everything, they were like a garbage disposal, now they are mainly feed corn meal because its so cheap and it fattens them up. The market weight of an average pig is 280 pounds. One of the advantages of farming pigs is that they can reproduce about twice a year, meaning more money in the farmers pocket.

Once born the babies are about 3 pounds and they slowly ween them off mothers milk at about 8 weeks. Once weened off they go straight to fattening them up, the mature pigs will eat about 10 pounds of food a day. On a farm, it would normally take 310 days for a pig to be raised for the slaughter. Pig farmers also use FDA approved antibiotics because it helps raise healthy pigs. The antibiotics helps teat an illness, help spread the control of the illness, and to prevent illness. Once killed, the meat needs to be cooked properly otherwise you risk getting Trichinosis. The proper internal temperature to cook pork to is 145F.

Pork shoulder also known as the pork butt is normally an inexpensive piece of meat, it costs as much as $3 a pound, and it can be bought with the bone in or boneless. The cut comes from either thicker end of the shoulder which contains more fat, or the thinner end which contains less fat.

The pork shoulder chop was about $8 for 2 pieces about 1cm thick. I don’t eat pork often so I thought I would use my barbeque and to give it a little more flavour, I would cook it on a cedar plank. This is a suitable method because my barbeque gets very hot and I will be able to cook it to the desired 145F internal temp. Bellow is the recipe I used to make this jerk pork chop.

RECIPE:

2 pork shoulder chops

-------------------------------------------

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground all spice

2 bunches of scallions

1 cup of vegetable oil

1 tablespoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon kosher salt

100g minced garlic

5 limes juiced

1 tablespoon of dried thyme

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

8 cloves garlic

1. Place cedar plank in water for at least 3 hours.

2. Mix all the marinade ingredients in a blender and blend into a paste.

3. Put pork chops into ziplock bag and use marinade to cover ingredients. Let chops marinade for 3 hours.

4. Preheat barbeque to 350F. Place cedar plank on barbecue grill.

5. Spray water on cedar plank with spray bottle when it catches fire.

6. Flip the pork chops to make sure the cook evenly on both sides. Remove from grill once internal temp is 145F. Let it rest for 5 minutes.

References:

LINK1

LINK2

LINK3

#theory

iPlant Based versus Animal Based Diet

Out of all topics to choose from for blog post #2, I decided to do a plant based diet versus Animal based diet because my parents are vegetarian, so I would like to learn more about vegetarianism.The definition of a plant based diet is when someone consumes primary food that comes from plants such as fruits and vegetables, but also, nuts, seeds, beans, and grains. This does not mean you are vegetarian or vegan, it does means that you consume a lot more plant based nutrients while you limit dairy or meat intake.

Three main health benefits that come out of Coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes. Because the person on this diet is eating lots of fruits and vegetables, they have lots of fibre and fibre helps lower cholesterol and stabilise your blood glucose levels. This would be a good diet for me because I am hypoglycemic and I'm always struggling to keep my blood sugar at a stable level. I always feel like my energy levels fluctuate throughout the day because I am always eating fast food because its so convenient.. The other benefit to going to plant based diet is your carbon footprint is so much smaller than when you are consuming meat. A quote from SEP shows how harmful the environmental impact is from mass producing chickens. “ The threat to the environment, too, arises from industrial farming itself rather than whether it produces meat or eggs. Chickens produce greenhouse gas and waste regardless of whether they are farmed for meat or eggs. Land is deforested to grow food for them and resources are depleted to care for them regardless of whether they are farmed for meat or eggs.”

In the future I would most definitely like to start eating a plant based diet because the older my parents get the more healthier they want to eat, and I want to be able to cook for them. I have also given thought to going on a plant based diet with some fish in the mix because fish is high in omega-fatty-3-acids. I also one day wish to live on a self sustainable farm, so incorporating a high plant based diet will be essential to how I live. It takes too much resources to feed the livestock when you can just eat it yourself.

For this blog post I decided to make my own vegan recipe by taking what I like from certain recipes I have soon over the internet. I will link what recipes I have sourced from.

1 L Canned tomatoes, with juice 9 pcs with juice

60 mL Olive oil

60 g Onion, brunoise ½ pc

2 cloves Garlic, finely chopped

10 pcs Basil leaves, fresh, whole ¼ bunch

1 pc Bay leaf To taste Salt, pepper To taste Sugar

It was easy to find all the ingredients since I chose a nice simple recipe.

