Unit: YOU RE on YOUR OWN!

Course: FOODS 11/12Gold

Unit: YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN!

Curriculum Outcomes

It is expected that students will:

• demonstrate the ability to accurately evaluate and follow recipes using a variety of food preparation techniques and equipment
• use a variety of cooking methods to prepare food
• create nutrition plans within a specified budget for a variety of dietary considerations that meet recommendations from Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide
• select recipes and apply cooking principles to prepare healthy dishes and multi-course meals, incorporating presentation and budgetary considerations
• devise plans and implement effective strategies for task sequencing and time management in co-operation with partners and groups

Rationale

“Healthy eating starts in the grocery store. What we buy affects how well we eat. Despite this, consumer research shows that most of us go grocery shopping without a plan to help guide our choices. For example, less than one quarter of Canadians write out a list and stick with it. And we’re not having fun! In fact, 53% of us say that we don’t really enjoy shopping for food.”

“Grocery shopping seems simple enough, but Americans are wasting more money, food and time than ever by not planning…. “Americans have forgotten how to food-shop," says Phil Lempert of SupermarketGuru.com, which tracks the industry. "When we don't plan, we buy the wrong things, which causes us to spend more money and more time. Today households on average toss 14 percent of the food they buy, about double what we threw out 20 years ago. Compare this with our parents' and grandparents' generations, when time was spent each week planning menus so that every last item that was bought was used.”

I have tried many different types of assignments for our final project or final weeks of class. When I first developed the Think Global, Eat Local I tried it at the end of a semester. It went very well, but I realized how important it was to fit it in earlier in the course. I have tried many variations of the “Iron Chef” theme which is a great way to use up what you have left in your cupboards at the end of the semester and it usually involves lots of creativity for students.

The next time I teach Foods 11/12 this is how I want to wrap up the course – with an assignment that tries to engage students with problem solving and planning. This unit reflects what I think are some of the key learning outcomes for this course listed above.

TIMELINE

Week 1: 5 Key Strategies, Sample Menu, Sample Recipes

MondayHealthy Baking

TuesdayPlan for Leftovers

WednesdayDon’t waste Food

ThursdayVegetable & Fruits

FridayUse your Pantry

Week 2: You’re on Your Own! Assignment

MondayIndividual/Family Summary

TuesdayRecipe Choices

WednesdayNutritional Analysis

ThursdayTyping & Shopping List

FridayOnline Grocery Order

RESOURCES

Saving Dinner ideas for shopping lists – the key to successful dinners

Canadian Living tested recipes with nutrition information

Stats Canada weekly food expenditures

Healthy Eating: CHEAP AND EASY

http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/library/publications/year/2002/HealthyEatingdoc.pdf

The Dietitians of Canada: The Cost of Eating in BC

Eating Well on a Student Budget

Saving Money at the Grocery Store and Grocery Shopping Strategies

Cart Smarts

Lesson 1: STRATEGIES

Purpose

Develop Five Key strategies for healthy and economical meal planning.

Objectives Students will be able to:

Discuss and analyse a variety of grocery planning and shopping strategies.

Materials

Sample FAMILY MEAL PLAN with RECIPES

Procedure

This week: Focus on some of the key concepts in meal planning.

I have 5 strategies that greatly impact my own planning and grocery shopping for my family. I share these with students and ask them to formulate their own list explaining their rationale and using examples from their meal plans.

• Healthy Baking

• Plan for Leftovers

• Don’t waste Food

• Vegetable & Fruits

• Use your Pantry

There are many other possible strategies for students that will likely be affected by who they are planning the meals for, and the ages and activities of those people. Brainstorm some other possibilities with students: eat out less, shop more often/shop less often, pack a lunch to school, share with friends, plan with another family member, shop online, organize for home delivery, read flyers, price comparison shop, don’t buy convenience foods…..etc… I don’t expect students to be able to analyse my strategies and narrow down their own right away. I expect these will develop while they are planning their meals and grocery lists.

Day One:

• Healthy baking

Samples: Apple Cinnamon Muffins or Banana Bread

Prepared baked goods are often high fat, high sugar, low nutrition and expensive.

Day Two:

• What makes good leftovers?

