Year 2!

It's week two of my second year in HROP Culinary Arts. I am looking forward to another amazing year learning new techniques and learning new recipes. I'm also very excited for this year because we are going to Chicago! =] We have a large class of 12 girls and it should be a very fun and exciting year.

Busy Busy!

Since my last post we have done a lot. We had two finals one was we all were given the same three recipes and had to manage time, cleanup, and how well we presented the food and how we followed the recipe. The recipes were braised chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and garlic asparagus. 

Our second final was to make cupcakes with mystery ingredients from our countries we researched and present them. My ingredients were lemon and almonds from my country of Greece. Pictures to follow.

Another thing we did was made crepes and plated and presented those with bananas and chocolate syrup or whatever we wanted, some people used nutella as well.

We also did staff lunches the last two weeks. Two weeks ago we did a lasanga lunch without Mrs. Chatfield there. It was a complete success. This last Friday we did a tortilla chip soup with salad with spicy ranch dressing on the side and chocolate tart. It was really good too. For Valentine's Day yesterday we made red velvet cupcakes as well as chocolate cupcakes that we sold to the students at Fortuna High as well as cookies we made for a local elementary school. It's been busy this last month!

New Year!

It has been awhile! In the last month and a half we did a lot of fun stuff. We had a pie sale and sold around 250 pies! It took a long time but everyone who bought one was happy. We sold apple streusal, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate mousse, and pecan pie. We also made 45 dozen cookies and pastries for the HCOE Holiday celebration at the Riverlodge.  We made Chicken Parmesean and Eggplant Parmesean for a lunch at the HealthyStart building on our school campus. We also catered an 80th birthday party on the Saturday before Winter Break, it was a lot of fun! We are now working on a project where each student has a different country and has to research the history of the food in the country and pick a traditional food and prepare it for the class and present our country to the class. My country is Greece and I am really looking forward to it.

Overdue Update!

This past weekend we catered a wedding reception. The things we made for the event included a lemon curd cake, a cheese platter, carmelized onion tarts with gorgonzola on top, veggie platter, toasted sourdough bread topped with curried egg salad and smoked salmon and a chiptole hummus dip with pita chips. We also catered two different teacher's meetings. One was for the Humboldt County Office of Education and we made a butternut squash soup, chicken ceasar salad wraps, orzo salad, and our signature chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting and spider webs. The other lunch we did was for our teacher's at Fortuna High School on November 2nd. We made thai green curry, chicken skewers, and basmiti rice. We also made cupcakes for Halloween. We made pumpkin spice cupcakes with maple cream cheese icing orange sprinkles and a pumpkin on top, red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting, chocolate cupcake with choclate buttercream frosting and a spider web, and a vanilla cupcake with caramel buttercream frosting. Yum =]

Homecoming Cupcakes =]

Friday October 15th we made over 80 cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla. The vanilla cupcakes had a caramel buttercream frosting and the chocolate cupcakes had a chocolate buttercream frosting. We sold between 60-70 cupcakes each cupcake was $1.50 each or 3 for $4. Each cupcake was topped with a husky pawprint made out of blue and white fondant to show our school colors for Homecoming week!

I think we did really well on this one and had a lot of fun with little to no chaos or drama.

I'll post a picture of them later!

Reflecting On Our Staff Lunches!

I think that this past week's staff lunch was very successful, it was our least stressful and everyone was equally prepared. The Chiken Skewers that Kelsey and I made were very tastey and I'm sure the tofu ones were just as good! The couscous was really flavorful and of course our honey walnut cupcake topped with honey buttercream a baklava treat and a fondant bubble bee just made the lunch even better!
I don't think we could've done any more better than we did this last week. We really worked as a team and everyone got along really well!

Here's the recipe for the Chicken Skewers
1 skinless, bonless chicken breast per person

Marinade:
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp fish sauce

16 bamboo skewers
Cut the chicken breasts into into cubes and place them in a work bowl. Add all the marinating ingredients (dry ingredients first and then liquids) gently tossed until well mixed. Let it marinate in the fridge for atleast 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

When ready to cook, stir the chicken in the marinade and place on a skewer. Baste the chicken with oil (optional) and grill on a barbeque or under the broiler of an indoor oven. Cook for not much more than 2 minutes each side, turning often to prevent unnecessary burning, and baste again with oil (optional). They are done when they have turned golden brown and crispy along the edges.

Welcome to My Blog =]

Welcome to my blog =] This is my first post and I will be posting pictures of foods and recipes that I have made. Hope you enjoy what I put up and thanks for checking my page out! =]