read the numbers off your fruits

recently via an email from my ST about labels on the fruits that look harmlessly "unimportant" but significant. All a person will do is to remove the sticker it and wash the fruit thoroughly before sending it into our mouths. i just got to admit how ignorant we are as consumers.

After reading the mail i happen to "discover" that the stickers actually meant something. (: I went on to search engines trying to see if the information was credible but i have yet to find any.. maybe i shall visit the supermarket to verify the stickers with my own eyes.

serious stuff aside, i actually found out that there are collectors out there who keep fruit labels as a hobby. they actually spend time not only to collect such labels... they also document their findings of various fruit labels.

interested to find out about such hobby?

you can read it here!

anyway back to the numbers on the label in the email...

.

.

.

The stickers tells consumer who are more concious about their choice of fruits as to how the fruits were grown. Reading off the label allows one to know whether the fruit is organically grown or conventionally grown with pesticides and herbicides; and the genetically engineered fruits.

Conventional Fruit Labels has four digits mostly starting with the digit 4.

Organic Fruit Labels bears five digits and starts with number 9.

Genetically Modified Fruits Start with the digit 8 **.

I personally go for organic food instead of those that are genetically modified.
Okay, so if you come across an apple in the store and it's labels 4***, it's an conventional apple grown with herbicides and fertilizers.

If it has a sticker 9****, it's organic and generally safe to eat.

If it says 89222, then think twice...

It has been genetically modified.

So next time you go shopping, remember make your choices and know how to avoid buying inorganic and GMO fruits.

Shop Safe :)

website review: Learning Seed

Here’s the review.

Suitability: for everyone.
Synopsis: Collision of educational videos and softwares on nutrition, consumer education, parenting, critical thinking etc.

Here’s a snapshot of the homepage.

You may see the home page of the site boring as there's little or in fact no graphics to capture the attention of their audience. Same ol cliché but true, looks are deceiving! May I seek you permission to allow me to show you more about the site?

In Learning Seed (LS), the target audience is basically everyone. In our context here, i would affirm that this site is for both young and old. For the young, such aids come into good use especially we are talking about incorporating ICT into our lessons. What more for us to use it to make lessons more interesting. It is a site with an abundance of infomation that you do not have to read per say. All you have to order it, preview it. If you find that the resource is worth adding into your inventory, just purchase it and make it yours!

Although shipping is not readily available to singapore, arrangement can be made via email. In order to minimize shipping cost, the power of networking comes into serious play. The more we order, the lesser the shipping will cost per resource.

Looking at LS, there are special sections has a range of “interesting” catchy links that you just want to click on it and find out. Take for example, “New and Revised” has a full list of fresh videos that has been recommended. All the videos are made accessible for a grace period of 30 days for viewing. there is a great variety of topics of the videos. The videos are very current and the availability of the videos encompasses and COLLIDES with the world of home economics today!

in addition, if you have grown tired of videos, you can consider going for the animations. There are animated cartoons and comics that provides another alternative to the usual videos. Such videos are good resources to be screened in the midst of a lesson to capture the attention of students.

being educators does not mean that we have acquired all the knowledge that we need. i see knowledge as a vast ocean. something that we cannot stop it from coming. we all learn new things everyday. life skills is what it takes for us to call for.

right..
are you ready to click on the site here to plant your learning seed today?

do not have to worry about navigating around the site because the site map is properly categorized to allow easy navigation. FAQs section is also available. It is stated that there's consume redress available should your video gets damaged. It will be replaced at zero cost!

food and craft

simple "experiments" wow students alot.

bet everyone has used pasta of different cuts and shapes to make into crafts and such.

the common ones that are used would be the alphabets pasta that looks like this.

how about putting some food colouring to it and add some colours to it instead of having to get those that are readily available that looks like this?

was multi-tasking this weekends and i found this somewhere while googling on sites for review and cracking my brains to come up with something simple yet meaningful for my friend's 21st.

found this perfect for a pasta lover.

simple as it takes and i might do it over the weekends at home.

materials needed would be food colouring, alcohol, plastic bags and pasta.

directions are simple and it doesnt seem to take too much of a time either.

all we need is to soak a portion of pasta in alcohol completely into a sealable bag.

add in a few dops of colouring.

allow the colouring to dissolve completely and leave the bag to stand.

(the intensity of the colours of the pasta depends on the standing time. you can be playful and create different hues!)

afterwhich just drain the liquid off (note: do not rinse the pasta!).

and dry it on baking sheets.

and tada!!

i always reccommend people to lacquer their pasta with a layer of top coat nail varnish to add a sheen to the pasta.

picture of end product and idea adapted from http://tutusandturtles.blogspot.com/

next,

i was having a conversation with this art teacher and she shared with me that

she conducted a lesson on different texture of painting in class.

students were awed by her lessons.

guess what she used?

eggs and bread!

something that you and i would thought that could only surface in the kitchens.

not true anymore!

here you see an example of an end product.

done by a sweet student on the last day of school.

don't you think we can do this in HE lessons too?

twist it and teach them about complementary protein?

add some bake beans and get the students to perform a hands on experiment!

experiments to engage the students.

teacher delivers theory.

one stone, two birds.

