And the moral of the story is...

Well, here I have come to an end on this Genius Hour Journey...well in posts at least. This is the final week before I present to my class. This week is going to entail me performing my own TED Talk (*eeek!*) and, and finalizing the rest of my blog. I do not know if I will be as good as Jamie Oliver's very own TED Talk (he his actually a TED Prize winner!) but, I will try my best! So keep your eyes out for the finished products in My TED Talk page and My Project page!

Unfortunately, my hope in blogging about my experience at Jamie Oliver's very first restaurant in Canada. BUT...I will be going there in March Break when I celebrate finishing this course and all others, and getting back out to the teaching blocks!

So, for my final blog post, I am going to briefly discuss what I discovered on the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, which is actually a registered charity in the UK! As I looked into his foundation's website, I found that Jamie Oliver has a number of programs ("programme" in UK grammar) created by the Food Foundation and the Jamie Oliver Project:
- Food Revolution Day: see earlier post on what this campaign includes and offers. Another huge campaign is:
- Jamie Oliver's Childhood Obesity Strategy: Jamie continues to lobby the UK Government to introduce a strong and robust Childhood Obesity Strategy. In November 2015, he released his own recommendations to tackle childhood obesity, spanning six key areas: the introduction of a sugary drinks tax, product reformulation, fairer marketing, clearer labeling, the School Food Plan and the National Child Measurement Programme.
- Kitchen Garden Project: Jamie Oliver's Kitchen Garden Project empowers primary school teachers to integrate growing and cooking into the school day. By teaching children about food, where it comes from, how to cook it and how it affects their bodies, the resources and recipes equip children with the knowledge and confidence to cook from scratch, as well as forming positive eating habits that will last a lifetime.
- Ministry of Food: Jamie's Ministry of Food is a practical and hands-on community-based cooking program that teaches people of all ages how to cook from scratch. All classes use Jamie Oliver recipes and resources, specifically developed with nutrition and balance in mind, and aim to build an individual's confidence to cook good, affordable, nutritious meals for themselves and their families. Trained Ministry of Food teachers inspire thousands of people to cook from scratch every year in centers and through Outreach Programs across the UK.

- Fifteen Apprentice Programme: Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Apprentice Programme uses the magic of food to give disengaged young people a chance at a better future. Every year, the Fifteen restaurant recruits 18 apprentices, aged between 18 and 25, and trains them to become professional chefs through its unique 12-month programme, which includes on-the-job learning, college-based education and personal development. Most of our graduates from Fifteen London still work in the food industry today. Fifteen also runs an extensive Outreach Programme, working with hundreds more people each year to help them unlock their potential in the kitchen. You can even follow them on Instagram to see the beautiful dishes they have created for customers to eat!

 

Needless to say I have discovered there are a number of ways someone can join the Food Revolution. For myself, I have tried making only a handful of his recipes, and although not all were great success, I have learned a lot through it all - both on healthy eating, and what I am capable of doing in the kitchen, too! I think the big thing I discovered from this Genius Hour experience and the "take home message" of it all, is that you do not need to follow in Jamie Oliver's footsteps exactly in order to see how you can join his infamous Food Revolution. It is all about the healthy eating and ensuring that the younger generation get the knowledge and skills in food education. Kids, teenagers, anyone, should not be worried about counting calories and sacrificing their happiness in order to "eat healthy to look healthy." We need to learn the good decisions in eating, as that is a huge factor on our health and well-being. So yes, you can have your cake and eat it too! But, it may be a smaller size than you may wish, and you cannot have it everyday. Everything in moderation. Although Jamie Oliver's recipes vary in ingredients, with many free of something (gluten, dairy, vegan, sugar, etc.), if you are not allergic to dairy or gluten, do not cut it out of your diet fully. Cutting it out in some dishes is one thing, but if you diminish your intake for these ingredients/food groups, you will eventually become intolerant to it, and have essentially affecting your digestive system and health. Kids should know the difference between a tomato and a potato; kids should know ice cream cannot be eating everyday; kids should know soda drinks are not healthy; kids should know what are some types of fruit and like to eat them too! Between work at home and at school, society as a whole can help improve the health and well-being for our young generation. There should not be a statistic saying kids today are going to day before their parents! As the world progresses, so should the people that live in this world, too! 

