The Night After Christmas

The Night After Christmas

'Twas the night after Christmas and all through the kitchen, little creatures were stirring up potions bewitching.
Salmonellae were working in gravy and soup, in the hopes they could turn it to poisonous goop!
Clostridia were nestled all snug in the ham,
While Hepatitis A viruses danced in the yam.
Little John with his Gobots and Mary in her cap,
Had just settled down for a long overdue nap.
When down in their guts there arose such a clatter
They sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.
They ran to the bathroom, threw open the door
Too late! Now their mother is cleaning the floor.
Wash your hands before cooking! Put your food away quick!
Or that jolly old food germ we know as Saint Sick
With his eight tiny microbes will ruin the feast
As they make their toxins. He calls out to each beast:
"Now Hepatitis! Now Staph and Perfringens;
We'll punish those humans for holiday binges!
On Botulinum! E. Coli! Shigella!
Go get 'em Amoeba! Work fast, Salmonella!
If those humans can't learn to handle food right,
A Merry Christmas they'll have, then a long, sleepless night!"

Connection

I have come to understand that some of the joys of eating lies in the act of personally creating the food, and in sharing it with the ones we love. 

The routine of stirring homemade gooey oatmeal on the weekend at the cottage for you and your family helps you to realize that it is the weekend and a long relaxed morning is going to ensue. During the busy week, coming home and going through the act of boiling water for tea can bring comfort and instant relaxation after a hard day. Not only does this connection with our food allow us to think about what we are putting into our bodies the matter in which we share and eat food can actually make it taste better to you. What tastes better than the apple cobbler you remember eating at your grandparents cottage after a long day of fishing and playing outside? Why are holiday foods so special? We have those special dishes that may not seem so special to anyone else, but the holiday just wouldn't be right without that pie, or cranberry relish. The dishes become special with the memories connected to the food, whether it be the routine of doing it every day, or the memories connected from prolonged holiday tradition. 

My love for my family is showed through the food that I make them. I take the time to make my dad his favorite pie, or dinner for my mom on mothers day. It is care and devotion that I put into my food to share with people that I love. I believe that food should be created with love and shared with love. This is part of the message that I want to share with people about food. 

What is your personal definition of Creativity?

This Was my Answer:

Creativity is a stream of unrestrained thoughts and ideas. Allowing youself to think outside, inside, behind, in front of, under, and on top of "the box". Creativity is Making/Saying/Doing, anything that allows feeling and emotion to get out of your body and into the world. Creativity inspires people to think in new ways and explore their own selves. Creativity is more than being artistic, it is bringing your soul/being/feelings/thoughts into the world to share with others, even if it may not be socially acceptable/tollerable.

Playin with our food

On Friday night I helped out one of my good friends N with a little homework assignment. Of course it involved food. She was to try new friuts and take photos and write about it. Well we ended up having a lot of fun playing with the scraps.


This was our selection of fruit to try/play with.

Too bad this one didn't taste all that great.

This was our first go.....

..... and then we made a friend.....

And because the first one was so much fun to make we made this little guy as his friend.

Food Relevation

It seems to me that many people don’t realize how important food is. Food along with air, water, and shelter is the basis of life. We get grouchy if we don't eat. We are in better moods if we are well fed. And we are healthy if we eat correctly. We bake cookies for people to show we care; we break bread and bond over food. We go out to restaurants to have an experience, a girl’s night out, or a romantic dinner. And yes if you think about it eating is not the most attractive of things but still food is necessary. We bring food into our home, into our bodies, into our families and friends' bodies. That brings food to be one of the most intimate things in this world to us. If people mess with our food we get upset think GHB, irradiation, bovine growth hormone, GMO's, the organic craze, fortifying of foods and the list goes on. So food is necessary, food is intimate and lately in today's society food has been ABUSED, especially in America.
Wake up KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Red Robins and Processed packaged reheat able meals ugh. A processed breaded chicken patty loaded with preservatives and salt is not a meal! ICKY! We have let food become impersonal, ripping open lasagna in a box and reheating it, buying pre-prepared healthy choice dinners, buying salad in a bag, meal replacement bars etc. Not only have we allowed food to become impersonal we have allowed the system of growing and buying food become impersonal and industrialized. Fruits, vegetables and meat are shipped many hundreds of miles from where they are produced, to be sold in large supermarkets. I am not completely innocent in helping these trends continue; I shop at Meijer and lord knows where that food comes from and how many miles it has traveled to get there. I've made the mistake of buying out of season foods and have paid the price. Hard tasteless pears, bruised avocados, sour grapes. I am in this situation too but I am unhappy about it and want to change it for myself and for others.
The problem is A) mindset on life and B) the system and infrastructure of what our food system is.
A) So we are busy on the go Americans. We want it all and we want it all NOW. This leaves little time for family let alone preparing a meal ourselves and having a family dinner together around a table (not a TV). Women came into the work force mostly during the war to help America and support their kids. Well they've stayed in the workforce to increase home income. Why do we want large incomes? It used to be so we all could go on family vacations and have nice things when we relax. But now work takes us away from the things that we were once striving to have. It seems we just want more and more money for the sake of having money, not for having quality family time. In lieu of these changing lifestyles fast food restaurants have popped up creating unhealthy eating habits for many people. Many food companies are responding to the demand for quick and easy meals by making easy to heat dinners, lunches and even breakfasts. This would be fantastic in my mind if only people actually ate them together.