LINK

LINK2

#nutrition

Preservation

So for this blog post I decided I wanted to do pickling, and fermentation. The vegetables I decided to use for both were carrots, white pearl onions, cucumbers, and chilli peppers.

From what I understand reading online, by adding the vegetables to a 2%-5% salt brine you creating an anaerobic environment, which allow good bacteria to grow and stop bad bacteria from growing. The fermentation allows lactic acid to be produced, which gives the vegetables their salty/funky taste. You want all the vegetables under the surface of the water because anything above the water is exposed to air, and that will make the vegetable rot and spread bad mold everywhere. After about a week to two weeks the vegetables are ready to consume, you can keep the vegetables in the fridge to drastically slow down the fermentation process, allowing you to store your vegetables for long periods of time. I learned quite a lot from LINK 1 and LINK 2.

Recipe:

250g White pearl onions (5mm Slices)

500g Carrots (5mm Slices)

80g Hot Peppers

1 Bunch of Dill

6 Cloves of Garlic

Crushed black peppercorns

750ml Water

35g Salt

Collect all your ingredients and jars

Slice up all vegetables into bite-size pieces.

Coat your vegetables in salt and let it sit for a few hours. Moisture should be removed from the vegetables.

Add all your dill, black peppercorn, and crushed garlic to the jars.

Add 35g of salt to 750ml of water and pour it into the jar, making sure to cover all the vegetables.

Let the fermentation process begin. The water should turn cloudy as time goes on.

Its been about 2 weeks since I started to let my vegetables ferment so I decided to give it a taste test to see how it is. Out of the carrots, white pearl onions, and cucumbers I will do a sensory evaluation on the cucumber because that was my favorite.

The taste of fermented cucumbers is very similar to a store bought dill pickle. It had the crunchy sound and feeling when I bit down into it and it sounded exactly like a firm pickle you would buy from the store. The taste was salty with a hint of sourness, but a good sourness, nothing compared to a lemon. There was also a small undertone of sweetness. The smell the pickles gave off was a pleasant mild salty brine smell. The feel of the cucumbers were slightly firm but wet, feeling as though there were actually soaked in something. I feel like this fermentation was a success, I was very hesitant to try the vegetables because it looked like mold was growing on the top of the water and the water was all cloudy. It did not look appetizing at all, but once I took my first but I was hooked! The one thing I would do differently next time is to add some apple cider vinegar to add a little bit more sweetness to my vegetables.

#theory

Sensory Evaluation

Growing up my mom and dad only cooked me chicken, beef, pork, and lamb, but never seafood. I have tried cooked fish one or two times before but I have never tried sushi, so I was quite excited to try new food for the first time. My brother is a seafood expert so he and I went to an all you can eat sushi bar. I went to Sushi Legend and I ordered a spicy salmon roll, white tuna, and crab. Out of all three my favourite was the spicy salmon roll, so that's what I’ll do my sensory evaluation on.

Upon eating my first bite, I was delighted to taste just the right amount of salt, sweet, and umami. At Least I think that's what umami tastes like, I have read that many fish foods have an umami taste. The perfect amount of salt was tasted from the seaweed, and the sauce and cucumber tasted a little bit sweet. I also added more salt to my dish by dipping my sushi roll into soy sauce.

The sound I got from eating sushi was a soft sound because of the rice, seaweed, fish, but I felt a little crunch from the cucumber. This dish is unique to me because I never though I would eat raw fish, and apparently raw fish is super healthy for you because it contains omega-3 fatty acids.

I loved how all the different textures of soft rice, crunchy seaweed, salmon, and sauces really came together as I continued to chew. I never thought that eating raw fish could be so satisfying. When I added the soy sauce the sushi because a lot more chewable in my mouth, I feel like i brought out the seaweed taste more

I never really knew that I liked the taste of umami, I guess now in the future I can start looking for that flavour in other seafood dishes. I am definitely going to eat sushi again in the future, I would love to try everything on the menu at Sushi Legend. I think the most underrated thing in sushi is the seaweed, I love how it adds the right amount of saltiness to the dish. In the future, I would like to eat a sushi roll with extra seaweed on it, just so I can get that nice salty crunch!

#theory

Its cold outside so I wanted to stick with a soup that was easy to make, healthy, but most importantly, vegetarian. I chose a vegetarian dish because my parents and grandparents do not eat meat. My father doesn't particularly like soup, but when does decide to have it, he goes for minestrone soup. So today I chose to cook Winter Vegetable Minestrone Soup with garlic bread for my family. The recipe is the following.