 

So, I leave this final blog post with a key quote from Jamie Oliver from his Food Foundation page. Take from it what you would like, but just realize this is something does take more than one person to accomplish. I can now say, I have learned a number of ways how I am joining his Food Revolution! Many reasons I have mentioned throughout this blog, followed up with the TED Talk I will be creating this week, too. And hey, I am going to be a Health and Physical Education teacher soon...I would be a hypocrite if I did not support and advocate for healthy eating and the Food Revolution! I just admire what Jamie Oliver is doing for our world at a personal level, as well as educational.

“My Foundation aims to shape the health and well-being of everyone, by providing access to the right information and to education around food, by campaigning on the issues that matter, and lobbying governments and industry to do the right thing to create a healthier and happier world.” - Jamie Oliver

Join us, and become a part of the revolution...

Baking Time!

Hello readers! Well this week has been a busy one! I did the finishing touches onto my Movie Trailer and now can be seen under my Movie Trailer page above. I can finally say that I have used iMovie and it was not as scary as I initially thought it would be.

This week I went back to the kitchen and decided to bake something. I have a major sweet tooth and so I was quite excited to try and bake one of Jamie Oliver's dessert recipes. I decided to try and bake his Gluten-Free Blondies - something sweet, yet healthy as it is gluten-free, dairy free and vegan! In the UK, the recipes often have measurements in grams, so after I converted the ingredients to cups (I do not have a scale to use), I was ready to conquer the kitchen! I have to say that I had a lot of fun baking these, as I was also using it as an opportunity to capture the finishing touches to my movie trailer. Unfortunately, not everything that is healthy taste good. As I mentioned before, I think I have a very powerful oven, so after about 20 minutes (10 minutes before what the recipe calls for) my blondies were burnt around the edges and yet raw in the middle. My experiences with gluten-free products have been mixed as the flour texture is very different to white or even whole wheat flour. After patiently waiting to cut into these blondies, I was left very disappointed. The recipe says these are sticky, gooey and sweet. I found them dry, yet moist, and just missing something. It was almost like an incomplete cake where I skipped a few key steps to the recipe. See the picture of my work below!

So, I leave this week's adventure for my genius hour with the motto that not everything that is "healthy" tastes as good as the nutritional information! Speaking of which, I have not mentioned before but one feature of Jamie Oliver's recipes that I like is the nutritional information that it shows with the recipe. Often you have to guess for yourself, but for anyone that is curious how many calories, fat, sugar, etc. that is in a dish (or sweet), has this information provided for them with his recipes.

I am nearing an end to this Genius Hour Journey soon, and unfortunately I will not be able to visit Jamie Oliver's new restaurant in Toronto (and first one in Canada!), but I do plan on going there as a celebration moment to finishing this project. I may just have to leave the healthy baking to him and his pastry chefs and try something when I am there!

In the upcoming week I am going to look further into Jamie Oliver's Food Foundation, as I have only researched one branch under his big Food Foundation's umbrella, and it would be incomplete if I did not research deeper into this side of his business and life's work.

Watching the Revolution

Jamie Oliver was a well know chef and healthy food advocate in the UK before he was fully known worldwide. Years ago I watched Jamie Oliver's American Food Revolution TV Series. It actually earned him with an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program! The USA version was based on a number of UK shows he did before (Jamie's Ministry of Food and Jamie's School Dinner).

