Lots of people can't cook. Lots of people can. I want to belong to the "Can Cook" group. That's why Comida con Causa is a thing. This project had a few core pillars.
- Learning about cooking and instructing folks on how to carry out recipes in Spanish (Cooking Demos)
- Creating a home cooking video, in Spanish
- Creating a page for inclusion in a Cook Book publication
- Developing and testing a packaged product to be sold at a farmer's market then selling said product at a farmer's market
Spanish Food Demos
Here's an example of a recipe that would be used in the food demo process.
These written directions were translated into Spanish by their writers, (in this case myself) an then presented to the class in Spanish, the rest of the class would follow along as the demo givers gave instruction. So this gives us three things:
Having taken first semester Spanish, I entered the semester with pretty developed conversational Spanish skills, and I feel the area that I most improved in was that first pillar, developing Spanish writing skills. I didn't explore writing in Spanish too much over the course of first semester because it had been my first experience with the language, but going into 2nd semester I had a much more intermediate understanding of the language.
- All students developed writing skills in both English and Spanish by writing and translating recipes into Spanish
- All students developed conversational skills by debriefing with with our teacher, Sofia, in Spanish
- All students developed comprehension and oral presentation skills by giving and following instructions in Spanish
Having taken first semester Spanish, I entered the semester with pretty developed conversational Spanish skills, and I feel the area that I most improved in was that first pillar, developing Spanish writing skills. I didn't explore writing in Spanish too much over the course of first semester because it had been my first experience with the language, but going into 2nd semester I had a much more intermediate understanding of the language.
Home cooking video
This video was the amalgam of several weeks of practice on varied skills. The recipe itself was not unlike the previously described recipes that were written for the Spanish Food Demos. The dish I made is called Adobo. It's a Filipino dish, and many Filipino families, including my own, have their own variations of the dish. The script I used for the above video follows:
Creating this video was a practice in writing Spanish, but more importantly, it let me practice my video editing skills once again. On a writing level, this is probably the most refined piece of Spanish writing produced by students this semester. (It went through a ton of revisions.) This is probably most evident through this:
SPANISH COOK BOOK PAGE
What you see here is a super refined, condensed version of the script used in the video. Video editing is generally pretty easy for me, (I've spent a lot of time making random silly videos.) so working on more varied, formal writing was helpful.
The Farmer's Market
The next, and arguably most important part of this project, was product creation. We spent several months creating recipes in groups of 5 or 6. My group struggled through this process, at almost every turn of the way. We initially decided on creating a prepackaged Italian cream soda product, but there were too many issues with packaging a dairy product, so we scrapped it. We decided then on creating a granola bar product. Here's our company pitch:
We are Grounded Granola. We make delicious and nutritious granola bars and we seek to share how we managed to strike a balance of healthy and tasty. We use whole wheat flour rather than regular flour and honey as a natural sweetener rather than sugar. Choices like this create healthy and natural alternatives to processed foods. We also sought to create a nut-free bar because one of group members has a nut allergy, which allows people with nut allergies to still enjoy our granola bar. Our group decided to make granola after running into problems with a previous, unhealthy product. When we realized our previous product was not going in the direction we were hoping, someone suggested granola bars. Granola seemed like the perfect idea because we could make it nut-free, healthy, tasty, package it nicely. We hope our customers are happy with how our granola bar tastes, while also knowing the ingredients that went into it.
The product sold very well. (We sold out!) Here's a picture from the market.
We are Grounded Granola. We make delicious and nutritious granola bars and we seek to share how we managed to strike a balance of healthy and tasty. We use whole wheat flour rather than regular flour and honey as a natural sweetener rather than sugar. Choices like this create healthy and natural alternatives to processed foods. We also sought to create a nut-free bar because one of group members has a nut allergy, which allows people with nut allergies to still enjoy our granola bar. Our group decided to make granola after running into problems with a previous, unhealthy product. When we realized our previous product was not going in the direction we were hoping, someone suggested granola bars. Granola seemed like the perfect idea because we could make it nut-free, healthy, tasty, package it nicely. We hope our customers are happy with how our granola bar tastes, while also knowing the ingredients that went into it.
The product sold very well. (We sold out!) Here's a picture from the market.