Brenda's Benchmark

​Personal Reflection 
What I have learned during this unit was on one of my favorite topics in the world, Food. Well, what about food you might ask. Hm, well the food industry and their secrets of processing what we consume. From watching a food documentary, it honestly helped me realize a handful of suggestion that I should take responsibility of in my life and others. Watching a food documentary called Food Inc. had brought lots of questions in mind that I want to ask. I was in shocked how livestock were being treated before they entered the slaughterhouse and even how they slaughtered the animals. It was pretty harsh and I got kind of disturbed but still watch anyways because it does not seem realistic to me that they do such torture to animals. The biggest problem I see here is how food industry have no care about consumers health and that what they do in factories can harm everyone. Food system obviously know this but I'm getting bothered that they are ignoring this important fact and rather be selfish for money. Even I did not know what the food industry does before they shipped foods out to supermarkets until this video had been shown. Now, Im the type of person that likes more than one source about an issue but this had shown more that enough for me. Some changes I would want to make to your food choices is to chill out with the greasy foods and just be cautious of what I consume. Now, I don't want to say I'm going to try and eat organic food now because truly that's not in my path. Yeah, I consume organic products from left to right but I truly and honestly believe that I will end up going back to what I like which is unhealthy food due to the taste but be more cautious! Ah, you see where I'm going at with this. I enjoy food but learning so much of what's going on with what I enjoy makes me more cautious and that's all I can really be thankful for. I care about my health and everyone elses, I'll make sure to make this happen. 
Sauteed Chicken & Ginger Dish

This is one of our favorite dishes that I have grown up to enjoy in my family. This is a simple delicious dish that does not contain much ingredients. It’s 5 ingredients or less to fix up an asian dish like this.


Materials:
Utensils:
-sharp Knife
-cutting board
-sauce pan
-peeler

Ingredients:
-3 whole gingers (unpeeled)
-2lbs of Boneless skinless chicken (serves 8-10 people)
-1 to 2 whole cloves of garlic(freshly chopped)
-1tlsp of Canola oil
-2table spoon of oyster sauce

Preparation(30mins):
1. You have the chose to either use your peeler to peel the skin off the ginger or if you are skillful enough, you may use your knife.

Tips: Whole gingers have an odd shape, so what I like to do is cut it in pieces where it’s manageable to hold and peel off the skin.

2. Once the skins are peeled off, face the ginger flat(If needed, slice the bottom to have a flat surface) and cut paper thin slices vertically. Do this to all of your ginger pieces. After cutting your slices, you want to cut them in strips.

Tips: Since you have cut paper thin slices of ginger, to make your process move a little faster, you may place a couple of slices on top of another and cut thin strips. Your ginger strips should be no longer than your pinky finger.

When handling with any type of meat, you want to wash your hands before and after thoroughly.

3. Place your boneless chicken breast on the cutting board. Using your knife, cut not to thick strips of chicken then slice them in either halves. Save as the size of your pinky finger in length.

Tips: Your chicken strips should be thicker than your ginger strips but the same length.

4. Mince your 2 cloves of garlic with a few of the ginger strips.

Cooking(5-10mins)
5. In a sauce pan, place 1tlsp. of Canola oil when it’s at least heated added with 1tsp. of white sugar. Once the sugar is slightly caramelized(Light brown), place the minced ginger and garlic into the pan.

Tips: When you hear sizzling, you’re doing something right! Don’t burn your minced ingredients.

6. Immediately, throw in your meat. Slightly sprinkle salt and black pepper so flavor your meat. Once the chicken is cooked, you add in the 2 table spoon of oyster sauce. You may leave this ingredient out if you chose too. It just provides extra flavoring into the dish.

7. Once this is all marinaded evenly onto the chicken, add in your ginger strips and stir for about 10-15secs.

Tips: You want to add in your ginger strips at the end of your cooking to leave a fresh zesty taste.  If they are soft, you have no texture that would compliment your meat. Serve with white rice.

Extra Recipe:
Recipe

Ginger roots
sugar
liquid lime
water

Need

Need a clean filter cloth
1 bowl

Directions

1. Wash off the ginger roots and cut them up into slices. (Small enough to chop smoothly in a blender).

2. Blend the ginger roots in a blender.

3. Take the blended ginger roots and pour it through the filter into the bowl.

4. Add any amount of water on the ginger while its in the filter. (Squeeze the filter so the ginger juice can come out)

5. Repeat #4 until the ginger has no more juice comes out the filter.

6. Add a half a bottle of lime juice and mix.

7. Add the amount of sugar you want and mix until its at the taste you want.

(Lime and sugar depends on the amount of juice you have.)



Analysis: 

I enjoy consuming this dish and how it compliments each other; both the lightly sauteed chicken and the taste of the zesty spicy ginger. It’s savory but being informative of what you use is even more interesting. This meal does contain processed and whole food ingredients. Canola oil and oyster sauce are processed ingredients where oyster sauce brand that I use is from Malaysia and the Canola oil I used is Wesson which is soy-based. Pure Wesson company is profiled in Suffolk, VA. Our other ingredients used in the meal is boneless chicken breast, ginger, and garlic. Tyson boneless chicken breast is what I used and they brand themselves as “100% All Natural Chicken Breasts that are a great option for a tasty yet healthy meal that is minimally processed and contain no artificial ingredients.” There are different types of major garlic and where it originated from. The garlic preferably used in this dish is an Italian garlic PDO(Aglio Bianco Polesano)  which is a heirloom variety from the northwestern part of the US. Ginger is grown worldwide and used in many different ways in other countries. I believed my ginger that I’ve used is imported from Asia because I brought my ginger from an Asian market. In Asian dishes, its used as a savory ingredient for it’s spicy, zesty taste and ginger has many health benefits that can relieve sickness etc. The main ingredients which were the ginger and chicken only came up to under 10$. If you did not process the other ingredients such as Canola oil or Oyster sauce, it would cost you another 10$.


Citations:
-"Ginger Root Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits." Nutrition Facts in the Food You Eat and the Impact on Your Health. 2009-2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/ginger-root.html>.

-This site had provided interesting facts about ginger and the use of it for health benefits. Our main ingredient used in both dishes were fresh ginger.


-"Featured Products." Lee Kum Kee Malaysia. 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://my.lkk.com/en_cop_se/products/featured_product/19555>.

-This site provides information on the oyster sauce used in this dish. How it was invented and how it’s processed.

-"Wesson | Pure, 100% All Natural Oils - The Four Oils - Canola." Wesson | Pure, 100% All Natural Oils. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://www.wessonoil.com/canola_oil.jsp>.


-This site list facts about Wesson Oils, where it’s from, and nutrition facts about it. What is also good by using this site is what you can use Pure Wesson Canola oil when cooking.


-"Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts." Tyson. 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://www.tyson.com/Products/Boneless-Skinless-Chicken-Breasts.aspx>.

-Tyson is a brand of chicken that I like using due to their minimized process and it’s just a good meat that I like to use.  

-"Garlic Facts Remedies and Health Benefits of Garlic." Disability News, Information and Resources - Disabled World. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/garlic-benefit.shtml>.

-This site provides interesting health benefits when you use garlic and remedies that can be helpful just like the ginger.
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