Unit 4 ~ Final: Putting Together a Meal

You’ve got the tools, you know how to avoid food poisoning, and you have practiced recipes and understand how to make healthy choices. For your final project you will be pulling all of these skills together to create a meal you share with others. This assignment has three basic parts:

1. Plan the Menu
2. Set the table with a theme
3. Serve and enjoy the food

Planning the Menu

Obviously, you need to decide what you will be serving at the meal. You can do a breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. You are welcome to serve your family, some friends, or a combination of both. You need to have at least four people, not counting you, at the meal.

When you are planning the menu you need to have the food pyramid in mind and create a balanced, healthy meal plan. This one meal doesn’t have to have 100% of all the good stuff, it is only one meal after all, but it should be healthy.

You need to plan for at least the following parts of the menu: a drink, appetizer, main dish, side dish, vegetable, fruit, salad, and dessert. Of course, you can combine them as they make sense: you might have a fruit salad or fruit in the dessert, the side dish might be a vegetable dish, etc.

TURN IN:

1. type up the menu with a description of each food you will prepare as well as the source of the recipe you will be using
2. include information relating your menu to the pyramid and other health considerations — this might be a short paper or a chart

Set the table with a Theme

This is easiest if you help with a birthday dinner, holiday or other special occasion. If that isn’t going to work out, you can just "pretend" a holiday or make up another fun theme (check the web for tons of fun and easy ideas for the different seasons).

TURN IN:

1. One paragraph description of the theme and decorations you came up with. If you got the ideas from a magazine or website, include a copy of the article.
2. Pictures of the table all set and ready to go OR include signatures of the people who at the meal on your typed up description.

Serve and Enjoy the Food

For this meal, people won’t serve themselves from the stove top. You need to take the food to the table and eat "family style." Plan ahead to so things are ready at the right time! Make sure you sit down and enjoy eating with your guests. That is the best way to hear all the compliments. J

TURN IN:

1. Cooking Lab form for each dish you made
2. A one-page write up of how the meal went, include pictures if at all possible. Explain what went best and what you’d do different next time.
3. Quick notes and signatures of your guests. You can make a survey for them to take and sign, or just let them write quick comments on a note card and sign that.