Jordan's Lunch Box was featured in an article called "Young food lovers break into blogging" which appears in The Journal News, LoHud.com, and LoHudFood.com. The article will appear in the print version of the Journal News as part of the Life & Style section on Wednesday, April 29th, 2015. Thank you to Megan McCaffrey for including Jordan's Lunch Box in her piece!
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This is the second blog post about my family’s trip to Vietnam. After we had spent a few days in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a three-hour drive down to the Mekong Delta. We drove over cool bridges and saw a lot of motorbikes on the drive there. The hotel we stayed at was called The Victoria. It was beautiful. When we got to the hotel, they sat us down and massaged us. While they were massaging us they gave us a fruit drink that tasted like mango. It tasted so good! After the massage, we went upstairs and changed into our bathing suits to go to the pool. While at the pool, we ordered shrimp toast and spicy Vietnamese chicken wings. When the food arrived, we dug in. The shrimp toast was creamy and crunchy at the same time. In America, chicken wings are usually either sweet or spicy but not both at the same time. These were both! The next morning we ate breakfast and headed out to the dock outside for a tour. There was a boat there ready to take us to three stops and to give us a tour of the famous floating markets. The first stop we went to was a noodle factory. When we got to the first stop, we had to walk down a path to the actual location. On our way down, we stopped at a stand that sold thin banana pancakes. The pancake was a thin circle made out of bananas in an old fashioned pancake maker. She was outside over a campfire and was flipping it in a colonial looking pancake maker. It looked thin and crunchy. We saved it for later in case we got hungry. After a few minutes of walking, we finally got to the noodle factory. The first step to making noodles was to make a thin batter. Then you put it on this pan and put a cover over it and flip it from side to side, and then you let it dry and then you shred it in a hand machine to make it into strips which look like pasta. It seems like an easy task, but it isn't. The batter was a beige color and in the room there was traditional Vietnamese music playing. There was a garden in the backyard and dogs in the room. After watching the workers make noodles, we got back on the boat and headed to the next stop. On our way to the floating market my grandma said, “I’m thirsty.” So, we saw a boat with drinks on it so we hooked our boat with their boat and asked for a drink. When we asked for the drink they wanted to sell it to all of us. So, they got closer to the boat and started to put drinks in our faces. They were there for a couple of minutes, but we were able to get them away from us. Just when we thought we had escaped another boat hooked onto us and wanted to give us all sorts of things, and put them in our face to try to get us to buy it. We finally got away and got to see the amazing view of all of the boats in the floating market selling fruit. Some families lived on the boats and others had a house on land. Each boat was pouring with amazing fruit. That was the ripest I’ve ever seen fruit. There were some fruits I’ve never heard of. It was an amazing sight. Once we passed the floating market, we were getting close to our next stop -- the fruit orchard. When we got to the fruit orchard, we went inside. Inside they were selling jewelry and drinks. My mom and I went over to the jewelry table and looked at the options. There were really pretty necklaces, and bracelets, and these cool hair things. We decided to get the hair thing and a bracelet for my cousin. The orchard had tons of exotic fruit. While we were walking, we got to feed the fish. When we fed them they would stick out there heads and gobble it up. The orchards didn't just have fruit and fish, it also had flowers. We learned that you can tell if a dragon fruit is red or white