Date Cake Demonstration Speech

I chose to do my demonstration speech on how to make a date cake as I have been making this cake for a long time. If you want to view my speech you can click on the title of this blog. As I go back and watch the video of my speech, many strengths and weaknesses are evident. First of all I think my introduction was good because it related to everyone in the class. Many of us are in our first year of college, and it is still pretty hard to get adjusted to studying everyday; therefore, I thought my introduction relating all of us and how we can reduce stress through baking was a strong point of my speech. I also that the organization of my speech was a plus point. After introducing my topic, I went into a little history about dates and how I started baking it. Then I listed the needed ingredients and materials. After doing so, I went through the steps of how to make a date cake. This was the most logical organization of the speech.

The physical part of the presentation contained many strengths and flaws. I am quite enthusiastic about the topic of how to bake a cake, but when I go back and watch the video it seems that I am merely listing off things from memory. I will need to improve myself on how to be more engaged in my own topic. The volume and body language of my presentation were a strength. I could hear myself perfectly fine when I was watching the video, and I did not make random body movements or hand gestures.

I feel that the audience was not engaged in my speech as I was not demonstrating the topic in real life. I was just listing the steps one by one. Due to my residence being off campus, I could not bring many items to the classroom, but that would have been a great way to keep the audience engaged. My visual aid was the powerpoint and the end product: date cake. I think I could have increased the effectiveness of my speech by seeming more enthusiastic and engaging the audience somehow.

I think I would still choose to do the same topic again if I was given the chance because I really know about this topic. There is a lot I can do to improve my speech. I could increase the amount of visual aid, audience participation and my enthusiasm. Otherwise, I would still keep my introduction and organization of steps.

Response to Casey KK's Real vs. Fake food

Casey stated that he grew up eating organic food, but due to limited access to organic food and money he has been substituting real food with fake ones. One of the foods that he substituted was yogurt. He used to get natural heterogeneous yogurt from an organic farm, but now as a college student he has been trying fake yogurts such as Yoplait and Go-gurts. Casey feels that these yogurts taste "un-natural" to him. Also these yogurts have harmful additives. Now he has found Sugar River yogurt, which comes quite close in nutritional values to real yogurt, and it also tastes natural. As I viewed the link provided by Casey, I discovered that it was true that these yogurts are made simply with a few natural ingredients.

I completely understand what Casey is going through as I have experienced the same thing. When I was little I used to get naturally made yogurt without any additives. The taste was so pure and distinct. The processed yogurt that most of us buy in the grocery stores taste "fake." They don't have a unique flavor that real food usually have. This makes perfect sense because they add so many preservatives, artificial flavors and colors. I will try the Sugar River Farms product as Casey was very convincing in showing how it is made naturally without much additives.

Post 3: "Real" food vs. "fake" food

JAM! It is sweet, and you can spread it on almost any bland food item to make it taste delicious! Jam can be eaten with bread, crackers, cake, and many many more. In the old days, my mom, my sister, and I would gather in the kitchen to make tomato jam! Considerable amount of tomatoes were boiled first then peeled and blended well. After that the blended tomato mix and sugar and other essentials were added in a pot and stirred for about an hour or more. The end product was a delicious, mouth-watering, appetite-inducing, sweet tomato jam! It seems unbelievable that tomatoes can be made into a jam right? But believe me it has such a distinct flavor that you won't be able to stop eating. The taste of this tomato jam still lingers with me even though I haven't had it in about nine years.

As everybody in my family became busy with their own work, we stopped making this jam as it was pretty time consuming and expensive due to the quality and amount of tomatoes needed. As a result, we switched to substituting this jam with Smuckers strawberry and grape jam. At first the taste was a little refreshing as it was something new, but as I had more and more all I could taste was sweetness. There was no taste of real strawberries or grapes. It tasted so artificial! One should be able to tell what their food is made of when they are eating it! If you look at the back of many jam bottles, there are way more ingredients than just the fruit and sugar. The high fructose corn syrup and artificial color additive can be quite harmful.

It is quite evident that many of the processed jams bought in grocery stores have little or no nutrients as the real substance. This is caused by the extensive alteration that they go through by addition of unnecessary chemicals and such to increase sweetness and reduce cost for the producers. Though this is the case, I am quite sure that I will not return to making tomato jam or any other jam for that matter. You may ask "Why?" My answer would be that making such jams are way more expensive and time consuming than dropping by a grocery store to pick of a bottle of jam.

