12/8/2017 0 Comments Blog post #6In this past week, my class was lucky enough volunteer at Kitchens For Good. Kitchens For Good is a company that takes people in unfavorable situations, such as aged out of the foster system or even homeless, and trains them to be professional chefs. This helps them to get jobs at professional locations, such as high end restaurants and hotels. They hold a workshop for a couple months (I think it was 12 weeks but I can’t quite remember) and at the end, every single student knows how to cook, act in a professional setting, and have a job somewhere in San Diego. During our time at Kitchens For Good, we learned about food security, food distribution, and food waste. Some things I learned were that the U.S produces 4 times the amount of food we need for everyone to be able to eat, yet 12% if our country is not getting enough food. The game we played involved what we learned about food security as well as food distribution. We were all given bowls of grapes with different amounts in them. For example, mine had one, my friend Vic had a lot (he was supposed to represent the top 1%), and my friend Deborah had none. We had 2 minutes to distribute in a way that was more even. Luckily, my group did it easily, and we had 45 seconds to spare, but the teacher told us that’s not usually the case. Usually people with more don’t want to share, and that truly does represent American wealth and food distribution. After that, my group got to go back to the kitchen and help pre-package food that was to be distributed to those in need the next day.
0 Comments
11/17/2017 0 Comments Blog post #5 My internship is building planter boxes for clients, with the help of John Santos. The purpose is to gain experience of working with a client to give them what they want, tho learn how to use useful skills, and to help us learn how to manage multiple projects at once. One thing I've been good at is not being afraid to use the tools and making sure to be precise when measuring or cutting. I have experience with tools like these and building in general, so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and just go for it. Something I need to work on is SketchUp. It's really confusing to me and not very user friendly, so I'm doing my best, but as of now my models aren't very precise or accurate in the sense that im just making things up as i go ad not measuring at all. Below is a photo of my peers at work (Unfortunately I didn't make it into any photos)
11/15/2017 0 Comments blog post #4We interviewed Allan, a business owner and the chef of Arepex Grill, a Venezuelan food restaurant. From this interview, I learned that this was an everyday food for Allan when he was growing up. He doesn’t know if this recipe was in his family before his mother, the person he got the recipe from. He told us that the very first person he ever made this with was his mom, when he was young. He stays strictly to the recipe that his mom gave him as a young boy, as he’s never changed it. The reason he started his business, and the reason he makes to this day is to spread joy with good food. His friend told him that his food was unique, as there’s basically no Venezuelan food in San Diego. He says that his food makes people happy, and that’s why he continues to cook. This tells a story about how important culture and tradition is to Allan. He’s a Venezuelan man, from Venezuela. He decided to bring his Venezuelan culture to the place he lives now, San Diego, as an effort to share his culture and connect with it. He’s kept his recipe the same since he was in Venezuela, to keep it traditional and authentic. He said that he gets lots of Venezuelan customers who love his food because it reminds them of their home. The interview findings are significant to the project because it helps us know about our country on a deeper level. Food is a necessity, so knowing what people from other places eat is very insightful. It connects to me and my family interview because it shows that no matter where you're from, food and family are a huge part of life. Every family has it’s own culture, even within the larger culture of their religion or where they live. Food truly can carry memories, and it accurately represents those who make an enjoy it, regardless of geographical location. The power of food has no boundaries. This interview was valuable to me because it showed me what’s important to people in Latin american countries. I didn’t even think about how different life could be in those countries. Allan said that he was lucky to be able to have fried eggs as a kid, but to me eggs are basically nothing. IT just really made me think of how lucky i am. 11/15/2017 0 Comments Blog post #3My interview findings are significant to me because they helped me understand why this recipe is so important to my mom and why she feels the need to carry it on. She talked about how she wanted make it for my dad because he had never had it before, and to her it was always an important part of holidays so she wanted to share with him. The first time he had it, he fell in love. That’s why we still make it to this day. It’s also important to me because it helps me understand what my parents were like before I was born, right when they had just gotten married. When my parents lived in New York they didn’t have very much room for luxuries, so things like banana pudding were the only nice things they had. The interview findings tell how my family bonds over the simpler things in life. Food has brought together both sides of my family, including bringing my mom’s side closer to my dad’s. Banana pudding is a very authentic southern dish, which reflects where my family is from. My great great grandmother made this first, and she was from Atlanta. This dish has deep roots in the south and in my family. I have so many good memories of making this dish, especially from when I was a lot younger. Since we only make it on special occasions, I always looked forward to helping my mom and dad make what I thought was the best thing in the entire world. My parents made sure that as soon as I was old enough, I was able to help them make banana pudding, because they wanted it to become special to me to. If I hadn't helped them and just read a book or something, I don't think this recipe would be nearly as important to me as it is. Being involved in my younger years is really what attached me to this dish, and that's all thanks to my mom and dad. Tradition is important to them when it comes to things like this. It's important to them that I love this recipe the same way that they do, so I can pass it down to my kids, and then they can pass it down to their kids, and so on. Since this recipe was such a big part of my mom's childhood, she wanted it to live on through me. My dad also wanted to be able to spread the holiday tradition and overall deliciousness of the dish to as many people as possible. Banana pudding is a big part of my life, and I hope it continues to be for years to come. Here is my cooking video 10/24/2017 0 Comments blog #2In these past few weeks, we did a lot of research. We did lots of background research for our research papers, and got together our thesis for our papers. We had to do lots of separate assignments of reading logs. Unfortunately, there isn't very much on Venezuela so we had some struggles with things to read about. Eventually we found things to read about, but on limited subjects. most of our articles are about Hugo Chavez, which is slightly annoying but at least we were able to find something. The purpose is to understand our country deeper for the research paper.
In the past couple of weeks I've been good about staying on top of things. Matt and Sofia assign a lot of things at once with short amounts of time to get things done. I understand that it's because some people don't work, but it's still kind of stressful. Although it's stressful, I've still managed to get it done. Honestly, my stress levels have been through the roof as of late, so I’m working on managing that. I’m also working on not complaining when I think the work is stupid or useless because most of the time it’s just because of stress that I don’t want to look at the deeper connection to the project, and also Matt yells at me about it and I try my best not to stress him out. 9/26/2017 0 Comments BloG #1During these past couple of weeks, something Im really proud of is the first day activity. The challenge was to make a healthy meal that could serve 4 people, but you could only spend five dollars. The purpose of the activity was to start breaking the ice, and to launch us into our project with something relevant. My group originally was gonna make an omelette, but we made a little mistake and suddenly it was a scramble instead. The ingredients we had were eggs, spinach, bell peppers, bread, and cheese. Below is a picture of our scramble.
An an area of success in these past weeks is staying on top of assignments. We've been getting them a lot, and I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping track of them and getting them all done. An area I could grow in is organization. As of late we've been getting lots and lots of papers that we need to keep track of, and I've sort of just been shoving them into my backpack and praying I can find them later. I want to improve by actually using my binder and taking my time to put things away so I know they're safe rather than just trying to be fast and putting them wherever. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2017
Categories |