inside. You can tell it’s red when the tips of the leaves are red. We were nearing the end of the orchard when we saw this bridge and our tour guide said we can go on it. So, I went on the bridge. I had flip flops on and I was playing with them on the bridge. Suddenly, my flip flop fell into the swamp below, which was not good. We had to get a huge stick to fish it out of the swamp. Plus, my grandma was on the bridge pushing it to the shore. Meanwhile, my mom and I were cracking up. We finally got it out of the water and it felt good to put it on. When we ended our tour, we got to pick out a few fruits to try. We had mango, dragon fruit, milk apple, pineapple, and jackfruit. My favorite fruit was the dragon fruit. After everyone finished we got back on the boat and headed to our last stop the rice factory. When we got to the rice factory, we got to see the different types of rice. The factory was big and had tons of machines, but no one was in there besides us. The rice was all different colors and sizes and there was enough rice for a lifetime. After we finished with the rice factory we headed back to the hotel where we got our stuff and went back to Ho Chi Minh City. My next Vietnam post will be about the cooking school we went to in Hoi An. Tonight is the first night of Passover. Passover is a holiday to celebrate the freedom of the Jewish people from Egypt. The Passover seder is a festival meal. Sometimes it can be boring for kids at the seder, so to make it more fun, grown ups throw special kid seders. At my Hebrew school, they make it more fun by throwing a chocolate seder for kids. The seder is all about chocolate. Chocolate prayers, chocolate matzah, chocolate seder plates, chocolate everything. To start off the seder, we said our first prayer about chocolate, then drank our first sip of chocolate milk. After we said our prayer, we had the dipping of the strawberry in the chocolate sauce. Then we broke the chocolate covered matzah in half the bigger half of the chocolate matzah would get hidden for the afikoman. The smaller piece of matzah we would eat. So, everyone at my table just started grabbing at the matzah and just handed it to everybody. After the chocolate matzah, we told the story of the four different kids and their opinion of chocolate. Then we tried all of the different types of chocolate: white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate (my favorite type of chocolate), and baking chocolate. When I tried the baking chocolate, it tasted so bland. It was terrible, I think everyone who tried it would agree with me. Next, we did the chocolate four questions and four kids read them aloud. After the questions, we made s’mores and we were allowed to take candy from a different table so everyone went crazy. People filled their plates with candy and and put chocolate seder plates in their mouths. It was really nuts. While everyone was being crazy, they went around with raffle tickets. Then, everyone got settled down and we did the raffle. The prizes for the raffle were two giant gummy bears on a stick, a giant rice krispie bar, and a five pound Hersheys chocolate bar. One of my neighbors Josh won the giant chocolate bar. After the raffle, we did our last prayer and left. I can’t wait to go again next year.
My dad's friend Jenn interviewed me about Jordan's Lunch Box for her blog "Transparently Teaching." Her blog is about helping parents and kids with technology. You can see the video above. The whole post can be found here.
This year, my Girl Scout troupe is selling cookies again! If you buy a box from my Girl Scout Cookie website and use them in a cool recipe, you can send me your recipe and I will post it on my blog. Even if you don't like cookies, you can donate a box to the soldiers in the military from the website. We are going to take all of the recipes we get and put them on the blog and then have people vote for the best recipe. The winner will get a really cool prize from Jordan's Lunch Box! Go please buy some Girl Scout Cookies here! My favorites are Thin Mints and Trefoils!
