I Cooked- Successfully! Week 3

   I finally cooked and I did not even burn down the house! For my first meal I made spaghetti. I made a simple, fresh green salad with ranch. Then I made spaghetti with Texas toast. I know I said that I had planned to do it all myself but in reality that did not happen. I wanted to get the groceries myself but I forgot that I have very little time and money. As a high school student I would be able to afford grapes for dinner and that is all. As a result, my very gracious mother bought the groceries for me. I started preparing the meal at 6 that evening. First I made the salad, which required very minimal work. I threw in some spinach and lettuce leaves that I had washed beforehand. To make it fancier like they do in the cooking shows I embellished my salad with cherry tomatoes. Then I put a bottle of ranch on the table and called it good.

   In order to make my main course I first had to gather my supplies. I grabbed some spaghetti noodles and ground beef, along with some tomato sauce. I thawed the meat and cooked it until it was all the way browned. While the meat was browning I brought a pot of water to a boil so that I could cook my noodles. I added a jar of tomato sauce to the meat and put it in a bowl. I used half of the package of noodles. Then I broke the noodles in half, which made quite a mess. While I boiled the noodles I put in the Texas toast. This along with the salad was the easiest part of the meal because I just had to follow the directions the box provided me with. After the noodles and toast were cooked, I put it on the table with proper plate presentation. I am pretty happy with the way it turned out!

Learning to Cook Week 2

    Hey guys! Over this past week I have made some very exciting progress! I have been extremely busy learning all about the different cooking terms and terminology. There are a lot of them! Most of them make sense once you boil it down (see what I did there?) and practice using them. I want to be able to use these terms in my videos once I get to the cooking stage, so it is important that I know what I am talking about. Now that I know some of the basic terminology, I will continue to keep practicing it and advancing my cooking vocabulary with each week that I work on this project.

    It has been a crazy busy week for me. I need to be really good about staying on top of this project as the fall gets even busier. With college and scholarship applications looming over me it is hard to focus on something that does not seem as pressing at the moment. 4H Livestock Judging and a feedlot during the fall run also make it hard to get in some cooking time. Despite these setbacks, I want to stick to my original plan and be very organized when it comes to this project. To help alleviate some of the time constraints, I'm going to break this week up into smaller, more manageable chunks. I plan to go get my supplies early and know what I am going to make earlier in the week, that way when the time comes to make the food, I won't have so much on my plate. 

    I hope my schedule works out a little better in the weeks to come so that I can have lots of trial runs when it comes time to actually make the food. I am excited by the little progress I have made and can't wait to keep growing in my project! If you want a glossary on some basic cooking terms, I found a good website that helped me a lot. Just go to

https://www.d.umn.edu/~alphanu/cookery/glossary_cooking.html   

Let's Cook! Week 1

   Hey everyone! I am very excited to start my journey into cooking and can't wait to get started. Before I feel like I can start actually making food, I should probably familiarize myself with the basics of cooking, including utensils and terminology. That's what I have been working on so far this week. Well, that and getting myself organized which is a project within itself.
   Getting myself organized took a while, but I found that the planning sheet helped quite a bit. If I stick to my plan then I should be able to make steady progress, assuming all goes as planned. I plan to make four meals in all, with an appetizer, main dish, and of course, dessert. Knowing me, I will put the most effort into dessert. The planning sheet helped me a lot and I hope I will be able to stick with it.
   Presenting is very stressful. My shark tank pitch was short and sweet but I was still a little nervous about it. Getting up and talking in front of people is a critical skill though so it was good to practice it. I will need to keep practicing for the Ted Talks which seem really daunting! All in all I think it will turn out okay.
   I am ready to start learning a new skill, one that will be very rewarding if I am successful. If I am not, there is always ramen. I will keep updating my blog as I make progress and look forward to seeing how I progress!