I recommend to anyone intrigued about Jamie Oliver and where his whole fight for a Food Revolution came from to watch these TV programs where it shows Jamie's efforts to try and change the world, one school and one family at a time! Of course there are aspects of a USA produced TV program that will be played-up and dramatized, but oh well! For the most part, Jamie's American Food Revolution series shows how emotional and focused he is about changing the school lunch programs and ensuring our children of today's generation have the right and ability to learn about healthy food education. In one clip it shows a young boy not knowing what certain fresh vegetables are called! See the video below to see this. Kids may know about ketchup, but they do not know that it came from Tomatoes and what that looks like. Almost to crazy to believe it is true...

It was disheartening to see during this series the number of adults that were in denial that giving students junk food and fried foods was not a bad thing and that obesity was not an epidemic. After watching these 2 seasons, I am not sure if you went back for an update on the schools, families and cities he worked with, that all of them are continuing with the positive changes he tried to help make when filming the series; but I would like to believe that a few of the positive things he did during this show has stayed and continued to progress for the better.

Jamie Oliver has some foundations and strategies that he has created within the UK that has progressed, and he seems to focus on a bit more on his website. Next week I am going to look further into his plan to help combat childhood obesity and fighting against the UK government in order to have nutrition education mandatory for children to learn about.

After all of these weeks, I still feel like I have only dipped a couple of toes into Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. This is something that he has spent years and years working on and there is still many more goals he is still focusing on reaching! What a determined, hardworking and dedicated chef to continue to fight for this Food Revolution he truly believes is a worldwide dream that will be achieved one day.

Video Reference:  
Ryan Seacrest Presents. (2016, Feb 17). Potato or Tomato? - Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution | Promo Clip | On Air With Ryan Seacrest. [Video]. Retrieved from: bit.ly/1Dny3bK

Food Revolution Day

Jamie Oliver has 4 different foundations he has created and support. This week, I researched one on them, and it is the Food Revolution Day campaign for his Food Foundation and registered charity. Now, I could write an essay on what this campaign is all about, but what the video below and hear from Jamie Oliver what this is all about!

If you watched this video, you would have been stunned by some of the statistics, such as:
- there are over 42 million children under the age of 5 are overweight or obese
- diet-related illnesses are among the world's biggest killers
- kids today are likely to live shorter lives than their parents!
These statistics are scary, and it is not just happening in one country more than another - this is an global epidemic and we must make a change to this if we want our next generations to live a long and healthy life.

From the site, there is a quote from Jamie Oliver on what is the answer to making this change and goes to show how serious he is wanting this to go, in order for real change to happen for our younger citizens of the world:

“By educating children about food in a practical, fun and engaging way, we can provide them with the knowledge and skills they so urgently need to lead healthier, happier lives. We need to make practical food education a compulsory part of every school curriculum across the world, and that’s why I’ve launched a petition calling on all G20 countries to action this. With enough support from millions of people around the world, I truly believe that we can create a movement that’s powerful enough to make governments take action.”

Now, this is not just a website full of daunting statistics, and a petition that everyone should sign (and share!) to support making food education mandatory in the curriculum worldwide, there is also a song and actual Food Revolution Day. The celebratory day is May 15, and last year as Jamie Oliver was getting assistance from Ed Sheeran, they created a song and got help from a number of celebrities and recording artists - including: Ed Sheeran, Paul McCartney, Hugh Jackman and The London Youth Choir. So, if the statistics, YouTube video of Jamie Oliver, the petition or website in general haven't influenced you to believe in this change and support this cause, you must watch this music video! It may even change your mind around if chefs can rap as well...
 

I have so enjoyed doing all the research I did for this week's post. I have signed this petition, and as a future Health and Physical Education teacher I know that I have an important role around supporting healthy eating and food choices - especially since Healthy Eating and Nutrition is included in the HPE curriculum! When teaching my students, I will not just educate through words or videos on the importance of healthy food choices, but I can teach them hands-on about healthy eating! Maybe I can have a class create their healthy versions of a fast food breakfast meal, or have them create their own smoothies and try to get the most amount of superfoods in there. The ideas are endless, and I am determined to support this cause and teach the importance of living a healthy and happy life! 

Stay tuned for next week's blog post...will it be on a different foundation of Jamie Oliver's or will it be on another dish I try to conquer in the kitchen!

