Bon apetit! International students and cooking online


My younger daughter and I made croissants for breakfast today...a process which began yesterday. You can see the pics on Instagram. I'm posting the final one here!


This is an example of how YouTube and face-to-face classes combine. I took a croissant class at Sur la Table last year; for me, it's really important to be able to feel and smell as I'm cooking, so YouTube alone is not enough. I've made croissants two or three times since then. Yesterday, I forgot exactly how to do one of the folds, so I checked with a pastry chef I've watched before on YouTube (Here's the link: Classic French Croissants ). That online reinforcement/review was croissant-saving!

One of the ways of using social media with international students has to do with cooking. Many of the Saudi and Kuwaiti students I had a few years ago were young men who had never even boiled water. Alone in the US, they craved their moms' cooking, so they Skyped with their moms and followed directions step by step, showing the progress of the recipe as they went. When I found that out, we started "one-pot meal" cooking classes during lunch...I made the first dish, and then students volunteered to do the next few classes. We learned Lebanese, Kuwaiti, Italian dishes...and more! Students filmed the lessons on their phones and uploaded the videos to facebook; we did not have a program facebook page at the time (long story).
Here are a video and a still picture from those lessons:





The video was taken in my house, where we moved one of the lessons because we had a real Austrian chef in the group. The second is of a Lebanese student making mjdara. The students wrote the recipes on the board, getting practice with food words, the vocabulary of cooking, and measurements in English.
Bon apetit!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After reading and listening to the various materials in this module, I see that I was not and am not coming close to using the full capabilities of Web 2.0. My excuse is that I do not have time to learn them well enough to employ them in class, but that is a poor excuse. I am an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) instructor currently teaching three Continuing Education courses: Business English (high-level students, 2 hours a week), Evening ESOL (intermediate level students, 6 hours a week), and Saturday ESOL (high-intermediate level students, 4 hours a week). I consider myself to be somewhat tech-savvy in that, when I was the administrator and an instructor in our intensive program for university preparation (the past 6 years), I used tools such as electronic flashcards, online quizzes, online games, and discussion boards with my students. I integrated current, relevant media from various sites and podcasts into my classes rather than relying solely on what our books pro
Read more

Curated Exhibit

Here is a link to my pinterest board on Street Painting . This has been my hobby since I returned to the States in 2006, and it is exactly the kind of art I like: ephemeral and social. When it rains during a festival, whether it is while I'm painting or overnight between painting days, I am not so excited about the temporal nature of chalk on pavement. However, on the Monday after the festival weekend, I have no problem with cars, bikes, and pedestrians, human and animal, passing over my paintings. In terms of being social, chalk artists paint on blocked off streets during festival weekends; people walk up, ask questions, comment on the design or colors, and talk about life in general. I have met some very interesting beings: tourists from overseas, local immigrants who are happy to find a Spanish-speaker to answer their questions, children, and lots of dogs. I love dogs! I have always been interested in Pinterest, but I had never tried it until this week. I love having the abi
Read more

Business Travel 2.0

Image
I made this infographic on easel.ly to visualize the number of tools that I have used since arriving here on Monday. It's pretty mind-boggling...especially when you consider the number of usernames and passwords I need to remember. For some of these, I can use my new work account; for others, I use Google whenever possible. I have two more days...more apps to come!
Read more