(:

okay reviews up next.

DCX 130 Website Reviews

Website Review 1
BrainPOP - http://www.brainpop.com/


BrainPOP is an animated website that is educational to students. There have been comments on the website from teachers who use BrainPOP to educate and that their students love it. Because the visuals and the animations are very colourful and eye-cathing, a lot of students are very interested to learn from it.

So this website does not only focus on one area of study. It has many different topics on Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health as well as Technology. Students will find this even more interesting as they will then be able to go to just one website for all the subjects they are studying in school.

Under the Health section, that is where you can find more relating topics to food and nutrition. If you click on the Nutrition topic, there are further sub-topics like Alcohol, Body Weight, Carbohydrates, Fats, Food Safety and lots more. Under these sub-topics, there are information and even videos relating to topic. It makes learning much more fun and interesting for students. Teachers can use this website as a tool during lesson time.

There is also a section especially for educators / teachers where tips, tools and resources can be found. On this page as well, news and updates about BrainPOP are also posted. There are lesson plans only for teachers' usage but there are limited examples on there. It is still very useful to read about as it may just provide more ideas for teachers for their own lesson plans.

Conclusion
This website also encourages educators to share their resources, such as lesson plans, videos or any resource that can be useful on the site. I think that is one way for all educators to develop and become better to ensure education is delivered to the students in the best way possible. This is indeed a very useful website for especially teachers to introduce to their students for learning as well as sharing resources among other educators worldwide.

Website Review 2
Epicurious - http://www.epicurious.com/


Epicurious is not only a typical recipe website. The wonderful thing about it is that this site also contain articles and guides, the community page where members can add their own recipes to the site or just browse through those added by the other members. The best thing is? There's the video library! I'll be going into each of these sections each to further elaborate how they can be beneficial in teaching food and nutrition.

Recipes and Menus


At the Recipes and Menus page, you can search or browse for any recipe you would like. This is really helpful as it can help teachers to share some wonderful recipes that can be taught during practicals or even take a sample recipe for discussion in class about the different ingredients and the science behind it. This also helps to build up one's experience to give the recipes here a try.

Students also may find this website useful as it helps to give them ideas and tips for their food and nutrition assignments or even their coursework. I think looking at other recipes and other ways of cooking a certain recipe can provide inspiration and creativity for the students to learn.

Articles and Guides
Articles and Guides is another main category of the website where you can read and find out more on topics such as culinary travel where writers or journalists talk about favourite culinary spots in certain countries e.g. Discover Greece, or they would write about essential restaurant guides in some places e.g. Where to Dine in New York for the best dining experience there, and for this topic specifically, it basically gives an introduction first, after which there are more categories on this page of different types of dining such as high-end, budget, hotspots, favourites and classics.



Also check out this visual guide on Pasta. Very useful for teaching also.



Another interesting section under Articles and Guides is the Epi Log. This is where you can find food news and views from all over. It is like a blog with many different writers. Any news relating to food and culinary, be it personal or not are published here. There are also tips found in some of the entries which I think is very useful. Besides that, there is also a long list of food blogs on the left side menu for visitors to check out.

Resources


The above picture shows what is in the Resources page. It is very helpful for both teachers and students should they want to check up on a food or any word relating to food. Even methods of cooking like "saute" or kitchen equipments like microwave oven or what a "paring knife" is can be found in the food dictionary. There are over 4000 food terms available here.

Videos
My favourite section of this website is here. :)
I really found this section very beneficial as I get to watch not only cooking videos, but also technique videos! I would really like to have my techniques right before even being able to cook right. You can find technique videos to watch and learn. Examples of videos are like:

simple method of creaming



knife skills like julienning!



And I would just like to add another video, it can be found under the Celebrity Kitchen Tours section and this if of Isaac Mizrahi, a fashion designer, (remember him from AdFund??) and how he makes his own Mint Chocolate Chip ice-cream!



There are other parts to this video as well which can be found at the Epi Videos section under Kitchen Tours. :)
Do check out the other sections on the videos page, I would list them all out but then it would be too much and won't be exciting for you to check them out anymore!

Conclusion
I think that the videos are very beneficial because I feel that most teachers and students are more interested in watching to learn techniques and ways of cooking. It gives a clearer picture on how the processes are like. It's very interesting. However there are quite a limited number of technique videos on the site. Hopefully more will be added soon!

Overall, I would really recommend this website to others, both teachers and students alike as a resource for them to look for more ideas, tips and helpful techniques, as well as a large variety of recipes uploaded by people all over the world. You could even drop a comment on the recipes to discuss and make the recipe better. There are even forums for deeper discussions on relating topics. This website is a very extensive resource for teaching of food and nutrition therefore, do check it out!