Lesson Plan #8 Feb.25th-Feb.28th

Lesson Plan #8 Feb.25th-Feb.28th

Parents & Guardians,

Our Winter Cooking Elective Session has come to an end. We had a great time teaching your kiddos. Hope they enjoyed it as much as we did! Feel free to come back and visit our blog, as we will have new recipes for the next trimester. Hopefully your child will have the opportunity to be in our class again.

This week we incorporated a few new things into our cooking lesson. New spices were introduced to the kids lesson like, ground cumin. This is a spice used in many countries. The history of cumin goes back over 5000 years. The ancient Egyptians used it as a spice in foods as well as in the mummification process. The Greeks and Romans used cumin as a spice and also applied it for medicinal purposes. Interestingly, it was used to make the complexion more pale. It is a major ingredient in chili powder as well as curry powder. It is associated mostly with Indian, Mexican, and Vietnamese foods, but the ancient Greeks kept a dish of it on the dinner table, a practice which continues today in Morocco.

We added ground cumin to our chicken to give it a smokey flavor. It compliments the chicken and makes for a perfect filling for taquitos. Again, we reiterated how stoneware retains heat and cooks evenly throughout. We placed our chicken in the stoneware and microwaved it for 5 minutes, then we shredded it. You can cook your chicken by boiling it, baking it, or placing it in the crockpot. Leftover roasted chicken also makes great taquitos.

We taught the kids how to infuse oil by adding garlic and onions and sautéing it in hot oil. Making infused oils is a process of transferring flavor and scent into the oil of your choice. This process can also be used to add flavor to cooking oils.

It is a simple process of infusing flowers, herbs or spices into an oil by heating or letting it sit in a sunny spot so that the volatile oils can transfer into the carrier oil. We did this process and used our garlic and onion infused oil for our rice. Bake instead of frying. We used olive oil spray on our baking sheet as well as spraying the taquitos on top.

Cooking Tip* Microwave your corn tortillas to prevent cracking when rolling your taquitos. Microwave them just until pliable. Roll your taquitos and place it with the edge down. Corn tortillas also have natural lines, roll the taquitos the same way as the lines. This makes it easier to roll and prevents cracking.


How to set a table

Place the main dinner plate so that it is centered with each chair.

Fold a napkin and place it to the left of the dinner plate.

Place the forks to the left of the plate, on top of the napkin. Place the forks from left to right in the order that they will be used. Smallest fork should be the furthest away from the plate on the outside. Align the forks with the bottom of the napkin.

Place the knife to the right of the plate, with the serrated side toward the plate. If using multiple knives, place them beside one another, with the first knife to be used on the outside.

Place the soup spoon to the right of the knife or knives.

Place the desert fork above the plate, perpendicular to the direction of the other utensils. The handle of the fork must be on the left side.

Place the desert spoon between the plate and desert fork, with the handle on the right side.

Place the glasses above the knives, in the order in which they will be used, from left to right.

Place your bread plate on the left side above the plate and to the left.


***To remember the proper sides to place the knife, fork and spoon, we told the kids to remember this easy reference and refer to the number of letters in each word. Knife and spoon both have five letters, as does the word "right." Fork has four letters, just like the word "left."***

Voila, the kids are ready to set the dinner table for Easter :)

Have a great Spring Break!!!