B) Our food system is based on large farms that ship food across the country. If one of these farms has health issues people across the nation pay the price. We have turned to mono cropping and irrigating the desert to grow food enough for the country. Due to this system, huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil fuels are used to grow the crops with the aid of fertilizers and plowing. Then there comes the waste in shipping a crop (which is harvested not at the peak of flavor) to local groceries and convenience stores around the globe so Americans can have flavorless grainy tomatoes in the middle of winter.

Wouldn't it be nice to know the person that puts in hard labor to grow the food that you eat for dinner? To have a personal relationship with other families that buy from this person? To not have to worry if the lettuce you got from the supermarket is the same as the lettuce being recalled for E. coli? To know that the food you eat is organically grown and picked when it will taste the best and is at it's most nutritious? That fossil fuels were not wasted in shipping you carrots all the way from California? How come it is now a privilege for a four star restaurant to buy local produce? To have relationships with farmers down the road or even have a farm for the restaurant? How did that become a novelty practice? With the distance we have put between ourselves in cities and the areas where our food comes from, we have increased our impersonal relationship with food. Children do not know that carrots are roots and grow in the ground, and who knew that a prune is a dried plum?
Yes, "new" practices people have been “creating” such as organic, naturally grazed life stock, and polycropping have been “developed” to enhance our efficiency and the safety of the food we eat. Maybe eating local would cut down on the trucking industry in some areas, but it would be for the best. There are still going to be specialty items at stores that need to be shipped: chocolate bars, cookies, and soda. Trucking will not be eliminated due to a local food revolution but it will help to cut back on the use of fossil fuels.

How is it that we came to view food as a nuisance rather than a focal point of our lives? How is it that we have come to rip food apart and then place it back together while destroying the nutrients and increasing the fat content all in the name of preservation and convenience?
If we continue our systems the way they are now we have no hope for health in the future.

Motivated

This fall semester has been very intense for me on many different levels. Lately I have been interviewing for internships with companies like Kellogs, Pepsico, and maybe Dominoes. I am so lucky to be in a field where internships are paid and give great experience. I must admit that I am intimidated by all of it but I am getting better and better in interviews (I hope).
I have been very bad with posting and hopefully I'll get myself into gear and post more and with that hopefully it will become easier for me to navigate around this blogging world. I have many exciting thoughts running through my head lately. Much of it is due to a wonderful program I am involved in called The Bailey Scholars. I call it Bailey for short. Bailey has helped me figure myself out a lot and it has also turned me back to this blog that I started for too many reasons to name.
Due to the fact that I should be studying at the moment I am going to post some pictures of my wonderful study abroad that hopefully I'll post about in a more indepth post later on.

Study Abroad

In ten days I will have finished my sohomore year of college and will be traveling with a wonderful group of people on a study abroad. This is more of a trip in my eyes but I can get credit for it. This is titled International Food Laws and Regulations. I am so very excited for this. I get to go to many different places and get to see some very exciting things. This is the main reason for me starting this blog. I hope to be able to share a pleffera of information about my study abraod that centered around what else but FOOD! I am such a food person.

We had a meeting regarding the study abroad and the instructors included this piece of information.




