Making Eggs Benedict with Kenny Goliff

What is your favorite kind of egg?

I love cooking (and, of course, eating) eggs. They can be cooked and even baked in so many different ways and they can be integrated into so many amazing recipes. These recipes could include anything from basic scrambled eggs and hashbrowns to being baked with pasta to being cooked with tomato sauce and a tortilla (possible foreshadowing?). My personal favorite of all of these is the wonderful eggs benedict. Eggs benedict is a poached egg on top of a slice of ham (I prefer to use slices of tofu turkey) and an English muffin with delicious Hollandaise sauce poured over the top.

Back when I got my recipe book, I looked through the different recipes and saw eggs benedict as one of them. Immediately I wanted to try it to see if it was as good as what I usually made. I was so excited to try this new recipe, I read it over and over again until I had it memorized.

I didn’t make it for seven months.

However, when I finally decided to make it for the blog, I regretted not doing it sooner. The new recipe was so much easier, making it a much faster and simpler process, and it tasted a lot better than the usual. The new simplicity of the recipe was due to two specific and dramatic changes to the way the eggs are made.

Surprisingly, the first step was to add two tablespoons of vinegar to the water the eggs are poached in. According to the creator of the recipe, Diane Unger, adding vinegar to the water slightly changes the pH of the water- just enough to keep the eggs from falling apart into a big mess of egg (Unger 7). This simple step makes poaching eggs so much easier and, as opposed to most other faster techniques that don’t work as well, more effective.

The second step to making better eggs was actually very simple. All I needed to do was cook the eggs at the same time. This may seem like a pretty obvious thing to do, but it can make all the difference if the eggs are cooked at exactly the same time. If they are cooked overlapped or one after another, the temperature won’t be constant and the success of the eggs could vary. Instead of doing this, Unger suggests to “crack the eggs into four shallow teacups… [and] slip in the eggs” (Unger 7). By cracking all of the eggs into teacups instead of directly into boiling water, the eggs will all be ready at once to be poached.

The eggs were good.

Leave it. No.

This certain trick that I chose to teach her made her more confused than usual. I decided to teacher her "leave it" and not matter what I said, she would NOT take no for an answer. She really wanted that treat. Over and over again I would attempt to follow what the book told me to do, but, Shasta was very persistent..
After very, very many tries and teaching her the trick. She began to understand and listen more because I am even more stubborn than her. A quote that helped me efficiently with teaching 'leave it was, "Move your closed right hand in front of your dog's nose, and say "leave it." He will sniff, lick, and possibly paw at your hand. the second he stops trying to get the treat and either looks at you or back away, say "Yes" and give him the treat in your left hand."(Fogle 18)
Fogle, Jean M. Tricks for Treats. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Shasta actually began to nibble at my hand, desperately wanting that treat. As the quote tells me to do, I put my closed fist in front of Shasta's nose saying "leave it" and watched in amusement as she tried so hard to get it. And when she looked at me all sad, I just laughed and said "yes" giving her the treat from my left hand.
The reading has impacted the way I train my dog by giving me great tips that actually work, and brought Shasta and I a lot closer because of how stupid she looks when she tries but fails. its actually quite funny. How much should I be teaching her tricks?

Photography - Kayla Treat

In this chapter of the book I am reading, a tip that caught my eye was to get close and then get closer.


"Very often, nothing kills an image more than keeping your distance" (Carroll 19).


I take this as you not only need to zoom but sometimes you need to get really close to your subject to show detail and enhance the look of the image. This also helps with filing the frame and getting a full picture. The difference between doing this and going back and cropping it is tat it lowers the quality of the image and that cropping is mainly for fixing something or to make something even. As one who loves to take pictures and look at pictures, I agree with this tip and think it really does heighten the image quality. I decided to try this out and the first thing that came to me was an eye. when up close to the eye, you can see all the fine and small details with the eye, eyelashes, and skin tone.

Here, I took the tip to get close. I used my 35mm lens so I could get close without it turning blurry and out of focus. I was maybe 3 inches from my little cousins eye and manually focused onto the eyeball making sure that the other details of her face were included.

  I feel like this tip is a very useful one and one that can be used on most images, specifically vertical images. do you believe that the image I captured would have been not so close or do you prefer it when I used the get close tip?

Healthy Cooking: Jambalaya

     
          After going to visit family over winter break, I learned a lot about my more distant relatives, specifically what they ate. In my previous post I spoke about my families bad eating habits, well it turns out, it wasn't just us. During the duration of my trip, I grew more and more aware of the food I was being fed. Once I was completely conscious about the terribly unhealthy food we were eating, I decided to take advantage of the moment once again and make a change.
 
         Before New Years Eve, my aunt decided that she wanted to cook a nice meal for all of the relatives that would be coming later. She suggested that we make something that would remind the guests of home, since they had traveled from across the country. I suggested that we make Jambalaya; "a assorted dish of chicken, vegetables and sauces." (Clendinen, 24) Except we would be using healthier ingredients instead.

