My Final Post

My Semior Seminar final project was making a cook book with Ryan Zapolski.  The final product is amazing and I cannot say how proud of it I am.  The best parts of this project was both the fact that I was able to do the project and have somethng to remember my senior year with one of my best friends, Ryan Zapolski, and the fact that for pretty much the whole time I was able to do something I loved, cook.  Every weekend I was able to experiment wit food.  I have always enjoyed experimenting with food since I started cooking with my mom. 

The most challenging and frustrationg part of this project was puting the actual cook book together.  It was dificult to format each and evey page the same and still have all the recipes fit on one page.  In a couple of occations Zapolski and I had to change the format a little because other wise the recipe would have taken two pages.   However, writing the description for each of the meals became more fun with each one I wrote.  At the beggining I tried to make them very structured.  by the end, I was having fun in descricribing each meal.   All in all I learned that it is a lot harder to make a good cook book than i thought it was. 

I was surprised at how well Zapolki and I worked together.  Normally, when Ryan and I work together, we end up arguing about some small detail that we both feel very strongly should be done a specific way.  However, this time, we did not have any arguments.  We both saw where this project should go and exactly how to do it the same way.  Although, we did have some troubles.  At the begging both of our orginizationa and time management skills lacked.  We would write down ideas on scrap peaces of paper and just say we will get it done.  By the end of the project, we had orginized files on our computers with everythoing in the corect format.  Futher more, we set specific goals for when everything would be compleated. 

I feel that I grew as a student because of this project.  The project really gave me a veiw of what college will be because I will controll my schedual and have to motovate myself to work.  In doing this project I really improved my orginization skills. 

For the last week in and out of class all of my efforts have been going to doing my write ups for my recipes.  Also, I finally got the recipe for monkey bread from Miss Mac two nights ago and I am really excited to make it.  I got some of the monkey bread at a bake sale here and imediatly thought "this has to go in the cookbook." 

I am almost done with the write ups. They will all be compleated by the end of the weekend and then I will be able to put the final product together with Zapolski.  The other night I hit a snag because i could not remeber the recipe for rub that went on the beer can chicken, so I made some some chicken quarters that night and recreated the rub.  I think it turned out even better than the origonal rub I put on the beer can chicken.  However, it was frustating to have to take the time to cook a meal because i couldnt remember how to make the rub. 

I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and it is feeling like a weight off of my shoulders.  I have been really stressed out the last week because all of my classes are giving me big final projects and it is hard to split my time between all of them, so that is why my blog has suffered this week.  I cannot wait to be able to relax after graduation. 

Wednesday in class I took the whole class to write two instructional sections.  This processes is very time consuming and makes me wish that I wrote down more of the specifics on how to make things.  Instead I wriote down the general information.  Looking back I would definatly document everything.  It would take more time while I was doing it but looking back and doing the write up section would take less time and be less frustrating.  Wednesday night I went home and did the same thing working on the instructional section,  with the same frustrations. 

Yesterday I did not do any work in class because I had the AP Environmental Science exam.  When I got home I sat down and finished my reading on cooking.  It took me about an hour to do but it was worth it.  I read on weather or not to flip certain meats and how often to do so.  So for example you only flip your red meat once because other wise it can dry it out and make it less flavorful.  At times wile I was reading I would find my mind drifting in and out of the text and I would have to go back.  Other times the pages seemed to fly by as I read.  I have found that my mind tends to really wonder as I become less interested in the text. 

Today when I woke up I was not motivated to cook what-so-ever.  I really wanted a lazy Sunday, but I cooked anyway.  Today's cooking cooking took HOURS.  What I made today was pulled pork sandwiches, grilled corn on the cob, and eggplant stackers.  All the recipes turned out to be great.  The pulled pork took from 11:20 until 8:00 O'clock to cook.  It was well worth the time.  The one complaint I have about this recipe is that I could not taste the maple syrup as much as I hoped I would be able to.  The other two recipes turned out how I expected them to.  Only the eggplant stackers took longer to make than I originality thought they would.

Wednesday in class, I worked on the skills sheet that Mr. Igoe handed out for the whole class.  When I got home I worked on completing the handout for about a half an hour.  It was a little more difficult to fill out certain parts than I thought it would be from first look.

Today, I spent about an hour doing the write ups for on how to cook buffalo wings and the angel food cupcakes with buttercream frosting.  This was not very difficult because I have looked at formats from other cook books.  However, it is a little time consuming to do.  I hope my wings get the approval of the self proclaimed wing connoisseur Igoe.  

Yesterday in class I got "distracted" from my project by looking at Whaley's blog on the Pats off season.  I still classify the day as productive work on the project because part of the project is interacting with other peoples projects.  I really enjoyed his write ups on the draft and breaking it down for me.  Whaley and I talked about his project for a little bit in class.  Last night when I got home I did a write up on one of the meals that I have cooked.  This part is more difficult than I thought it would be.  It is hart to pick the words that truely describe the food and not be cliche.  Also, it is hard to know when I have enought writen about the meal.