Today we made a Thanksgiving dinner, and it was amazing. It was cool because this was like a little preview to what we are going to eat on Thursday. Mrs. Ariss and I made the turkey. First we made a sauce to put under the skin and then we put a bunch of vegetables and lemons and spices in the turkey cavity. We did this all really fast because it had to cook for 3 hours and we wanted to have enough time to eat.

After that I was put on bacon duty. At the store, some of my fellow classmates bought extra bacon so we had a nice mid morning snack.

Along with the turkey and bacon, we had mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and a bunch of desserts. Sachin made cheesecake, which was divine. Also Mrs. Ariss made humus and grape leaves. I am not a big fan of grape leaves but the humus was amazing.

Today we went to Ann Arbor. Our first stop was at a place called Whole Foods, which is amazing grocery, story that they have there. This place is amazing and has everything that you could possibly want ever there. I bought some chocolate covered ginger, which no one like but me which is fine I guess, more for me. The next stop in town was zingermans. This is a locally owned amazing deli and bakeshop. This store is cool for many reasons. One, because they have amazing food, and two because they have amazing customer service. All of the people there were so nice and willing to help. After we tried all the different meats and oils, I sampled some blue cheese, my favorite, and then I asked someone about all the honey they had. Since my dad is a bee keeper I already know so much about honey, but he really opened my eyes to all the different types of honey and how it is made. I wish I had his name so I could email him with some more questions. Next we went to this burger place for lunch. These were some of the best burgers I have ever had and I loved it so much. All in all, my trip to Ann Arbor was amazing.

Today was kind of a leftover day. We baked the remaining bread, which was great. I burnt my finger however taking the bread out of the oven, luckily it was not too bad and I am fine now. After we did all of the bread. We made some chili, which was great. We made green chicken chili, which I didn’t try but I am told it was amazing. And some beef chili, which I did have some of and was very happy with. All of the food we made today was great especially the Greek cheese pies that we made which were AMAZING. I would eat them any day of the week, all day every day. I am looking forwards to going to Ann Arbor tomorrow.

Today is an exciting day for me. My dad is coming in to cook bread for everyone. He has been making bread for a while now and he wanted to share his skills with everyone. Now bread baking takes some time so he brought in a bunch of dough at different stages in the process so that we could make all the bread from start to finish today. First we made cinnamon buns. These were really fun to make because of all the kneading we did with it. Cinnamon bun dough is very buttery so it felt kind of cool in our hands. At the end of the day we put some of it in the oven for dessert and it all turned out amazing with some lemon glaze on the top. Next we made baguettes. These were much like the cinnamon buns in that we kneaded them for a long time but then we shaped them into baguette form, or I made mine into a heart, and baked them in the oven with a pan of water underneath to make the outsides crispy. The final thing that we did was to make pizza. We do this all of the time at my house but I still tore the first dough that I tried to through up in the air, to the hysterical laughter of my teacher LK. But when I finally made a suitable crust I put on my peperoni and pineapple and made myself an amazing pizza for my lunch that day. Today was really special because my dad was here and I had a lot of fun.

Today I am cooking dinner for my family. I wanted a surprise so I let my dad pick out of my cookbook what he wanted for dinner. He picked out that I should make pan fried potatoes with a sweet-Tart Tamarind-Date Sauce. This was an appetizer and was amazing. It was basically just fried potatoes with what tasted like a sweet raisin sauce. As bad as that sounds it was actually really good. The next dish that I made was tamarind beef with shallots and mango. This was were I ran into problems. The mangos I had were really kinda iffy and didn’t look that good, so I decided to swap that out for some fresh apricots. It tasted good and I believe it to be an amazing substitution. The final dish I made was saffron rice. This was cool because it was a bit like the rice that I made in class for the Mexican food day but with Indian spices. All in all I think my food came out great and I am very proud of what I accomplished.