Local or Global?

Hey, everybody! I'm on spring break right now, so I thought I'd use my spare time for a lot of fun cooking. I've got a new challenge for you to take!

We've all heard about how local foods are "better for you" and how global foods help you "expand your horizons in cuisine." Some people think that being a locavore, or someone who eats only foods grown and produced within a one-hundred mile radius of their home, is the way to eat. Others think that eating foods grown from all over is the way to go. This next challenge will help you decide which food system you think is best.

Local food system
Pros:

• Eating locally is better for the environment. The food doesn't have to travel a long way to reach its destination, meaning that pollution emitted through transportation is minimal.
• Eating locally supports the local economy and community.
• Eating locally helps you get a firm understanding on where your food comes from.

Cons:

• Shopping for local foods can be time consuming, for you have to discover many details about jut one ingredient to make sure it is truly local.
• A locavore has a much more restricted diet than the average person. A locavore where I live (Seattle/King County) would be without mangoes, bananas, imported cheese, rice, and other essential foods.
• In Seattle, a lot of locally grown fruits and vegetables are not in season during the winter (berries, peaches, etc.). This goes for many other regions too.

Global food system
Pros:

• The types of cuisine you can make are endless, and many exotic foods are available. Plus, the most common fruits in the United States (bananas, apples, etc.) are available in stores everywhere in the country.
• Eating globally supports the economies of countries that depend on produce sales to survive.
• When many vegetables and fruits aren't in season during the winter, fruits grown in tropical environments are shipped to the United States so we can have produce.

Cons:

• A lot of fuel that hurts the environment is used to transport the food.
• Buying mainly globally grown foods hurts the farming economy in your community because they have less customers. Why buy a peach from California if you can get a basket of peaches from your neighbor's peach tree for free?

I hope this information helps you think about your position in this worldwide debate. Now for my challenge: I want you to make a dish using ingredients from your favorite food system. The choice to create a recipe or find one on the Internet is yours. You can make an all local meal, an all global meal, or a meal with a diverse combination of the two systems. I will be doing this too, except I'm going to make one meal for each system option. I won't share my opinion until after all three recipes have been posted though. Hopefully this will be a fun contest. I encourage you to try it out because it will help you learn about where your food comes from.

Please comment on this post stating your opinion about local and global foods, and take my local/global challenge! If you like my blog and you have a Gmail or Google account, you can follow my blog. If you have a YouTube account, please subscribe to my channel! If you don't have any of these but you love my blog, email me at tweenchef123@gmail.com and ask to join the mailing list. Also, please remember to tell your friends about this website! Healthy eating and cooking is extremely important to me, and I want to inspire others just like Jamie Oliver and Rozanne Gold inspired me.

The results for the poll are in! 4 or 5 of the votes disappeared, so I kept a tally of all the votes I counted on my whiteboard at home. The real results are:

Ultra Thin Pork Chops: 2
Mediterranean Burger: 6
Hawaiian Chicken: 12
Rosemary Alfredo Chicken: 10

Hawaiian Chicken is the winner! Sarah and I will be filming it over our spring break, and it should be up before we get back to school. At the end of the month, I'll be filming a gluten-free dessert video (peach crisp). It's so good you can't tell it's gluten-free. Please vote on the new poll to decide the fate of the next video.

Mediterranean Pasta

Hey, everybody! I have a new video out! Check it out at http://youtube.com/user/tweenchef123.

Mediterranean Pasta is a great recipe. Everyone that was in my teacher's vegetarian cooking elective got to make it in class. My friend Mallika made it for a New Year's Eve party. My friend Sarah recently made Mediterranean Pasta for a large event, and I have some pictures.

Please follow my blog, or join my mailing list! Subscribe to my YouTube channel if you have a YouTube account, and tell everyone you know about my websites. Thanks!

Chicken Parmesan

Hey, everybody! Today, I'm going to answer a question from an anonymous viewer. Their question was:
I can never find enough time to actually cook because of a busy schedule. Is there any really good meal that doesn't take too long to prepare? This is a great question to ask! I have a delicious and simple recipe for Chicken Parmesan. It doesn't have a whole bunch of vegetables in it like everything else I make, so I would serve it with a side of broccoli, green beans, or Italian salad.

Chicken Parmesan
Serves 6 - 8

I've eaten lots of Chicken Parmesan, and none of it has tasted as good as Rozanne Gold's recipe. Rozanne's is different than most; she doesn't encrust it with bread crumbs. When I formed my recipe, the last Chicken Parmesan I had eaten was Rozanne Gold's Chicken Parmesan. Naturally, I didn't put bread crumbs in mine either. Even though I don't use one of the most classic Chicken Parmesan ingredients, it still tastes delicious.

Ingredients
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 roma tomatoes, diced
2 tsp dried oregano
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
2 mozzarella balls, sliced
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 tbsp olive oil

Preparation
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the chicken in a glass dish and coat with olive oil. Sprinkle on the oregano, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese.

2. Place the diced tomatoes in the dish with the chicken. Make sure the tomatoes aren't all clumped in the same area; spread them around.

3. Bake the chicken for 20 minutes. Take out of the oven and place mozzarella slices on top. Bake again until the chicken has reached an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit, and the mozzarella is melted. This should take about 2 - 4 minutes. Serve.

Each person should eat about 2/3 or 3/4 of a chicken breast. A few people will be stuck with two little chicken breast thirds or quarters on their plate, but oh well.

