Introduction
So, as said in the Week 2 blog post I am sorry that my posts have not been on time. The good news is that after this post I will be up to date and you should look out for the Week 4 post this Sunday. The better news is that Week 3 had SO much in it and I have tons of pictures to share as well. This will be a super lighthearted post and I am sure you will enjoy a couple of my baking failures (pictures included for your amusement). Here it goes!
Projects
As you know our capstone project for our internship this summer is to help convert Hulen/ Clement into an all you can eat gluten free dining facility. I have to admit that at first I thought I would breeze through the recipe creation, I mean how hard could it be? The answer is that creating large scale recipes is incredibly hard because you have to keep costs low and labor minimal. Being at The Market during Week 2 showed me how hard everyone works to create each dish and so I knew that the recipes I created had to be simple and not time consuming. I am proud to say that after a lot of trial and error during this week and the first week I did finally come up with two recipes that will work. One is an Italian stuffed bell pepper and another is a Chex Mix cereal bar using chocolate gluten free Chex Mix. Both recipes are easy to make, low cost, and are options I think college students would eagerly choose.
I also finished my Wellness Wednesday: Eat the Rainbow, Taste the Rainbow post which will be featured by the Dietitian Mindy Diller sometime in the fall. Writing this post was a lot of fun because it was about the topic of how eating fruits and vegetables from each color group can benefit your health. I am passionate about this topic because it really boils down to the micro-nutrients level and shows us exactly how food can impact our health. I think this is a reason why those of us are passionate about nutrition chose this path. Food is our fuel but its also a vessel for getting the nutrients that help our body processes. I won't go all philosophical on you guys but you really should read into the color groups of fruits and vegetables and the phytonutrients that each group contains.
My favorite project this week was filming a video about how many students get excess sugar by drinking sugar sweetened beverages. Each of us got to talk about a certain aspect of the topic and what our personal tips are for reducing intake of sugar sweetened beverages. I think this was my favorite part because students at TTU will be able to see me on video and relate to me. After all, I am a student too! I know how tempting these drinks can be but I really think our video will connect with students and was also informational. My part of the video was talking about how to avoid sugar sweetened beverages by looking at the food label to detect if there are added sugars. Explaining food labels is important for me because I know before I studied dietetics, food labels confused me and were not really explained well. Now I am more informed and so I hope the video will help other students too.
Here is a picture of all of us on filming day:
Juicing and Baking Oh My!
As I mentioned in my introduction...this week we tried making gluten free cookies without any grains and it did not go well.... But before I talk about that I will talk about the success that was our juicing project. Smart Choices in the Student Union Building serves juices that were created by students for students. Some of the recipes were even created by the NACUFS interns from last summer! We created about four different recipes but our favorites were the Tasty Tropic juice (orange, watermelon, and pineapple) and the Kickin Kale (kale, ginger, apple, pineapple).Here is a picture of us prepping some of the produce!
Now about those cookies I mentioned earlier.....they were a terrible failure. We were attempting to make gluten free cookies without any sort of flour including almond flour or gluten free flours. The batter was made with egg, banana, baking soda, vanilla, chocolate chips, and corn starch. Unfortunately in the end it was too wet and the cookies didn't rise but the scraped off chunks were actually kind of good. If you want a lesson on how not to bake gluten free cookies, here it is.
It's my birthday and I will eat all of the mini cupcakes if I want to.
The week ended pretty spectacularly with my birthday and a trip to Palo Duro Canyon. Thursday was my birthday and our internship coordinator Alan was nice enough to bring in cupcakes! Little did he know lemon cupcakes are my kryptonite and suffice to say all of the mini cupcakes have since been eaten.
Palo Duro Canyon
While we all keep busy during the week, the weekend excursions are my favorite! Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the U.S. and for an inexperienced hiker such as myself I have to say...hiking was hard. It was a lot of fun though and we all got some really great pictures! Not to mention we saw some animals like collard lizzards and *gulp* spiders. While my hiking skills are sub par I made it on the CCC trail which is one of the more difficult trails.Here are some pictures of me and the scenery!
Until Next Time!
Megan
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