Saturdays Spent

Every Saturday, I get up early (at least try to) to go to school and attend my FN 11 class. Entitled Principles of Food Preparation, this subject deals basically with cooking, baking and the science behind how food is prepared. When I enlisted for this class, I really dreaded it because it would be on a Saturday! There was another class scheduled on a weekday but it was in conflict with my major so I had no choice. The first few meetings weren't enjoyable, but thanks to some getting used to and some really good recipes, I'm beginning to enjoy this class!

Here are a few of the things we've made:

January 22: Buko pie! My group and I made the whole pie from scratch. That's Alexa, one of my close UP friends, being her usual self.

January 29: Banana cake and Shirred eggs. Both recipes weren't perfect :( The banana cake was alright, save that it was rather dry and not sweet enough. The shirred eggs would've have been heaven but because I put too much butter, it was a bit too rich for my taste. At least the other groups liked both of them!

We're 5 groups in my class, each making our assigned recipe/s for the day. When we're all done cooking/baking, we prepare the tables, sit down and start tasting each dish for evaluation. The dishes are evaluated on 3 categories: Appearance (this includes plating), Texture/Consistency, and Taste. I thought describing food would be easy but it's not!! You have to be very specific and creative (i.e. "the icing looks like black leather", "the leche flan crumbles into little balls when eaten", "tastes like a Red Ribbon chocolate cake"). All the eating can get tiring, plus having to think of very articulate descriptions for each dish can be difficult too. After eating and evaluating is clean up time--the worst part of the class because we have have to wash everything we used. Then after that, lecture which is sorta sad for Ma'am because we're all so sleepy and tired to listen to her. Good thing she isn't too strict. :))

This class made me want to start baking again (I used to bake often in highschool) but the oven just recently broke. So much for the motivation.

How do you spend your Saturdays? :)