INGREDIENTS

1 White Onion

3 cloves garlic

3 cups (400g) Butternut Squash (cubed)

1 Zucchini (courgette)

1 Carrot

2 tsp Dried Oregano

2 cans Beans (variety of your choice)

2 (14oz) cans Diced Tomatoes

8 cups (1.9 l) Vegetable Stock

2 tbsp Tomato Puree

2 cups (110g) Dry Fusilli Pasta

INSTRUCTIONS

Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Dice all the other vegetables into 1-inch cubes.

Heat about 1 tbsp olive oil in the bottom of a large stockpot. Fry the onion for 2-3 minutes until slightly translucent, add the garlic and cook for a further one minute.

Add the rest of the cubed vegetables with the oregano, and stir so everything is coated.

Add the vegetable stock, cans of tomatoes and tomato puree, mix so everything is combined and then simmer for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, drain the beans and add those to the pan, along with the fusilli. Simmer for 6-8 minutes until the pasta is al dente. Serve straight away.

My entire family had my soup for dinner and they all loved how all the vegetable flavors blended together. My brother isn’t a fan of vegetables and even had a second helping! My father said he will be taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow and can’t wait for me to cook him more stomach warming dinners.

The main challenge I faced was getting all my vegetables into the same size as one another. I need to work on my cuts. The also I believe overall this dish was a success because my family loved it, and I learned a lot on how to use stocks to really add flavors to my dish. The one thing I would do differently is I would maybe find some way to add spice to this dish, I am a fan of hot peppers, and that would definitely make sure that person stayed warm on such a cold day.

I learned a lot by making this dish. This is the first soup I have ever made, besides the ones I made in my lab. I learned how to combine different types of vegetable flavors and vegetable stock together.

#theory

Cafe Production Week 2

#theory #nutrition

Blog Entry 1. Nutrition Fundamentals

Vegetarianism is a topic of food that interests me because both my mother and father are vegetarian. I love eating non vegetarian dishes, but throughout this course I would like to open up my palate to more fruits and veggies. The other main reason that vegetarianism is important to me is because all my life my parents would cook all sorts of non vegetarian dishes for me even though they didn’t eat it, I would like to learn how to have dinner ready for them by the time they come home from work.

I believe that nutrition will start to become an increasing part of the average persons life because we are in a day in age where people eat out 4 or 5 times a week. People should know what they are putting in their body on a daily basis, because we are what we eat. We are also in a day and age where technology can help a lot, there is a device out there call the FItBit and it tracks your activity, exercise, food, weight, and sleep. Im sure this device can help the user improve their daily life just by seeing all the data they collect.

Three ways I could tell that that www.heartandstroke.ca/ is a credible source because part of their research was done by Dr. Kim Connelly who is a recognized scientist/cardiologist at the St. Michael’s Hospital. The second way I know this site is credible is because it is a government funded website. The third way I know the website is credible is because the heart and stroke foundation is a non profit organization, they are not after money, so they are not trying to manipulate people into buying/doing something.

https://dailycravings.tumblr.com/ is not a credible source because it is an opinionated blog run by someone with no reputable credentials, anyone can submit information or pictures, and there are no sources.

#nutrition

Free Image on Pixabay - Vegetables, Carrot, Food, Healthy. (n.d.). Retrieved January 15, 2019, from https://pixabay.com/en/vegetables-carrot-food-healthy-1085063/

#theory

Put your head down and work hard. Never wait for things to happen, make them happen for yourself through hard graft and not giving up.

Gordon Ramsay. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. Retrieved January 15, 2019, from AZQuotes.com Web site: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/882684

#theory

About Me

My name is Dhananjay and I wanted to become a chef because I always wanted to learn how to cook good food for myself and my family. I'm always waking up in the middle of the night to cook simple snacks or eat leftovers but I wanted more. Iv also always loved to watch the cooking channel, I always have a smile on my face when Gordon Ramsey is yelling and other chefs and all they say is YES CHEF.

I am not currently working in the industry. But I hope to start making some connections at the upcoming job fair.

I hope to start trying new recipes at home and posting it on my blog, and hopefully acquire a following of people who have similar tastes as me.

My philosophy for cooking is that everyone at the table in my house should be able to eat. My brother and I eat meat, chicken, and seafood, but my parents are vegetarian, so I'd like to learn how to make good vegetarian dishes so I can cook for everyone in my family.

One blog that stands out to me is https://minimalistbaker.com/ They have amazing recipes and also a side section on how to take good pictures of food. They also have a wide variety of cookware for sale. I think they should improve their website by added videos on their recipes, I say this because I am a visual learner.

#theory

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