So, anonymous, I hope I answered your question! If you have any questions for me, comment on a post or email me asking me whatever you want to know. If you like my blog and you have a Google account or gmail account, you can follow my blog! If you don't have a Google or gmail account, then please join my mailing list or subscribe to my YouTube channel!

By the way, Mediterranean Pasta will be filmed next weekend! The next video (please vote on the poll to determine what I'm making) will be up a little early; around early-mid April. After, I'll put up a gluten-free dessert video at the end of April. Stay tuned for more cooking fun, and answer the question of the week if you already haven't!

My Japanese Cuisine Experiment

Hey, everybody! A few days ago, I had an idea for a recipe. My mom and I were talking about sushi. I don't know why, but I'm afraid of eating raw seafood. Maybe watching an episode of Wife Swap where one of the families ate raw meat scared me too much. She told me that raw seafood is something that you build up a tolerance for. After that, I was thinking about how I could make a delicious dish with cooked salmon that had all of the flavors of traditional sushi. So, I decided to try a deconstructed sushi. I baked a salmon filet with ginger, garlic, green onions, soy sauce, and cayenne pepper. After it was cooked, I broke it down into little pieces. Then, I mixed it in with some fresh cucumbers, avocado, green onion, and bits of nori seaweed sheets. Combine that with white rice, rice wine vinegar and black sesame seeds and you have a delicious meal. Now, I'm starting to think that it's not a deconstructed sushi. It's more of a Japanese rice bowl. Here are some pictures:

All of my ingredients



The final product!

 I have a new feature on my blog: the question of the week! Each week, I'll have a cooking trivia question at the bottom of my blog. The first person to email me at tweenchef123@gmail.com with the correct answer will get acknowledgement on the blog. Hopefully, the question of the week will be a fun feature that will help you learn a little bit about the food that you eat.

Harry Potter, Fusion Cooking, and Mushrooms

Hey, everybody! I'm very excited to share some photos of my cooking experiences from this weekend. Plus, my friend Sarah joined the mushroom challenge awhile ago, and I'm going to share some of her experience with you.

On Saturday, I made pumpkin pasties with my dad and my little brother. If you're a Harry Potter fan, you'll know what a pumpkin pasty is. The recipe came from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. Here are some pictures.




My little brother rolling out the dough



Me filling the pumpkin pasties




Me eating a pumkpin pasty. Yum!

 Last night, I made a delicious Mexican wedding soup. I combined Italian wedding soup (a soup with vegetables and turkey meatballs) with Mexican ingredients such as cilantro, Monterey jack cheese, tomatillos, and Mexican spices. The fusion cooking that I did was inspired by one of Rachel Ray's recipes for an American-Asian stir fry. My soup was amazing! My mom loved it so much that she said she could eat it for the rest of her life. Here are some pictures.




Raw turkey meatballs




Onions, carrots, and tomatillos



The final product!

My friend Sarah is so great. She's very supportive of healthy cooking; she's on my mailing list, and she joined the mushroom challenge. Hats off to you, Sarah! Thank you so much! Sarah made a mushroom gravy that was used to top off her meatloaf. It looked delicious. Sadly, I can't upload the photo because it was sent to me as a gigantic photo.
If you would like my recipe for Mexican wedding soup, email me at tweenchef123@gmail.com. Be like Sarah and support healthy cooking in any way you can. If you make my recipes, please tell me about it! If you want to, join my mailing list! If you have any type of account that is associated with Google, you can follow my blog! If you have a youtube account, subscribe to my youtube channel! (Go to http://youtube.com/user/tweenchef123) I really want to spread the word about healthy cooking. If you subscribe/follow my blog/youtube channel, you could inspire other people to eat healthy and spread the word too.

The Food Preacher

Hey, guys! The results for the poll from last month are in, and Mediterranean Pasta has won! Many of my friends and readers from school have already tasted and made this pasta. It's a middle school friendly recipe for sure! The video will be filmed on the weekend of the 26th and 27th, so you should see it up no later than the 31st of March.

At my school, we had an event called the Poetry Coffeehouse. The 7th and 8th graders recited their poems. Mine, of course, was about eating healthy. Here is my poem, "The Food Preacher."

Eat healthier, fresh foods!
Please, don't go to Wendy's!
Veggies are nutritious
even though they are quite spendy.

The grease and fat they cook with
at McDonald's is quite poor.
Yet McDonald's has lured customers
to eat there more and more!

Those microwaveable meals
are not going to serve you well.
They may say "three-hundred calories"
but the bad stuff do they tell?

Of course they will not tell you!
They do not want you to see
that their sauces and their glazes
have the red dyes 5 and 3.

Go buy a bunch of vegetables
and make a healthy dinner.
A stir fry, or a pasta dish.
A curry that has to simmer.

I'm sorry if I am too strong
in preaching my beliefs.
But when it comes to your well being,
This stuff is a relief.

So please, get off the couch
with your soda and Doritos.
Get up and make some chili!
And please, don't garnish with fritos.

Eat healthier and healthier
for years and years to come.
When many many people die,
you'll be the lucky one.

Remember to check out my youtube channel at http://youtube.com/user/tweenchef123 to see my video and look at the pages of my subscribers (my classmates). Please subscribe! Follow my blog if you have a google account, gmail, or youtube account. If you don't have any of these, email me at tweenchef123@gmail.com and ask to join the mailing list! You'll get cool cooking tips, tricks, and recipes once a week! Thank you all for supporting me, and continue to stay healthy!