For my great grandma Peepa’s birthday, our whole family went to Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem. My Uncle Henry made a reservation for us and when we walked in I could see why. Man, that place was packed! Once everyone got settled at our table, we ordered our food. Melba’s serves soul food which is food from the southern United States. Soul food can be things like corn bread, hush puppies and black-eyed peas. Those are some of my favorite things. Melba’s is known for their fried chicken and eggnog waffles. They were featured on The Food Network. Almost everyone in my family got the chicken and waffles including me. I don’t think you’d be surprised that I got it. I wouldn’t have been surprised either. I was so excited when the food came because I was starving. When I bit into the chicken it was so crispy on the outside and so tender on the inside. I love fried chicken! When you dip it in syrup it’s even better. The waffles were packed with sweetness and was really soft. On top of the waffles, there was strawberry butter. The whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday to Peepa and they brought her chocolate cake. Our waiter Thomas was really nice and gave Peepa the cake as a birthday present. I’m glad my Uncle Henry took us here and I think I’d come here again. You should too. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PEEPA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The New York Botanical Garden has a program called the Edible Academy where kids learn more about healthy eating and cooking. During my February break, The Edible Academy had an event called Culinary Kids Week where kids come to the Botanical Gardens and go to different stations to learn about food and nature. The event was sponsored by Carla Hall who is a famous chef and is a host on The Chew, which is a talk show on ABC. She also was on Top Chef, which is one of my favorite shows. My dad saw an advertisement for the event online and called the Botanical Gardens to ask them if I could cover the event for my blog. They said yes, and gave us free parking and passes to the event. They also said I could have an interview with Carla and Toby Adams, who is the Director of the Edible Academy. On Monday the 16th, we headed to the Botanical Gardens. That day was probably the coldest day of the year. So, it was a big pain getting to NYC. We got to the event, and Toby explained what we were doing that day, and the set-up of the event. He said that there were five tents that teach you different ways to garden and grow food. At 12:45pm Carla Hall was scheduled to have a demo on how to make a broccoli pesto. We started out at a tent that teaches you how to compost. They said if you leave newspapers in a bin that is shut with worms inside, you’ll get compost. The first step is to put newspapers in a bin with a special type of worms, and after about two months all there will be is compost, and worms. Then when you want to have an apple, or a banana you could throw the peel, or the core into the compost and it will become compost in a few months. The guy who ran that station said, “I keep my bin under my bed.” I thought that was odd because why would you want a bin under your bed when you know it has dirt, and worms in it. When he finished speaking, a helper at that station helped us make seed balls using seeds and compost. My seed ball was made out of dill, which will eventually turn into a dill plant. My brother made one with cilantro seeds. After we finished that station, it was time for me to go interview Carla Hall. Carla was waiting at a picnic table in the back for me. I asked her some questions and then we had a good conversation about things like food and our favorite restaurants. Here are some questions from the first part of the interview. Q: What was your first childhood memory of cooking? A: “I didn’t cook much as a child, but I remember cooking as a Girl Scout. I made spaghetti and an apple crumble to get my badge.” Q: What was your favorite food as a child? A: “I loved oranges. I can eat a whole bag of oranges. My grandma had this big garden. So, I loved cucumbers and vinegar. That might sound weird, but it’s so good. I also love my grandmother’s mac and cheese.” Q: What made you get involved with today's event? A: “I love kids, I love people discovering things, I love teaching, and to see people get an aha moment. When I do my cooking demo I’m going to bring people up.” You can see the full interview with Carla at the video below. After my interview with Carla, the first station we went to was a station that taught you about healthy eating. They were giving out free samples of fresh pea hummus. You could have the pea hummus with a carrot or a pita chip. I tried the pita chip with hummus first. The pea hummus was sweet, smooth, and went really well with the pita chip. When I tried the hummus with the carrot though I thought the pita chip was a little too hard, and I preferred the carrot more than I preferred the pita chip. The woman who made the pea hummus was an author who wrote a book called Appetite for Life. Her name is Stacey Antine. The book is about healthy eating and cooking for kids and has easy recipes for parents to make with their kids. We looked at the book and bought a copy because the recipes looked so good. Here is a link to the webpage for the book: http://www.healthbarnusa.com/appetite-for-life/. She also gave us a copy of the recipe for the pea hummus to share with you on my blog. Here it is: After we finished our hummus, I made a pea plant, so I could make pea hummus at home. When we made our pea plant it was really cool how we made the pot. To make the pea plant you needed: A strip of a newspaper, a mold, two dried peas, and damp soil. You took the newspaper curl it into a circle. Then, you put it into the mold and pressed hard. You have your pot, voila! Then you put a scoop of soil into the pot and press two pea seeds in, then cover them and you have your pea plant.
