Food blogging: take two

For my foods week 10 assignment, I decided to make sugar cookies. I decided to make these cookies in particular, because a year or two ago I needed to make some sort of food for something (a school event, maybe) and I found this recipe online. They turned out to be pretty good, and the recipe didn’t require many ingredients/the ones it did need were things that you would have on a regular basis. Perfect for Covid! They’ve been my go to cookies ever since.

**Note: I’ve discovered that replacing the butter with coconut oil, you get some pretty good lactose-free coconut cookies!

When I made these in the past, I would put some drops of food colouring into the dough when I was done making it to add a bit of colour. The first time I did this I just wanted the cookies to be coloured, but when I mixed it, it didn’t turn the dough blue (or whatever colour I was using), it made speckles of that colour evenly throughout the dough which looked even better! This time, I was contemplating doing that, but I decided to sprinkle some cinnamon on top of them at the end (as you’ll see in the pictures).

I didn’t have to change much to the recipe, but I did have to substitute the vanilla extract with almond extract, which, I discovered today, is a thing. It gave the cookies a nice almond-y flavour, and I think I will stick to this substitute in the future. In the end, the cookies turn out great. Nicely browned, and just chewy enough. Next time I would like to mix cinnamon into the sugar and butter at the beginning. I think that would make them taste even better.

 

INGREDIENTS

-2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

-1 teaspoon baking soda

-1/2 teaspoon baking powder

-1 cup butter, softened

-1 1/2 cups white sugar

-1 egg

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract**or almond extract

RECIPE

-Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

-In a small bowl mix flour, baking soda and baking powder. Set aside.

-In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

-Beat in egg and vanilla.

-Gradually blend in the dry ingredients.

-Roll rounded teaspoons of dough into balls, and place onto ungreased cookie sheets.

-Bake 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown.

-Ya done.

Food blogging, Week 7

For our foods week 7 assignment, I chose to make a frittata. I chose to make this because when I was looking through recipes online, I came across some sort of omelette/frittata and remembered when we made them in class. I still had my foods duo tang in my backpack with all my recipes, so I thought I’d stick with that. At first I wanted to make a ‘pesto frittata’ without the use of pesto, to see how it would taste (so just the ingredients mixed in with the egg). This was inspired by one of my pictures from our week 6 assignment, “Food Photography”. I put the ingredients for pesto on a plate, with the exception of pistachios instead of  pine nuts. After I took the pictures I mixed the ingredients in a bowl and ate it, which, to my surprise, tasted just like pesto. Because of this, I was low on some on the ingredients, like basil and nuts (we literally didn’t have any nuts in the house, which might of been a good thing, ’cause I don’t know exactly how good a pistachio frittata would be). I ended up using the little amount of basil we had left, garlic, parmesan and chives (for a bit of extra seasoning). I wanted it to be simple, but still have lots of flavour. The frittata turned out pretty well… my family finished it within 10 minutes :). The flavour of the garlic, basil and chives went nicely with the eggs, and it looked really good too! The top was golden, and the ingredients that you could see from the top looked nicely spaced out. Overall, it turned out to be a pretty good frittata.

 

Ingredients:

-three eggs (and a bit of milk)

-two-ish table spoons of parmesan cheese (grated)

-two cloves of garlic

-All the garlic I had left (about half a custard cup)

-three chive strands(?)

-Salt and pepper

 

Recipe:

  1. Get out all of the ingredients
  2. Preheat the oven (I set mine to 250 F)
  3. Thinly slice the garlic and chop the chives
  4. Crack the eggs into a bowl/cup and add a bit of milk
  5. Whisk the eggs, then add the herbs and spices
  6. Pre-cook the garlic in a frying pan with a bit of butter (cook it to your liking)
  7. When the garlic is ready, add the egg mixture and jiggle the handle to spread the egg around
  8. Keep cooking the egg, lifting the edges now and then with a rubber spatula to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan
  9. When the edges are forming bubbles and the middle is almost fully cooked, sprinkle the cheese around the top, and put it in the oven for 1-2 minutes
  10. When it looks golden brown and ready, take it out and transfer it to a plate of trivet
  11. Slice and serve

Foods 9 Food Photography

This is my Foods 9 Food Photography assignment. Hope you enjoy!

(Just a teaser)

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The first ‘photo shoot’ I did was with a teapot, a slice of cheesecake, my glasses, and some other things from around the kitchen.