Samples: Chili & Cornbread, Roast Pork & Veggies or Moroccan Chicken Salad

Plan recipes that make more than you need for one meal. Choose foods that travel and reheat well.

Day Three:

• Don’t waste food!

Variety is very important for your health, but try to use ingredients in more than one recipe, especially ingredients that are more economical or limited to certain quantities. Yogurt is a good example – much more economical to buy a 650 g container, but you don’t want to waste the rest if you only need 125 mL! This can be especially challenging when you first live by yourself if you are used to living and shopping for a whole family!

One of the best ways to save money on food is to waste less – plan and buy only what you will use – if you only need 1 piece of celery for a soup recipe don’t buy a whole head of celery unless you need it for something else that week. Sure, per piece, it’s more expensive to buy one at a time, but it’s not economical to buy a whole head if you only use one piece of it.

Samples: Apples – crepes, muffins, snack on their own

Bananas – snack, fruit shake, banana bread

Cornmeal – waffles, cornbread

Plain Yogurt – banana bread, apple muffins, fruit shake

Whole Wheat Bread – sandwiches, toast, make fresh breadcrumbs for fish recipe

Cheddar cheese – sandwiches, crackers & cheese, cornbread

Carrots – veggie sticks, roasted veggies, carrot salad

Day Four:

• Buy lots of Vegetables and Fruits – fill your shopping cart in the fresh produce section with as much local, seasonal, organic produce as you can. Plan for it.

When you analyse your daily food intake look for patterns – do you consistently miss out on the number of Vegetable & Fruit servings? What should you do? Focus on this food group at snack times. Fresh, raw fruits and vegetables – low prep, high nutrition.

Day Five

• Use what’s already in your pantry

The first thing you should do before planning meals for the week or writing that shopping list is look in the fridge, freezer and pantry cupboards. What do you have that needs to get used? Have a big bunch of broccoli that didn’t get used last week? Plan a meal that will use it before it goes bad and gets wasted. Running low on some staples that you know will get eaten? Add milk (for example) to your list right away…

This is the only strategy that is important for me at home but I haven’t made it a part of this assignment. It would be easy to include this strategy by giving students several items from the classroom pantry/fridge/freezer that you would like used up by the end of the semester and ask them to plan to incorporate these items. Trying this assignment for the first time I would like to see how the budget aspect works out and I’m not going to have students actually cook the recipes they plan for.

Discuss one key strategy each day this week. Keep adding to the brainstorming list of possibilities and keep this list visible somewhere in the classroom so that students will be able to refer to it as they plan their meals and develop the strategies which suit their needs the best. Depending on your budget and class time you could have students prepare related recipes from your sample menu a few days this week or you could allow them time to start their planning.

Lesson 2: PLANNING ASSIGNMENT

Purpose

The Problem: How can you feed yourself for less than $50 a week?

Objectives Students will be able to:

Plan and demonstrate healthy meal plans, shopping list and budget for themselves or a family for a week.

Materials

Sample FAMILY MEAL PLAN with RECIPES

Healthy Canadian Cookbooks

Procedure

Day One:

• Individual/Family Summary

Students can choose to plan for themselves or a grandparent living alone, a family (current or future), roommates… or… other options. Students could plan for their current family, their siblings and their parents. They could plan for their future family – pretend they are a parent with children and choose their ages. They will need to write the gender and age of each person to relate serving sizes and food requirements. Ask students to write a ½ to 1 page summary of the individual or family or friends living together – what are their activities, jobs (how does shift work affect eating habits), food preferences (vegetarian?), physical limitations (grandparent who can’t drive to the grocery store), etc. What other factors might affect food choices?

Several factors of this assignment will depend on your community location and culture. Grocery prices will depend on where you live. Your pantry basic list will depend on the ethnicity of your students. You may want to adjust some of the assignment requirements in the handout that follows.

My sample reflects where we live on Vancouver Island and the type of students that I teach. I was going to use a fictional family with teenage children (close to the ages of my students) but then I remembered how much it means to students that I care about their lives and that I am willing to share with them. They already know about my family from stories during demonstrations and examples that I use. Most of the recipes that I teach students are recipes that I do actually cook at home on a regular basis. This is really important to me. I feel like my sample family meal plan is a genuine reflection of what we eat in a week, and I know students will be able to relate to the choices we make and the samples that I will discuss.

