Free Inquiry

Macaroni Moments with Maxie and David

Today Maxie and I went over to David’s van and made some Macaroni and Cheese. We used my all-time favourite recipe for Mac and Cheese, my Granny’s recipe. Her mac n cheese uses sharp cheddar and has a bit of a tang to it, and I love that about it.

Here is the recipe we used:

1/4 cup butter
1 tsp salt
2 cups old cheddar, grated
2 cups macaroni
1/4 cup flour
2 1/4 cups milk
1 TBSP Imperial Cheese
soda crackers

The recipe calls for a microwave to melt the cheese and mix the butter, but given that we were in the van, we heated and mixed everything on the stove. Place butter, flour and salt in a pot and heat until butter is melted. Add milk and stir until sauce becomes thick (took about 5 minutes). Mix in cheddar and imperial cheese until melted. While making the cheese sauce, cook 2 cups of macaroni for 8-10 minutes and drain. When done, add drained macaroni and cheese sauce into a casserole dish. Top with crushed soda crackers. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes, or until crackers are golden and cheese is bubbly.

Cooking with friends definitely added an element of fun to the cooking process. We worked together to measure, stir, and add ingredients and did crosswords while we waited. I had a marvellous time making my Grans Mac n Cheese, and would definitely want to cook in David’s Van again!

Vegan Potato Curry

Tonight I made some Vegan Potato Curry. I looked up some recipes on Pinterest for some curries that looked relatively easy. Its definitely starting to feel like winter is coming already, and I thought that some warm-comfort food would be a great idea.

I took a much better picture of my food this time, and I am pretty happy with the results.

Through doing this recipe, and given the fact turned out so well, I have started to wonder how many vegan/vegetarian meals I could make throughout this Inquiry Project. Although I don’t think that I will be able to make all of the recipes veggie, I think it would be an exciting thing to try and get more comfortable with some recipes that are better for the planet.

Below are some adjustments and tips n tricks that I learned through the night.

Start off with boiling potatoes
- Peel potatoes
- Cut into cubes
- Boil for 15 minutes
Then cut the onion
- Leaned how to cut an onion properly and with more precision
- Messy and crying, but best I’ve done it
Then put the onion in a pre-heated pan
- Prepped the same as the fish tacos recipe
Put together all of the spices while you are waiting on the onions (which need to be stirred every two minutes so that they cook evenly)
- Pretty much double all of the spices except for cyan because I can’t handle too much spice
- Rae always adds garlic and onion powder to add a little extra flavor
- And turmeric for extra color and health benefits
Add minced garlic to the onions in the pan
- Learned to carefully crush the garlic to get the skin off of it
Add spices and coat the onion and garlic in the mixture
Next, I learned how to peel ginger with a spoon and grate it
- Add this to the pan
Add a can of chickpeas and a can of diced tomatoes
- You want to squish to tomatoes before adding them to the pan to help them absorb more flavor
Strain the potatoes and rinse with cold water
- You always want to rinse starches with cold water because it helps them stick to the pan less
Add in frozen peas and currents
Added in coconut milk earlier than normal because the ingredients were looking a little dry
Learned how to make real rice (and not 5 minutes rice)
- Rinse the rice
- 2 cups of rice and slightly less than 4 cups of water
- Let the rice boil, stir, and move to a cooler element (low) and leave for 20 minutes

Fish Tacos – Breading Fish

Today I embarked on learning how to bread fish… and make fish tacos! I usually make pretty simple tacos with veggie meat that is pre-seasoned, but today I thought I would try something new. I found the process far easier than expected, and they ended up tasting amazing. My partner walked me through the steps of breading fish and taught me how to fry it as well.

Below is the recipe that she taught me, with some tips and tricks on the side.

I found that I liked writing out the steps in point form because I know it will help me in the future when trying to recreate this recipe. I also don’t have any pictures of the tacos because the ones that I took are quite awful. That is another thing I am hoping to add to my repertoire, how to take some more appetizing pictures of my creations.

BREADING THE FISH

Start out with getting the pan nice and hot
- Set at medium so that it cooks all the way through, and not just the outside
  - What happens when its too hot
- Set oven to 170 in order to keep fish warm while getting everything else ready
Set up station of eggs –> flour —> panko
- As soon as the fish is breaded you want it going into the pan so that the breading doesn’t get soggy from the eggs
- Two eggs
  - Wisk eggs together in order to mix the whites and yolks together
- Add spices to the flour (sticks best to the fish)
  - Garlic powder, pepper, salt, paprika
  - Wisk them together
Right before breading, you want to heat the oil in the pan
- And you know the pan is hot enough for oil if you put a tiny bit of water in your hands and flick it in the pan and it sizzles
Dip the fish into the egg, and then the flour
- Make sure the flour is covering completely
- Then back into the egg and then into the panko
- And then into the pan
Fish is ready to flip when it is golden brown around the edges
- Fish will feel a lot more firm and then you know that it is completely ready
You don’t want to overcrowd the pan because it gets too steamy and it makes the breading on the outside soggy instead of crispy

SAUCE

Juice two limes
Sprinkle of garlic powder
1/3 cup dollops of sour cream
4 tbl spoons decent squirt of mayo
A tsp of siracha
Wisk together

RANDOM OTHER ASPECTS

Red peppers
Avocado
Lettuce/coleslaw depending on your preference
A little bit of fetta

September 23, 2019
by kayldawn

When this project was first introduced I was feeling both excited and nervous for the opportunity to create my own learning process. I have grown up in an education system that is full of set guidelines and rubrics. I have always been a perfectionist, and although this system gave me a lot of anxiety, it also gave me a lot of structure, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Having so many classes this semester with inquiry based projects has proven to be a challenge, as I am not the most self motivated person. In addition to the struggle of multiple projects and assignments to keep track of, I am not even close to being a technologically savvy person. We have been assigned multiple TedTalks, documentaries, and YouTube videos to watch about the growth mindset, and how inquiry based projects are wonderful ways for children to learn, I am definitely trying to keep an open mind about how I will succeed this semester.

I have had a lot of difficulty coming to a decision of what I want to do for this assignment. Although I am passionate about photography, I only have access to a film camera. The process of buying and developing film takes both a lot of time, and money. I was trying to think of something that would be interesting and also make a positive impact in my life, and I have settled on cooking. I am not the best cook, and if I am cooking for myself my plate is typically a brown buffet: pasta with butter, rice with soy sauce… you get the gist. My partner on the other hand is an incredible cook and very creative in the kitchen. Given the fact that she is always the one cooking, I end up with the task of doing the dishes. I thought that for a change I would like to learn how to cook for her, as well as get out of doing the dishes multiple times a day. Though cooking is something I get a lot of anxiety doing (I don’t like being bad at things), I am excited to try and see what I can learn and bring to the kitchen.