After we finished the pea hummus, I had an interview with Toby Adams who is the Director of the Edible Academy and who helped create this event. Q: How did you come up with the idea for this event? A: “Right now I supervise the garden and we are only open from April-October, and so we thought it would be a great way to have an event in the middle of while school is out. During either the Spring break or February break. We decided February break would be best. What we usually teach about is gardening, and cooking with the plants we grow. We don’t have any plants growing right now because it is so cold out.” Q: Why did you invite Carla Hall? A: “Carla became one of our friends. We have a close relationship with her co-host Mario Batali. So, he comes to a lot of our events. So, during our gardening season he brought Carla with him and we met Carla and she loved our family garden and the Edible Academy. So, she decided that we were great partners, and now she is our friend.” Q: How did you pick the other chefs for this event? A: “That is a good question. We reached out to different organizations that also do food education or associate with food education. We asked them if they wanted to join us, and they had experience teaching kids about food. They were from all around the metropolitan New York area, and we thought it would be nice to spread the word.” Q: Why is this event for children? A: “I call adults big kids, but we usually have events for children, but everyone can learn here.” Q: What do you think kids will learn from this? A: “Well I hope they learn a little bit more about how they eat every day and where their food comes from. I hope they make some connections to the gardens and the farms that produce food. I hope they learn cooking is fun, and that they can be involved with family meals at home, and maybe learn about new foods, and might be inspired to grow foods at home, and have some fresh foods available.” Q: Will you have this event more often? A: “Well right now this is our slow time. In about five weeks we are gonna open our two acre garden. It’s bigger than this whole tent. Then we have activities every day of the week from April-October. We do cooking demonstrations every week, three times a week, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.” After my interview with Toby, we went to our last tent. It was a tent where they teach you about bread. When I got to the tent they were showing different grains and we had to guess what they were. I guessed two grains and got them right. They were rice and quinoa. At the tent I got to make flour. First, they put in a grain and we mashed it in a stone bowl with a masher. When your time was up they put the flour in a bag to take home. After we finished that tent we headed to our seats to watch Carla’s demo. During the demo, she gave us good tips on how to make a pesto out of broccoli and she was entertained us. She called up a few people for her demo. At the end of the demo it looked so yummy. This was a good experience for me and if you want to do something like this look you should look into some of the other Edible Academy activities at the New York Botanical Garden. This Valentine’s Day was really special. The morning of Valentine's Day, my dad didn’t get me an ordinary present. He got me flowers. That might seem like a really ordinary present for Valentine’s Day, but they were roses. But not just regular roses. They were bacon roses which is the best present a bacon lover can have! Then my dad and I decided to make a special Valentine’s Day dinner for my mom. We looked up some good recipes for a surf and turf. We decided on a Moroccan styled theme. We decided to make lamb and shrimp. First we seasoned the lamb with salt and Ras el hanout. Ras el hanout is a Moroccan spice blend which reminded me of Indian and French spices. For example when you smell the Ras el hanout you could smell the paprika because paprika was in it. It also had cumin, cinnamon, ginger, coriander, turmeric, black pepper, cardamom, allspice, mace, white pepper, rosebuds, nutmeg, cloves, saffron, and bay leaves. After we rubbed the spices on the meat, we put it in a plastic bag and added prunes and honey. Then we put the bag in a vacuum sealer to seal the bag. Once the bag was sealed, we put it in our Sous Vide Supreme machine. The Sous Vide machine will cook it for two hours the way we want it to be cooked without overcooking it. It has water in it and the water is heated to the exact temperature we want the meat to be. Once the machine had the right temperature, we put the bag in. Many restaurants cook using machines like this so that when you cut into the meat it will be the perfect color you want. Then we peeled carrots because we were going to make carrots along with the shrimp and lamb. After we peeled the carrots, we made a paste to put on the carrots. The paste was made out of butter, maple syrup, and harissa sauce. Harissa sauce is a Moroccan pepper sauce and it will give the carrots a kick while the maple syrup gives it sweetness. After we got the paste on the carrots and got them in the oven we had to do the shrimp. So, we got the shrimp and cleaned them under water. Then we put it in a bowl with scallions, lemon zest, ginger, garlic, and sesame oil. Then, I mixed it all together with my hands and then I smelled the bowl and said, “Dad, come over here and smell the bowl, it smells amazing!” My dad came over and smelled the bowl and called out for my mom and they thought it smelled amazing too. After that, we put it in a plastic bag and did the same thing we did to the lamb. Then after we did the vacuum sealer, we put the shrimp in the Sous Vide machine and took the lamb out. For dessert, my mom made chocolate lava cakes. I helped by melting the chocolate. After we finished the shrimp and did the finishing touches we were ready to dig in. When we sat down I tasted the lamb it was sweet and really tender. Then, I tasted the shrimp and it tasted the way it smelled and the carrots were soft and sweet. Then, after we ate and cleared the table, my mom brought out dessert. When I sliced through my chocolate lava cake, a puddle of chocolate came through. When I tasted the cake it was dense and rich. I hope that we all remember this lovely dinner. I hope that everyone else had a cool Valentine’s Day like me!