The exercise was to place our names by the specific area we felt we belonged to. Well to start off with there were many that appealed to me. I kind of happened upon food science by flipping through different colleges and looking at the different majors they had. My mom actually found food science and was like Ashlee this is it! See I have always liked everything about food; cooking it, eating it, talking about it. And so I appeal to many of the culture and traditions around food. I am also interested in how food plays an important part of our lives. We have meetings over dinner and lunches, we have food at all of our important events. Our lives are simply based around food even if we do not realize it. However the new food movements with all the new products are about meals on the go, meals that are quick and easy so you can get on with you lives. Well I am totally against that! Meals are supposed to be enjoyed and meals are meant to be had with others. It is a time to enjoy life and catch up with people. If we weren't meant to enjoy food, the thing that sustains us in life, we would make our own food like flowers and trees. But humans were meant to eat and enjoy eating. We are not meant to be eating power bars and new fat free foods that taste like nothing.
Then there is the scientist in me. Science has been one of my stronger sides. I was told once
"Stick with science girl you ask great questions!" by one of my science teachers. I will admit that I was almost a straight A student all throughout highschool ( with the first exception being Honors English and the second being Honors Pre Calc). But College is a whole different ballpark for me. But I am still pursuing my science career. And I do recgonize the importance of understanding International food laws and regulations especially if I will end up working in industry and trying to come up with international products.


So I will not post for about a month due to being out of country. But I do intend to take lots of photos and share many stories when I get back.

DC and the Lumix

Well I got my camera on Friday, the day before I left for DC. So I had to experiment with it while I was on the trip. My advice to anyone is to make sure that you know how to use your camera before taking it on vacation. I know I really had no other choice but it became really frustrating for me on the trip. I did encounter a major problem however. This camera does not have a view finder. This isn't such a big deal for a digital because I hardly ever used a viewfinder with my old elf. However the lcd screen has glass over it and is very shiny. While some days on the trip were overcast I still had problems sometimes trying to see what was in the viewfinder.

However I did find a remedy for this. It is a little polarized piece of plastic that fits right on top of the screen. It doesn't seem like another clear plastic thing would help much to reduce glare, but this is a must have for the camera. The camera has tons of features and there isn't a camera this size with a 6x zoom. It is the ultimate package whith this one flaw. But I have remedyed this and now I am ready to start taking lots more pictures.

IMG_0656 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The question of all questions: If you could do anything with your life what would you do?

This is a question that takes a lot of meditation. Firstly I would pick something that never goes out of style. Meaning that there are always new advances and ways to keep up with global trends. Secondly it would need to involve something that I could be passionate about. Passion isn't a common word any more, espically when it comes to people's careers. But then you hear these fabilous stories about lawyers and business people quitting their jobs to pursue their passion of baking, or what have you, and making lots of money doing it. So the question is how do you pin point your passion and seek it out within a career ?
Is seems that now mostly people go to school and think oh you never know where you will end up.....and that is true; you may start off in one major switch and then just apply for a job and get that. But there are ways to make sure that your dream comes true. By sharing your passion and getting to know those people in the world that have the same passion integrated into what they are doing for a living. One way is to network yourself to the right destination...and blogging has opened a vast window of people and of different areas of interest .....now I need to narrow down my interests and see where I have opportunities....

This might take a while, but anything worthwhile takes awhile to accomplish. Right?

Cursed With Electronics

It seems that no matter what I always have some electronic that is broken. I believe the downfall of my relationship with electronics started last year when my microwave quit on me. My hunt for a new one was something else. I finally found one with a browning feature that I thought would benefit me because I live in a dorm, well when I plugged that baby in she started smoking! We took that one right back to the store. And now (knock on wood) I've had the one I have now for about 4 months and she is holding up well.

Next to go was my printer. I had an Epson scanner printer thing and I loved it. I never treated it badly and it's not like it ever got banged up or dropped. But all of a sudden it stopped printing with the new ink cartrages I'd put in it. I wasted soo much paper and ink on head cleaning it , it was rediculious. Well my wonderful parents replaced it for me, with a different brand mind you. But last night I came to find that I wasn't the only one who had this problem. I was talking with my Dad (he has two of these printers one at work and one at home) and he askes me "guess what blew up at work today?" His printer at work crapped out just like mine! Well that makes me feel slightly better and they know that I really didn't do anything to my printer.