Response to Lilikazoo's Post # 1

As I was reading Liliana's response to Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food, I found myself nodding my head without realizing it. Liliana first begins by summarizing the first portion of the book, which basically says that the "Age of Nutritionism" has done more harm to us than good. She repeatedly emphasizes the point that Americans need to start being conscious of WHAT they are putting in their body instead of counting calories. Liliana also sites Goodhealth.com in which Drex Earl says that people do not find real food appetizing anymore. We are in an age where we try to get the max amount of nutrients from a bar that has it all, like a Luna Bar to SoyJoy or other products that are advertised to be so good for your health.

What happened to all those times when families spent valuable time with each other to cook and share food loved for its taste or preserved from long traditions? Why are we so intent on believing the words of scientists instead of the centuries old traditions that have been passed down to us from our elders? Liliana cleverly ends her post by referring back to Michael Pollan's words which say that animals have not been able to adapt to the Western diet. Shouldn't this tell us something?

Liliana did a great job in defending Michael Pollans' words clearly and convincingly but also very concisely and to the point. I enjoyed reading her post. I completely agree with Liliana in that we need to start focusing on what really goes into our bodies instead of worrying over the amount of food we are consuming. Let's just follow our ancestors and their traditions.

Post 2: Prepare a Meal

Last Sunday, I prepared noodles with vegetables and soy sauce for my whole family. First, I wrote down all the vegetables and spices I wanted to use to prepare this meal: carrots, cabbage, broccoli, mushrooms, green chile, potatoes, snow peas, radishes, onions, garlic, ginger, black pepper, salt, oil, and soy sauce. Then I searched the cabinets and my refrigerator for all the ingredients and found that I was missing some vegetables I wanted to use, like radishes, snow peas and broccoli; therefore I took a trip to the nearby Woodman's and bought all that I needed and some unnecessary items.
Once I arrived home, I started cutting the vegetables into long and thin pieces after washing them well, and I realized that it takes a really long time to nicely cut vegetables. My mom always helped me cut when I made noodles in the past, but as I wanted to do it all by myself it took me a considerable amount of time to finish cutting everything (about thirty minutes). While I was in the process of cutting the vegetables I had to get the noodles ready. I used wheat linguine pasta and added it to salted boiled water, and drained it after it was cooked. Once I was done cutting the vegetables, I put a big pan on the stove with about three tablespoons of oil in it. Once the oil made a cracking sound, I added the onions, garlic and ginger. Once the onions turned a golden color, I added in the green chile and potatoes. A while later I added the carrots and radishes. I let the pan sit, stirring often, until the vegetables looked partly cooked. Then I added in the cabbages and green peas. Afterwards I added in the soy sauce and the salt to taste. All there was left to do was to mix the noodles and the vegetables.
Once I finished doing everything I was famished! Once everyone was served, I started eating and was pleasantly surprised and happy because of the pleasant taste. It is quite rewarding to know that you made the whole thing by yourself and the end result is pretty satisfactory. After filling myself with noodles, I realized there was still cleaning to do. I used homework as an excuse to get out of cleaning and it worked. I could not clean as the whole cooking process was exhausting.
If I was asked to describe my feelings afterwards, I would say that I felt pretty great as the experience is rewarding and it really lets you see the effort one puts in cooking for others.
Michael Pollan says in his book, In Defense of Food, "Like sex, the need to eat links us to the animals, and historically a great deal of Protestant energy has gone into helping us keep all such animal appetites under strict control." There are claims that eating is more than an animal instinct as Pollan says. But if you ask yourself why you eat, the answer is simple: because you are hungry or just plainly want to eat food; there is nothing more to it. Pollan also says that people have developed the idea that healthy food (food that is good for you) does not taste good. This is what lead to "a flood of damaging innovations...such as low-fat processed food." After I had prepared my meal, I felt satisfied because of the taste and also because I was satisfied with such a "healthy" meal with lots of vegetables. I am totally under the spell of nutritionism even without realizing it. I purposely chose this meal because it seemed healthy with all these vitamins and other things that were going to help me live longer.
I found an article called called Instinctive Eating in Gaia Yoga. This article says that if one follows their instinct in choosing what to eat, they will be well off as our bodies are so complex in that they start making a certain product taste bad after you have had a certain amount of it. "Essentially, instinctive eating yields tremendous clarity, liberation, and the security that you’re eating the best foods for you – and only in the quantities that you need – as well as generating profound, long-term health benefits. And it all happens through following your pleasure!" This sounds so great and believable as all of us know that even though chocolate tastes extremely delicious, after two bars you kind of feel sick.