Brooke
About Me
Hi! My name is Brooke. I live with my mom, dad, little sister, and identical twin sister, Kiley (her page is also on this website!). I have always loved watching the food network and helping my mom bake brownies from when I was in preschool. I’ve since spent a lot of my free time in other ways. I love to play lacrosse and field hockey, to ski, and to lounge on the beach with a good book. I now want to dedicate some of my free time to learning how to cook, and I hope you enjoy following my journey to become a chef!
Final Reflection
One of the reasons I chose my project was that it would give me a practical skill that I could use for the rest of my life. Now that I have a base of culinary knowledge, I can continue to build on it throughout the rest of high school. I am now no longer afraid of the kitchen, and I can cook whenever I need to, such as when I am having people over or my family just has not decided on what to have for dinner. I have also come to really enjoy cooking; it is therapeudic and is a great creative outlet. I love to experiment with textures, flavors, and sometimes even food photography. I definitely believe that I chose the right project for me because not only did I very much enjoy completing it, but I now have a skill that I can use for the rest of my life.
MY Project
In simple terms, I want to learn how to cook.
To elaborate: I want to learn the most basic and useful culinary skills and how to apply them to common recipes. Through cooking many family dinners etc., I hope to progress enough so that I can adapt preexisting recipes or create my own, all of which I would put in a cookbook. I will blog about my entire cooking journey on a website, where I will post photos of the dishes I have made. Hopefully this will be a great way to track my progress in the kitchen.
Progress Report #4
My fourth mini goal was to try to make dishes out of unique ingredients/ ingredients in my pantry in order to learn how to be able to make a dinner out of anything. I tried to take good photos of my food, but they did not turn out as planned. However, after gathering feedback from my classmates, I have come up with new techniques to use in taking and editing photos.
Progress Report #3
My third mini goal was to decide on an area of cooking to branch out in. From the beginning, my journey as a chef has been all about experiencing new things — however, learning to cook is also about obtaining an important skill for my daily life. So, I have decided to try a challenge of making tasty and nutritious family dinners etc. from random ingredients I have in my pantry or fridge, while still practicing different culinary techniques.
Progress Report #2
My second mini goal was to get cooking! I was able to build a decent repertoire of recipes. I cooked basic foods like roasted vegetables, rice, sautéed spinach, grilled chicken, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and salad dressing plus salad, and I was able to expand to slightly more complicated dishes like apple pie, macarons, and scones. I had some trouble trying to fit in cooking amidst an already pretty busy schedule, but I started aiming to set aside an hour to forty-five minutes during dinner time at least once during the week (minimum) if I wanted to cook something. This worked pretty well. I was also usually able to harness the weekends to do more time-consuming baking or cooking. One of the biggest lessons I took away from this part of my project is that if I want more time to work on something, then I need to create that time myself.
Progress Report #1
My first mini goal was mainly research; I asked questions like: What are the most important skills that every chef should master? Which dishes should I try to make first? What equipment do I need in the kitchen?. I was able to accumulate long lists that answered all of these questions. Thankfully, I already had basically all standard kitchen tools, so I didn’t need to buy a lot of them. This provided me with structure and guidelines for when I started to actually make dishes.
I also set up a Google site, so I am all ready to blog. Now I just need to start cooking!