But let me tell you about my experience with cameras. Now first I should let you all know that my father taught me well, and I take care of my things especially the expensive things that I want to have for awhile. But accidents do happen don't they? In high school I went on a wonderful trip with my french class to Canada. Well when we got back one of my rolls of film got stuck in my camera, it was advantix film and I had some shed tears about losing that roll. Next we have my first digital camera. I got a little cannon elf, I believe it was an sd 100. Well this puppy lasted me up until this year. Oh we had some good times with her. But she took a little tumble out of my pocket and seemed fine until the lense woudn't retract in an error 1 or something. So for Christmas I got my new Hp. Well here's the story. I want this little one to get me through Europe this summer. However some icy sidewalk had other plans for my camera. I have to park my car a little ways away from my apartment so I tend to ride my bike over to the parkinglot. Well that sometimes is a hard ride especally when the wind is blowing and it is 20 degrees out. Well I almost got back to my apartment this night and realize that I've left my dome light on. Can't drain the battery now can we? So I turn around and it is freezing out and I get to the part of the sidewalk where it curves and is full of ice. Well I have thought to myself before that I will one day fall on it and that one day had finally come. My front tire slipped and my handlebars turned and boom! I went down flat on my back, my purse flew out of my hands and I even hit my head ( thank goodness it wasn't hard). Stressed out I got up and walked my bike across the rest of the ice and proceeded to my car. The light was on and I was thankful that I had remembered I left it on.
So a few days later I decide to charge my camera so I can take some family pictures. It charges right up and I turn it on.....the screen is white! with all these dark spots in it! OMG I BROKE MY BRAND NEW $200 CAMERA! The screen had shattered. I could still take pictures but there is no way to change the modes or see the pictures.
Well despite all of this I'm hoping that the third time is the charm and I have ordered ( and am paying for it myslf) a little panasonic DMC-LZ2 Lumix.

She is currently in the mail and I can't wait to see her. I have read some mixed reviews but have good feelings that this camera will be perfect for me. And I will be taking particular good care of her. Hopefully I will be able to take some great shots for this site. I am a bit sad that I won't have it for my trip to DC but hey that's the way things go and I didn't have the extra $30 to shell out for overnight delivery. But she should be here when I get back from my trip. How Exciting!

Away for a little while

Well this blog isn't going to be much about food but generally what is going on with me.
About three years ago I had had the best grandpa in the world. He taught me, my sister and my cousins soo much. The most important thing he taught me was how to fish and how to filet them. Then about three years ago he started to change. He wasn't himself. My grandma actually moved out after he told her that he didn't love her and never should have married her, mind you after more than 50 years. They had met when she was 16....she's well into her seventies now. Well recently about two weeks ago he complained about pains in his side. He continued to go to doctors and get opinions. Turns out he had cancer and it had spread to his lungs as well. So they operated on a Wednesday. My parents flew down on Thursday (he's in florida). He didn't do so well in the operation and they almost lost him. After a few days they said that it had spread more and that he was going to go into hospice care. Then on Monday morning his body gave up.
Heartwrenching as that is for me....I know that he is at peace now. After three years of not being himself, not being the grandpa that I knew and loved dearly. The man that taught me to fish, how to catch minnows, that had me fry him hotdogs and the man that used to put mustard on EVERYTHING had been fading for three years and now there is no chance of getting him back. I always thought that he'd be at my wedding.....
So throughout all of the MRI's and cat scans the doctors found a spot on his brain that show the signs of an old stroke. So that possibly explains the entire attitude change.

It has been very hard for me to accept how I have acted through the entire ordeal. I was hurt and confused and far away from the entire situation. What do you do when someone you have known for all your life suddenly changes? How do you cope with that? Now there is no way for me to tell him that I am sorry and that I still love him. 

So it is remembering the good times we used to have. It is remembering the last time I spent with him in Disney before his change.  It is remembering that he was touched by the support I tried to give him when he and my grandma separated. 

I will be traveling down to Florida with my sister for the funeral. I don't think I could ever forgive myself if I don't go. I hope that somehow there will be closure, but this will be a tough trip. 

Lessons

Well when something doesn't turn out the way you want it to....there is a lesson to be learned.
I love dark chocolate. I prefer semisweet over milk. When M&Ms came out with the dark chocolate ones I didn't mearly eat them I devoured. So I decided to buy Hersey's dark cocoa for stocking up the new kitchen. I then decided to make some brownies for a dinner I was going to attend. Well let me just say lesson learned. From here on out I will buy regualar cocoa.

As explained in Dessert First's wonderful post called Crash Cource in Cocoa, dark cocoa powder is pressed with alkali which reduces the acidity of the chocolate therefore mellowing the flavor. This is not exactly what I wanted to have on hand....a mellow chocolate. I never knew about this, I have heard of buying dutched cocoa and thought that it would be a deeper chocolatier flavor. But I had never used it, partly because my mom always did the shopping and kept regular cocoa powder. In a way the fact that I didn'thave the knoledge eats away at me because on some level I feel like I should have known. But I guess it is better to learn first hand than to just assume. There are many many many things I do not know about baking and cooking so I guess I had better get used to it. Therefore, this is my first little lesson learned in my first little kitchen. I am pretty sure it won't be the last.

Stuck Pig

Last wednedsay for my food science lab we got the pleasure of waking up for a 6 am hog slaughter. I think one of my two new least favorite words are slaughter and carcass.

