T
he Culinary Medicine Class has had a busy couple of weeks! They made muffins for the Trustee Coffee using healthy substitutions such as zucchini, honey, and dark chocolate. They learned about the preventative and healing properties of spices and herbs and experimented with alternative recipes for several of our Tex-Mex favorites. They even made homemade tortillas with ground mesa.
Junior, Gavin Leege's Week 6 Culinary Medicine Blog: Muffins, Spices & Nachos!
"For the final baking session, I made chocolate zucchini muffins. These muffins turned out a lot better than the banana ones (in my unbiased opinion.) The banana muffins seemed too dense, probably because of an error in measuring ingredients. We also made lemon poppy seed muffins. The biggest difference in the taste from normal muffins is that they tasted very concentrated. The chocolate and lemon muffins were really strong. It’s a good thing they were bite-sized! The texture of the chocolate and lemon muffins was soft and fluffy.
After we finished the baking unit, we started spices. We learned how spices affect the body - sage and fish help memory. There were also other spices like ginger and cinnamon that I didn’t know had a medicinal quality. Too bad I’m not a fan of either.
Next, we had a spice lab with Mrs. Cheryl. We talked about the different spices that can commonly be found in the kitchen. Brayden was brave enough to try each of them. I specifically remember that cumin had a really earthy smell and tasted about how it smelled, which is to say, not very good!
We then made our taco seasoning and used it to make healthy nachos. Our taco seasoning had no salt in it and I preferred the taste of it over packaged seasoning. Packaged taco seasoning is also known for having a lot of preservatives and other things that don’t play nice with your body. We made nachos with bell peppers as chips, ground beef, cheese, and our taco seasoning. The following day, we made corn tortillas which were easy to make and used simple ingredients. I filled mine with cheese and Tabasco. Unfortunately, some of them were undercooked and were a little rubbery."