Video References:
1. Food Revolution Day. (2016, Feb 8). Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. [Video]. Retrieved from: bit.ly/1HeZJgP

2.  Food Revolution Day. (2016, Feb 8). Jamie Oliver #FoodRevolutionDaySong. [Video]. Retrieved from: bit.ly/1H6le1u

A Recipe for the Books!

As I was researching Jamie Oliver's website I noticed a number of recipes and posts connected me to his Youtube page, Jamie Oliver's Food Tube. So naturally I began to delve into this link of his and watching a number of his videos. Not all of the recipes/videos are by Jamie Oliver himself; sometimes it is him with someone else, and other times it is by another chef/food lovers (many were fellow Brits). I recommend everyone to check out his Youtube page. It is helpful to not just have a recipe in hand, but a video/picture to follow during the cooking process. One recipe caught my eye because it reminded me of a recipe that I previously read on his website. The video is called: Jamie & Gennaro's Lemon & Basil Fettuccine | Food Tube Live - and can be watched below! 

This video also caught my attention because it said it was live. Now I don't know if that meant this was once live on Youtube (maybe silly to think this), or just that there was an audience there on the balcony somewhere in the world (again probably in Great Britain). As I was watching this, I could only think how much I wish I was in the audience watching Jamie Oliver cook these recipes, as well as eat these dishes too!

So, I was on a mission to cook this meal. I did not have fresh pasta to use, to I used the normal dry pasta that it easier to buy at the store, along with fresh Parmesan (expensive, but worth it!), a lemon and ensured I had the rest of the ingredients. I changed one piece to this recipe and added chicken since I was making this for dinner with my boyfriend (the sous chef). Following this recipe had no bumps in the road or messes that had to be cleaned up, and in the end resulted in one empty plate and a full belly! This recipe was delish! The combination of the lemon and fresh Parmesan cheese, with some good olive oil was light, just full of flavour! This recipe was so simply, yet looked elegant and something I will make for guests one day! It seemed so elegant, so we lit a candle and he had a glass of wine with it. Here is our finishing product...may not look as fancy and "fresh" as his with a bunch of fresh pasta under the tray, but it is a recipe I am adding to my book of recipes I have so far collected. Whether it is -30 or +30 degrees outside, this is a meal that will leave you satisfied and asking for the recipe!

After last week's ups and downs, it was nice to succeed and confirm to myself that I can cook something to Jamie Oliver's standards and tastes. Since this recipe took my attention (and some money) this week, the upcoming week I will finally begin to look into his Foundation he has via his oh so wonderful and highly informative website!

Video Reference:
Jamie Oliver. (2016, Feb 1). Jamie & Gennaro's Lemon & Basil Fettuccine | Food Tube Live. [Video]. Retrieved from: bit.ly/1QhRZ3h

http://bit.ly/1QhRZ3h

http://bit.ly/1QhRZ3h

Some Success and Some Failures

Week 3 done and 2 recipes of Jamie Oliver's has been attempted! However, it is not all good news as the first recipe I tried to make was a complete fail! The first recipe I tried was on how to make his sweet potato fries...seems simple right, well not so much. First trouble came with from simply trying to cut up the potato into wedges. The cutting was actually quite difficult I asked my boyfriend to try and cut it for me. As he tried to cut the potato, he ended up cutting his finger and it was not pretty to see! Then, after I finally got the potato cut into wedges, and seasoned them as the recipe calls for to be put into the oven, I thought the rough parts were in the past. The recipe says put the wedges into the oven at 400 degrees F and for 30-40 minutes. Well, after 15 minutes of being in the oven I thought maybe I should flip them, in order to have an even crispiness to the fries; as I pulled them out of the oven and flipped them over, the bottoms were burned to a crisp! Super charred and inedible!

Here is a picture I took of the "final product". What is deemed as a "Super Easy" level recipe, ended up not working at all. I think it was because of my oven, as my oven is very strong and old.

