Culinary Arts

by shelly
(India)

My daughter needed an elective so she took CLE Home Ec 1. This was a pretty comprehensive course on cooking, however she became very interested in food and culinary arts. Over the Christmas season she took to baking specialty cakes, cookies, pies such as bushe de Noel, Trifle, cheese cake, Black Forest, Ginger Bread house. She was able to visit a local bakery to learn tips on frosting, piping, coloring, etc.

We had a friend who owned and Indian/Chinese Restaurant so she was able to also visit there and learn some techniques and recipes.

Because of her interest whenever we went to a coffee shop or ice cream parlor we would stop and ask the person in charge if she could see the behind the scene happenings. Sometimes they would do it on the spot, other times they would set up a time when she could come and visit.

She would keep a journal of all that she baked or cooked, often times documenting with photographs or recipes. She also made her own cook book with all the recipes she tried.

Additionally she kept records of charts she made on kitchen cleanliness, daily, weekly jobs that needed to be done, master shopping lists, price evaluation, etc.

All of this was put into a very impressive portfolio with a Culinary Arts diploma at the end.

Response: That's a very impressive unit study. I would think that the record keeping of it was probably the hardest part. Once she got into the habit of journaling each day, I would think it would be second nature though.

How fun to be able to see behind the scenes of the places you went to eat. That is a great idea I need to implement.

Cooking unit study - here we come!