I was originally just going to use the cheesecake and the teapot, but I wanted more colour to pop. First I added my rose gold glasses and cleaning cloth to accent the pink in the cheesecake, then I added some basil leaves as a garnish to add a bit of green (It wouldn’t taste very good, but it gave me what I was looking for). Finally I added a small detail to tie in the last bit of green; the tag on the tea bag (peppermint green tea).

 

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For my second photo shoot (and also my favourite), I stuck with the same theme as the first, but simplified it.

No more tea pot and cheesecake, just a nice cup of tea on the dock.

For these pictures, I really wanted to focus on the simplicity of the cup, while also acknowledging the lake and mountain in the background. This is one of my favourite types of photos to take, where the camera is focused up close on an object, yet there’s still something to look at in the background.

The second part of this shoot was sort of to symbolize two things; don’t judge a book by it’s cover/too show your true colours, and too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

The first bit is kind of like this: you don’t know if something is good or bad just by looking at it. when you tip over a cup, you may try what you think is sugar, only to get a mouth full of salt.

And, I think ‘too much of a good thing’ is a bit self explanatory. Too much sugar=not good. While a bit of sugar in your tea can be nice, try half a cup, and prepare for a headache.

 

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The third shoot I did was a ‘deconstructed pesto’.

For this picture, I wanted each ingredient to be separated on the plate, so there was still a lot going on, but in a ‘calm’ way, I guess. At first, I tried different angles from above, and the side, but none of them turned out as nicely as this one. The ingredients I used were pistchios, basil, garlic, parmesan and olive oil. I would’ve used pine nuts, but I didn’t have any.

This picture looked good, but also tasted good! When I was finished taking pictures, I cooked up the garlic, and since I didn’t have a blender, I put all the ingredients into a bowl and ate it like a salad. I was suprised that it actually tasted like fresh pesto! My sister on the other hand was surprised that I would eat it at all.

 

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The last photo shoot I did was this:

In these pictures, I really tried to play with the lighting. The candles, chives, ginger and egg were  set up on a chair with a slotted back. the chair was faces away from the window, so the sun could shine through (in the second photo), and the other two were in the direct sunlight, or in the shade. I tried a few with the candles lit, but it was too bright and it didn’t work out as well.

Micirobit project so far

For my microbit project, (which I am doing alone), I had no idea what to do at first. I tried to think of problems that people face every day, and I started going through my daily routine in my head. I didn’t have to think very hard, because the first thing I do is wake up to my alarm, and hit snooze.

20 minutes later I actually get out of bed.

Now that I had my problem, I started brainstorming ways that I could prevent people, like me, from going back to sleep after their alarms go off, and I thought of a device that would make some sort of annoying sound until you wake up. The only problem was, how would a microbit know when someone is awake? To solve this I decided to use the light sensor on the microbit, and have the sound turn off once the light level=x. This way, the microbit would only turn off once the person got out of bed and turned on the light.

During our last advisory, I worked on my code and ended up with a sort-of finished product. For the sound, I was going to use a tedious song over and over, but I instead used the highest note you can play on a microbit, (a high B), as an eighth note, added a sixteenth rest, and had that on repeat. I went to the tech center to test out my code, which worked on my computer, on a real microbit. At first it seemed to work; I covered the microbit so it was dark, and it started ‘beeping’ at me, but for some reason I couldn’t get it to stop, even when I held my phone flashlight right at it. I asked for help from one of the teachers, and even they thought it was strange, seeing as it worked perfectly fine on my computer.

Other than those complications, the only thing I have to figure out it what the light level in my code should be set to. Eg; while (input.lightLevel() <= __)

I would have to test this by trying multiple numbers, but because of our situation with covid-19 and all, my project is put on pause for now.

Digital Footprint

When I google searched my name, the first things that came up were links to Facebook comment pages on a music video for a song that I sang on a couple years ago. The next thing was a link to Christie Grace’s Golden thread album; an album that my dad produced. 

In the picture section, there were some pictures of Christie Grace, and then a bunch of random people (A while ago if I googled my name, pictures of my parents would appear).  

I think if someone were to look up my name, I might appear as a bit of a ghost (no information on me). I think the reason that there isn’t any personal information about me is because I don’t have any social media platforms, so the internet doesn’t have any info to share. 

 

Sway:

 

This entry was posted on October 3, 2019, in Uncategorized. Leave a comment