A question came up recently about the Salmon Cakes and Ginger Mayonaise recipe. The recipe for the mayo lists 2 eggs or equivalent pasteurized egg product. When using this recipe, you have excellent teaching opportunity about eggs and food safety. It is imperative that educators use the pasteurized egg product in the class and explain the reasoning. For more information information check out: https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/eggs/index.html. I also like to include a handout on egg safety in the handouts for the class.
S t r e t c h i n g . . .
Last week we presented a cooking class that allowed us to stretch a bit in our ideas of the mobile cooking school concept. A couple of months ago a teacher asked if we could do a one-time cooking class for a parent engagement group of pre-k students.
Teacher: not sure how many will be there, but I heard your cooking school is great and would be a good fit for us
Me: yes! That would be awesome. We’d love to! Just let me know when you have better idea of how many to expect
Week of the presentation:
Teacher: Ok, so it looks like we’ll have about 75 people
Me: Yikes! I don’t think we can do our hands-on cooking classes like we usually do because we only have 4 cooking stations that serve 4-6 people….but we’ll come up with something!
Solution: No-cook Kits!
We made “kits” for no-cook recipes with pre-cut items the participants could quickly put together and feed about 8 people with each kit. One kit was for a Chinese Chicken Salad. The “kit” had each of the ingredients pre-cut and pre-measured in separate bags or containers all inside of a gallon size bag that could be used to mix the salad and then pour into bowls to serve. Even the bowls and forks were in “kits” that were easy to place at each table/station. The other kit had ingredients for Yogurt Parfait, with a container of yogurt, cut frozen fruit in snack size baggies, and 2 oz cups with lids of granola. Another “kit” had small clear cups and plastic spoons to use for assembling the parfait.
This method created a lot of waste with the bags, but it was easy to present and everyone got to participate. Also, the menu was a good “MyPlate” representation with all of the food groups and the food itself was yummy!
This was a little different than the fully hands-on cook a meal with skillets method we usually do, but nonetheless….Success!
Credit where credit is due!
The Instructor’s Guide includes several sample recipes that we found work well in the mobile setting. Those recipes were pulled from a lot of different sources and every effort was made to credit them appropriately.
Many came from past “Dinner Tonight!” recipe books. Dinner Tonight! is a popular Texas A&M AgriLife Extension program that features live community events or shows as well as a very useful website for recipe and food prep ideas. The website dinnertonight.tamu.edu is chock-full of great information and easy, nutritious recipes. There are also lots of videos for all you visual learners!
Other recipes were carefully selected from the internet. As internet information goes, things change pretty fast and often there are multiple links that make it difficult to determine original sources. One of our favorite recipes is “Salmon Cakes and Ginger Mayonnaise“. In the guide it is credited as coming from http://everydaypaleo.com/salmon-cakes-with-homemade-ginger-mayo/ which is where I first found it when it was shared by a friend. Currently, that site redirects to https://sarahfragoso.com/salmon-cakes-with-homemade-ginger-mayo/. So, we want to make sure to give credit and a shout out to Sarah Fragoso for that awesome recipe!
Another one I love came from buzzfeed.com. The Chickpea and Black Bean Salad was featured in an email, or a social media post, or somewhere I saw with the title “This Chickpea And Black Bean Salad Is What Your Body Needs”. By generally accepted nutrition principles, it really is good stuff! After looking back at the site, I’m not sure who came up with this recipe, but it is awesome, and I want to say thank you!
So, a word of caution… any recipe selected for use in a mobile cooking school should agree with the principles of MyPlate and be nutritionally sound while supporting healthy eating patterns. Whereas the internet has a lot of great stuff, not everything is always as it seems. Also, it’s important for your recipes to be people tested and nutrition educator approved…in other words: it should taste good and be good for you!
Check the Helpful Links page for good sites to find recipes!
Yummy Lime-Pineapple Dessert
Yummy is right! Yummy Lime-Pineapple Dessert is a funny name for a recipe, but I’m not sure what else you would call it. We use it a lot in our mobile cooking classes, because it’s quick, easy, a good source of calcium, incorporates the dairy and fruit groups into the menu and it’s… well… yummy! One of my co-workers says it reminds her of the gelatin desserts they serve at cafeteria restaurants, but this recipe takes so much less time to make and is so much tastier.
In class, we usually have participants make this first so it can chill while everything else is being prepped. If there is not a fridge handy, we just use the ice chests/coolers with ice. Although lime and pineapple is a classic flavor combination, we’ve had fun offering different combinations for groups to try. Sometimes, we give each group a different combination, then compare and contrast the flavors. And, sometimes we just set the gelatin and fruit out and let people pick their own combo. Some popular combinations have been orange gelatin and mandarin oranges; strawberry gelatin with fresh banana slices or frozen bananas and strawberries or frozen berry bland; peach gelatin and peaches. Once we tried lemon gelatin with coconut flakes…not the sweetened shredded coconut flakes, but the ones that are newer on the market … the big flakes of toasty, crunchy, coconut goodness. Another fun one around the holidays was cranberry gelatin and apples flakes…similar to the coconut flakes but crispy baked apple flakes…yumm-o!
We’ve had people ask if they have to use the sugar-free gelatin. Some people have sensitivities to the sugar substitutes. The the answer is no you don’t have to use the sugar-free, it works just fine with the “fully-leaded” gelatin. But as with anything, you’ll want watch out for your overall sugar intake. Even with low-sugar-low-fat ingredients, we should enjoy this dessert in moderation! And…did I mention this recipe is super yummy?…it is easy to over do it with this one. Nevertheless, it’s a quick, easy, nutritious, and yes, yummy way to complete a menu!