To get started you need:

• 8 oz. chicken breast, diced
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 large red bell pepper
• 1 large green pepper
• 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
• 4 cups fat free chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 1 tablespoon of any tomato sauce (I used Bertolli Organic Tomato Sauce)
• 1 cup brown rice, uncooked
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

         

       I know that this may seem like a lot but trust me, every ingredient plays in important role in the end product, which was pretty good if you ask me.

Preparation:

1. Heat oil over medium high heat in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add in onions, peppers, celery, and garlic. 
2. Saute until tender, about 3 minutes.
3. Add in sausage and chicken, and heat until meat is cooked through, about 3-5 minutes.
4. Now stir in all the remaining ingredients, except for the shrimp. Mix well. 
5. Lower heat to medium, cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes, or until rice is soft.
6. Adjust seasonings as desired. Add in more chicken if desired, and continue to simmer until it's cooked thoroughly. Serve hot.

       This recipe was not only enjoyed by me, but enjoyed by my entire family. It was exactly as it said it would be, a "healthy, savory and satisfyingly delicious meal for many to enjoy" (Clendinen, 24) I recommend this recipe to anyone who knows people like my family who aren't really into healthy eating, because if there was ever a good way to start the road to healthy eating, it would be with this dish.

Gifty Minhas- Soccer Tricks (#3)

Gifty Minhas

Ms. Meara 

Honors English Period 4

Soccer Tricks 

Hello everyone! Hopefully you guys have all had a relaxing break and are ready for some more soccer tricks. This week I wanted to bring it back to a more fundamental trick. The reason I chose to not go the crazy trick route is because I remembered my main goal in these tricks. My main goal is to focus on tricks that will actually help my in-game ability in soccer matches. Many juggling tricks are useful for practicing for real game situations and one example is the simple Side Roll.

The Side Roll, a juggling trick featured in Sean D'arcy's book Freestyle Soccer Tricks, is useful for actual games for many reasons. Although the trick is not typically used directly in a game, the movement required for the trick is very helpful. The trick requires the use of the soles of your feet, the inside part of your foot, and the laces of the shoe. These three area's are very important in soccer and are the most frequently used. The involvement of these three significant area's makes the Side Roll a fairly simple yet greatly helping trick.

1. "Start with both feet on the ground. The ball should be just a little bit to your stronger side, with your stronger foot on top of it." (D'arcy, 70)
2. "Roll the ball as fast as you can so that the ball hits the inside of your weaker foot" (D'arcy, 71)
3. "Swing your stronger foot under the ball when it bounces up off the inside of your weaker foot" (D'arcy, 72) 

1.

2.

3.

My question for the day: is it a good approach to do tricks that may be simple but help on field? 

 Hello everyone! I'm finally getting around to getting some stuff done after the holiday chaos and it's time to draw some Manga!

One of the most important things to know about drawing is that everything is made up of shapes. We all know that stick people are made up of a circle and some lines. Drawing realistic people is just a step away from that. Now obviously people aren't made of circles and squares, but every part of a person starts with a shape. For instance your arm. Your arm has two main parts and it has a hand attached to it. The two main parts of your arm an be drawn with ovals that overlap each other slightly, the palm of your hand is a circle, and you fingers are made of many ovals also. Drawing the basic shape of an entire person is just finding out what body part looks like what shape and adding the shapes together.

However, it's often easier said than done even if it's drawn out on front of you...

The next step in drawing is blending those shapes together to form a body, but I'll be saving that for another day. Remember practice makes perfect, and thanks for reading!

Changing Chords

Hello again! Now that I have bettered my skills at playing basic chords, I decided to try transitioning from one chord to the other. I have tried to do this before and to be honest, it's a lot harder than it looks.

The chords I am playing while practicing changing between them.

"Try to move all of your fingers at the same time, and change chords in one smooth movement" (Evans 44). This was pretty difficult because all of my fingers could not figure out what string and what fret to go quickly so I ended up having to place my fingers one-by-one at first. This was while I was practicing going from the C chord and D minor chord smoothly. "Change chords slowly at first, counting evenly" (Evans 44). It was important for me to keep this tip in mind because I often found myself rushing from chord to chord, thinking that I would magically be as good as someone like Ed Sheeran. However, going slowly from chord to chord definitely made a difference because it allowed me to take my time to figure out where my fingers needed to go.

C chord

D minor chord

I made sure to take my time on each chord sequence (C chord to F chord, C to D minor chord, etc.) and make sure that I could proficiently transition from chord to chord before moving onto a new chord sequence. I definitely think that I am a lot better at changing chords now because I took the time to slow down and focus on where my fingers needed to go.

Based on the chord chart in the very first picture, which chord do you think would be the most complicated to play for you?