Day Two:

• Recipe Choices

All of my sample meal plan recipes are from or adapted from Bonnie Stern’s Simply HeartSmart Cooking and More HeartSmart Cooking.

I don’t require that students take all their recipes from one or two books like I did, but I do suggest some cookbooks that can make the assignment easier. Such as these:

A few reasons using one or two books is easier

• similar format for all recipes, easier to copy

• standard nutritional information

• Canadian cookbooks list metric and imperial measures

• often cookbook authors have favourite pantry staples – several recipes will use common ingredients

Day Three:

• Nutrition Analysis

Students should to refer to the individualized food guides they created in the lunch unit.

To see whether their daily plan meets the Food Guide recommendations you may require that students use the food guide servings tracker:

Or the Dietitians of Canada EATracker:

“EATracker lets you track your day's food and activity choices and compares them to the guidelines laid out by Health Canada. EATracker assesses your food choices and provides personalized feedback on your total intake of energy (calories) and essential nutrients and compares this to what is recommended for your age, gender, and activity level. It also determines your body mass index (BMI) and provides information to help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight.”

I will have students estimate their food guide servings for each day of their meal plan and I will have them choose one day to enter and analyse using the Dietitians of Canada EATracker. Students should print out the daily assessment to include with their assignment.

Day Four & Five:

• Shopping List & Grocery Order

Once students are happy with their meal plan they need to create a shopping list and then use an online grocery store to figure out the cost for the week. I will post a list of pantry staples that students don’t need to include in their grocery order. Items such as flour, sugar, oil, vinegar, spices, soy sauce, etc. You may discover a common ingredient that should be included on the pantry list. You will need to post your own list of pantry staples depending on your students’ tastes and cultures. This can dramatically influence the overall grocery cost that students will calculate so it is important to choose the pantry list carefully. You may want to decide on a list of sauces and condiments to include with your students, or be flexible and add to the pantry list while students are working on their plans.

We will use Thrifty Foods, Quality Foods or Sobeys online stores.

Students may have to go back and make adjustments to their meal plans and recipes if they have overspent their budget.

Evaluation

Assignment handout follows.

Reflection

Would it be useful to give students a list of required foods? Foods from the classroom that need to get used up? Or give a list of required foods to make it easier to evaluate how economical or nutritional students’ plans are?

How many students will be able to afford these plans in the future? Depending on the student population and the experience of this unit I would like to modify this unit for a focus on food security and thoroughly examine “The Cost of Eating in BC” with students.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: MEAL PLAN

© 2007 Leikermoser

Check List & Self Evaluation

 Individual/Family/Friend Summary – 250 to 500 words

 5 Key Planning/Shopping Strategies – include explanation and reference to sample recipes

 1 week – 7 days – breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks

 Minimum 10 recipes must include source of recipe, metric and imperial measurements, and nutritional information

 Include a copy of your food guide, estimate intake each day.

 Choose one day and complete a full intake and activity analysis at EATracker. Print and include the daily assessment.

 Shopping List – Organized by store department

 Grocery Order – Copy and paste from online grocery order.

Maximum $50 per person.

 Summary – 200 to 300 words

Comments & Grades

/20

/25

/35

/50

/10

/10

/20

/20

/10

TOTAL /200

© 2007 Leikermoser

Leikermoser Family

Meal Plan

male age 33

female age 31

female age 6

female age 4

male age 1

January

For our family of 5 with three young children, “4 Servings” is usually perfect. I keep this in mind when looking at recipe yields and planning amounts of food. We love to bake so we try to plan healthy choices for snacks. A batch of muffins or banana bread usually makes enough for our family for 2 servings each.

When we plan to eat leftovers for lunch the next day, I put enough aside before even serving dinner. I find this an easy way to manage our portion sizes. This way we don’t over eat and lunch is all ready for the next day.

We look forward to leisurely weekend breakfasts – waffles, crepes, pancakes, soft boiled eggs, French toast, omelettes, poached eggs and toast…. These are our comfort foods – Some of our favourite foods. The kids have been known to request “Breakfast” when we’re in the mood for a really easy dinner. We love trying new recipes and different ethnic cuisines. We are always experimenting with new foods and looking for healthy ways to prepare them.

THIS IS A WINTER MEAL PLAN.