The Week That Was

It was that part of the year once more when everything needed to be finished. Finals, grades, rollbooks, signatures, keys returned, etc. Thank God it's all over!
I could still see the busy kitchens and the concerns on my students' faces as they went about preparing their final menus (pictures to follow). They had to have their tables ready 20 minutes before the dismissal time and everything else cleaned and put away 5 minutes before and they were fully aware of the consequences if they didn't.
Unlike the previous years, this semester, I let the various groups pre-measured some of their ingredients a day before. That took a lot of time away from their preparation schedule on actual the exam day. Also this way, I had more time to go over what went well and what did not with each group. I was surprised, though, that of the 25 groups only two prepared Mexican dishes. The rest prepared menus from recipe books that Sharon, a co-teacher donated to my classes.
Sharon is our Magnet coordinator and she loves food. She once told me that she buys recipe books and reads them as if they were novels. Yes, from front cover to end cover! I found that interesting because I only open pages to those recipes I fancy. Anyway, I was glad that my students had more in-room resources and were more adventurous in preparing recipes beyond what they often see done at their own homes.