 


So although the first recipe I tried was did not work out so well for me, I thought I would try another. This time I tried a dessert, the Frozen Yogurt layer cake. Now, I only tried 2 layers; one raspberry and one banana. After hours of eagerly waiting, it was finally time to try this dessert, and it was actually pretty good. The texture was icier than a frozen yogurt you buy at a store or ice-cream shop, but for a first time try, I am proud of what I created. The raspberry flavour was nice and tart; and the banana flavour was rich and not too sweet. Overall, I think this recipe is a must-try again recipe! Thank you Jamie Oliver!





I have learned that all though not all recipes may live up to the difficulty level assigned to them, or work out well the first time, but you just need to try, try again and just learn from your mistakes! From the 2 recipes I have tried so far, and the dozens I have read over already, I can say that Jamie Oliver meets the expectation he created that every recipe on his website is healthy and quite natural for you to try to make/eat. Next week I am going to possibly try to cook a dinner recipe from the Jamie Oliverwebsite, as well as start researching into his Food Revolution Foundation. Everything can be found on his website, as posted in my first blog post! Until next time readers!

Where to go from here...

The first week is over and I have a game plan in place! (Under Project Proposal you can see the plan I have set) So far this week I feel like I have just hit the tip of the iceberg of what I am going to uncover from the Jamie Oliver website. I have researched a huge variety of recipes I am thinking I could (try to) make during this Genius Hour project, but there are just so many possibilities! Desserts, chicken dishes, veggie dishes, meat dishes, drinks, breakfasts, and so much more! I will say though that the problem is not deciding what to try and make, but the problem is towards the amount of different ingredients all of these recipes calls for. Perhaps this different and worldly ingredients are the reasons behind it is an healthy alternative to cook/bake, but I am not going to be able to purchase every single different and odd ingredient a lot of these recipes ask for. So, in a way perhaps this will actually help me decide on what to try and make to eat. 

I saw that on his website there are not just recipes for a variety of audiences to make from, but also healthy tips, blog posts, and expertly advice available from him and others in the world of food and healthy nutrition. So I do not think I will have any trouble on what to decide to do each week for this course, as during a busier week I may just read or watch a couple of posts from his website, verses a calmer school week I will try and cook one of his main dishes he recommends on his recipe side of the website, or perhaps an every-other-week switch sort of system could work, too.

With a lot of the initial ground digging work completed from this week's Genius Hour efforts, next week I plan on trying to make one of this recipes. You will have to wait and see until the next blog post to find out what I decide on making! I will have to admit that I look forward to the end for I have decided that at that point in time would be a good prize/finale assignment to go to Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant in Toronto! (The first and only one so far in Canada!!) My mouth has already been watering as I read the menus from the restaurant's website.

Stay tuned on my adventure towards the Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution!

Joining the Genius Hour Revolution

Jamie Oliver is a famous British chef that may be a household name depending on the country you reside in. I have heard of him, am a huge fan of him and has watched his show called the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution (See the USA Season Trailer here). After divulging into the 1000s of ideas that one could do for a Genius Hour, I was drawn to the idea towards cooking. When I thought about cooking, it of course led me to Jamie Oliver. As much as I am a fan of his, I have never tried any of his meals, tried cooking any of his recipes, or even own any of his recipe books - I have only watched one of his series on the television. So my Genius Hour question is: How can I join the Jamie Oliver Revolution?

As a former Varsity athlete, life long mover and a Health & Physical Education teacher (to-be!), I believe it is important to live a healthy life. Living a healthy life does not just require to be physically active, but to also live a healthy life in other ways - one important way is to eat and sustain a healthy, nutritious life. Through this Genius Hour I am going to further look into Jamie Oliver and what he stands for, not just the recipes and knives he sells through Sobeys. My plan is to try and cook/bake one of his recipes at least once a week, along side looking up his various foundations he has created/support, his biography and what inspired him to not only cook healthy meals for a living, but also try to make this a global food revolution!