Nutrition!

So I was super excited to finally take a class that is specifically geared toward my career path!

I know all the information I’m learning will be drilled into my head within the next few years but honestly, that excites me! I wanna be able to help others with choosing healthy foods and producing food that not only tastes delicious but also has positive fuel for the body!

Day 1 was a basic overview lecture on nutrition and our senses with food. Our class was split into groups for production and we all produced sandwiches and potato salad. There were 6 groups and every 2 groups did a certain kind of sandwich. My group made the sandwich in a pita with hummus (instead of an unhealthy mayo for a sandwich), spinach leaves, grilled tomato, zucchini, red peppers, and onions. We sprinkled feta cheese on top. As for the potato salad, most groups just made a potato salad with red round potatoes and made their own kind of salad without mayo. My group was given the recipe for sweet potato salad. We used apricot preserves, dried cherries, orange juice, toasted pecans, celery, apples, and of coarse, sweet potatoes(which we roasted). It was so delicious and made me feel good eating it all because it was healthy! I can’t wait to prepare more food in this class as the days go on!

Here are all the sandwiches made by the whole class

Day 2 I’m going to skip over because we didn’t do much, except change recipes into single portions and make them healthier than they actually were!

Day 3 we had so much going on. Every group had to poach two eggs for eggs benedict with a healthy bernaise sauce. I never poached an egg before and now I realize how easy it is! The water isn’t boiling when you put the egg in, but somewhere between 160 and 180 degrees.

Our main objective of the day was steaming and poaching, so we also poached fish in this flavored liquid (I didn’t do that so I don’t know what was in it :/ )After the fish cooked, we reduced the liquid and made a sauce for the fish. We steamed broccoli and carrots, and boiled and lightly roasted tourne potatoes. We also had to steam chicken, and I made a red pepper coulis to go with it!

Day 4 was definitely an interesting day. We learned how to make a papillote with chicken and fish. A papillote is baking something in parchment paper. My group used asparagus and red peppers on bottom, put halibut on top of that, scallops, lemon wedges, and seasoned it with tarragon. It’s kind of funny, we have to cut out a heart shape before we fold the paper to be steamed.

We also made these wraps in grape leaves, which is a main item in Greek cuisine. We stuffed them with rice mixed with dried cranberries and apricots, macadamia nuts, and dill. It was served witha tzaziki sauce which includes sour cream, plain yogurt, dill, cucumbers, salt and sugar.

Here are all the wraps made by the class

Day 5 was very good! It was a pasta day! There were so many kinds of pasta made, from beet pasta, to whole wheat with ginger and carrots, to spinach pasta, to even chocolate pasta! My group made the chocolate pasta and a whole wheat pasta with fresh herbs.

The chocolate pasta was actually good!!! It had unsweetened cocoa so we made a sweet sauce to compliment the pasta. All the pasta had healthy ingredients and stuff, just the sauce for the chocolate pasta wasn’t too healthy; it was a vanilla cream sauce.

The other pasta we made included basil and parsley. We liked the green color it gave the pasta so we didn’t want to add a sauce that would cover the color. We decided on doing a a cold dish so we tossed the pasta with olives, some of the olive water, oil, tomatoes, green peppers, and feta cheese. I wanted feta so we went along with the greek flavors and added tomatoes and olives (not a fan of olives though)

Here are all the different dishes made by the whole class

We did much more, but this is just a glimpse into what my nutrition lab was all about!