Reflection Blog

Looking back at the entire semester of cooking and just learning about food, I really enjoyed it. I took the class with only an interest in food and only having cooked with my Mom before, who’s a really good cook, and it completely exceeded my expectations for the class! I always knew that I never wanted to be a chef as a career, but that I LOVE food. Eating it, cooking it, it didn’t matter.

I think that I am not alone in saying that Mondays were my favorite class times, just because we got to cook. I also think that going forward next year, it might even be a really good idea to cook twice a week! I’d say that making class maybe a half an hour, or even an hour longer, just to allow for more cooking and clean up time would be really helpful. We always ran out of time on Mondays and then it seemed like we had too much time on Wednesdays.

As for the readings, I did enjoy some of them but not all, and I think certain ones were more interesting than others. Also, certain ones were definitely more relevant than others, and I get that we were supposed to learn about cultures other than our own but some were stretching that. An example of that to me would be the punk culture article, which is a culture I never expect to encounter in my lifetime. That being said, some of the readings around diets or eating disorders were really interesting to me and I feel like we will (sadly) only be getting more familiar with them.

I really can’t recall a class where I distinctly didn’t like what we were able to make that day, but I did like some more than others. The class I wrote a summary for, which was the Eastern European food, was my least favorite flavor wise. Everything seemed to blend together into what ended up being a very similar flavor to me, which I personally don’t enjoy. But cooking it was fun!

(Picture credit to Lisa from her class summary)

My favorite class was when we made the Okonomiyaki, which to me tasted almost like what I’d imagine Japanese diner food would be like. It was a very rich, fatty meal and that to me always tastes the best. I really enjoyed the okonomiyaki sauce especially, almost like a glaze for the “pancake”. Making it was also really fun to do, I think anything that involves flipping always adds a little something to cooking!

I think that logistically the class worked really well, except for the time issue. We never had a bad experience with any of our guests who were all really great (have them back next year) and doing lagniappe was fun too, especially for me. I think that making us do cooking outside of class is really nice and it drives home that what you learn in class is something you can literally use that evening when making dinner.

Thanks for a great semester!

-Lars