Here are links to the recipes we made: Moroccan Lamb Chops with Prunes and Honey Baby Carrots Glazed with Harissa and Maple Syrup Shrimp with Lemon and Ginger After being to the other side of the world, I’m really into ramen now so my dad took me to a place called Roc-N-Ramen in New Rochelle. When you walk into a Japanese restaurant you usually see a lot of cultural stuff. Not in this restaurant. In this restaurant, it was just like an empty room, but with a lot of people in it. Man, that place is busy! There were a few tables, but my dad I wanted to sit at the bar. A few minutes later, the waiter came by to take our order. I ordered a Shoyu ramen and my dad got a Tonkotsu ramen, which has a pork bone broth. Here's the deal for the pork broth one. They take pork bones put them in broth and cook it all night. About 5 minutes later, our food came. The pork in it was char-grilled and they cooked the egg so it was nice and runny. It was the best ramen I’ve ever had. When you bit into the pork it wasn’t as fatty as it would be in different places, and when you put the egg in your mouth it just melts. The noodles in the soup are thinner than spaghetti, but they stick together and they are heavy. The noodles here were really good , but it had the same traits as the rest of the normal ramen noodles. When I finished the soup a few minutes later I wanted more of that soup because it was so good. So I totally recommend you go there. It is so good and it’s a great place to go to warm you up in the winter.
It’s getting close to Valentine’s Day and, in my house, Valentine’s Day treats are a big deal. So, we decided to make truffles this year. There are only a few ingredients: Oreos, cream cheese, and melting chocolate. You could also add sprinkles if you want to. First, we crushed Oreos and we had to get them really crushed, so it took a couple minutes. Then, we added cream cheese and mixed it really well with our hands until it was a dark color. We rolled them into balls and put them into a bowl. While my brother and I were making Oreo cream cheese balls, my mom melted the chocolate in the microwave. My brother was done before me with making his chocolate balls. The melting chocolate had been sitting out for a few minutes. That stuff dries quickly. So, when my brother dipped the truffle in the chocolate it was stiff, but it still worked out fine. When it was my turn to dip my truffles in the chocolate, it was the exact opposite of what happened to my brother. My truffles had been sitting out too long, but not my chocolate. So, we had to put my truffles in the fridge and make another batch of melting chocolate. Instead of putting the chocolate in the microwave, we put it in the double boiler on the stove. A double boiler is used so that you don’t have to put the chocolate in water. You put it in a pot above water so it melts. We mixed the chocolate in the double boiler until it got smooth. Then, we took the truffles out of the refrigerator and applied chocolate onto them. After that, we added sprinkles and put them in these cute little cupcake wrappers and we were done! Try this recipe for Valentine’s Day for a little extra love. We learned this recipe from our friend Amy Justiniano. Please keep up with my next few blog posts about my exciting adventures in Vietnam.
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AuthorMy name is Jordan. I am a 12th grader and I love food! Archives
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