I have never seen an animal becides a fish actually be killed and made ready for eating. It is quite an experience as one of my classmates said,"This is intense." He was right it was in fact very intense. But there were only a few parts that I didn't enjoy, the squealing of the pigs before they were stunned, the flipping around of the hair removal process, and the cutting off of the head. Once the pig didn't have resemblance to a pig it was easier to watch. It is a rather clean process once the pig is bled out.
During a slaughter the animal is first stunned and rendered unconcious by either a bolt or electric shock. This puts the animal into a state of eplictic seisures. I was not prepared for the first pig as it thrashed around uncontrollably. This part is extremely dangerous for the workers, as the pig is unpredictable in it's movements. The pig is then "stuck" meaning that a knife is inserted and cuts the main artery for the exanguination to begin. A shackle is placed around a hind leg and it is lifted into the air for it to continue bleeding. The pig is then moved over to a water bath where it is scalded for around 2 minutes. It is then places onto the hair remover. This has paddles on one side that rotate to remove the loosened hair from the pig. What I was not prepared for is that it flips the pig over and over in circles, quite disturbing when first seen. It is not a delicate procedure as hair and some blood fly all over the place. But they practice a CAYGo system Clean as you go. Then the workers torch and polish the animal to get rid of the rest of the hair that the paddles missed. The animal is then evicerated and decapitated. The head removal was done by knife in front of us but in large facilites they have these sharp clamps that cut right into the neck to remove it. There was a USDA inspector there to make sure that all processes are done properly and he also inspected some parts of the animal, like the lymph nodes to ensure that the animal was in fact healthy. After the head is removed inspected and the entrails are also inspected the body is split down the middle with a power saw. This saw cuts right through the middle of the spinal cord to ensure that no meat is lost.
And that is where our tour ended. In pigs the skin is not removed and the carcass will be further inspected, washed with hot water and then taken into the cooler. They had priviously done lambs that day and they had removed the hide and washed the carcass to then be chilled.

This was all done at our meat lab. It is a very small facility and they were in total only slaughtering 4 pigs that day. I was impressed with how clean most of the process was. But I can see how quickly things could get out of hand, espically on a larger scale where they are doing 10,000 a day. That is something not so comforting to think about.
Next week for lab we will be making sausage. Can't wait.

No More Dorm!

I am sitting here drinking my first cup of coffee in my new place. I am excited, liberated, and a bit nervous about all of the new responsibilites that an apartment comes with. But no more do I feel like a hampster living in a little box. No, in the words of pinocio "I'm a real boy". I feel like a real person again.
My wonderful friend H helped me and S ( my roomate) move everything over on Friday. Then on Saturday my wonderful parents came and brought us a bunch of kitchen supplies and some end tables. My birthday cameith early. I got my own set of T-Fal pots and pans ( as my sister refused to share her's with me) and a new set of dishes that are white and shades of blue. Today we are going shopping for our first stock up on food and other household items that we are in need of. I am very nervous about how much that is going to rack up to. But then again some of it like flour, sugar, and baking powder are things that we aren't going to have to buy every trip to the store.
This shall be an exciting adventure and hopefully I will also be able to further develop my blog. To summerize my current life ; in about one and a half months I will turn 20, living on a campus apartment, and writing in my spare time on a food blog. I am not sure if there is anyone else under this situation. Many of my friends I am sure would not understand the way of a developing foodie ( as my palate is not yet refined). However the roomate S understands a little, she likes to linger over gossip blogs.
Here's to a new chapter of my life as a budding food science major, with her own pad to experiment with.

Well I don't have much to write about because I do not regurlary cook my own food. Living in the dorms I eat things that I would rather not, but my alternative is to go broke or hungry. So I just tend to complain about it with my roomate. But then again she has a lot more to complain about as she can eat only about 1/4 of what I can (celiac- no gluten).
I also can't really give any good resturant reviews... unless people want to know about Big Ten Buritto. Or the occasional thing I microwave.
But change might be in the air. I don't want to curse myself, but I might soon be living somewhere with a kitchen! How wonderful!

A Short Piece of Advice

Americans are so rushed and busy these days that many people find the easiest things to eat on the go. I would just like to ask everyone to slow down and enjoy the process of sitting down to a meal. Good food should never be rushed. We have disconnected ourselves not only from where our food comes from, how it is made, but now we have disconnected ourselves from each other by eating our meals alone, in our cars, and sometimes in front of computer screens. 

So I ask that at least once a day you sit down with others and enjoy a meal slowly. Then reflect upon if you enjoyed the meal more, connected more with the person you are eating with, and perhaps you may discover that you have slowed down to choose a better for you meal and have possibly eaten less because you are actually concentrating on what you are putting into your body.