Hell's Kitchen

Well, sorry for not posting in so long.  I was on a great 8 day winery tour of northern Italy which I will begin to share this week once I get my thoughts and notes together.  What I wanted to talk about now is Hell's Kitchen which I watched at a few points during the show although hard to stomach.

I used to be a fan of the show.  I liked the competition and it was entertaining.  Now I just see it as a show that sheds a bad light on chefs.  I do not know how they choose the competitors but they do not seem to be all that sophisticated socially or personally.  The thing that drives me the most crazy is how out of shape this batch of contestants appear to be -- more so than any other.  I do not like it all that much when watching them chain smoke in their personal time which is not good for their sense of taste and the tongue is perhaps a chefs most important piece of cooking equipment.  Or they are drinking.  Then there are the fights that erupt between competitors during the various competitions between teams, during service and in their private quarters (of course not so private since filmed).  Even more of a puzzle is that they cannot cook the simplest of dishes during service this time around like pork, chicken or a steak for goodness sake.  Not good!  I wish they would show some of them doing something constructive like having an intelligent conversation about food or heaven forbid, going for a run in the morning or doing some kind of exercise.

So I am now boycotting watching the show but will use it as a teaching tool to show students how NOT TO BEHAVE as hospitality professionals.  There is just no place for bad attitudes, limited intelligence, anger management issues, chain smoking, bad hygiene, drinking to handle stress, petty bickering and the rest.  Worse still is that the show has Ramsay play the role of a fire breathing asshole chef for the American television viewer when he indeed is not portrayed this way at all in Britain.  How sad. 

I hope you will do the same.  Tell students that the behavior on display on Hell's Kitchen is not cute or entertaining.  I will be doing so when teaching the restaurant class again this fall and leading by example!

Learning Styles Debunked

Perhaps you have heard of Daniel Willingham on your own or in some of my posts over the years.  He wrote a great book, "Why Students Don't Like School" and encourage you to read it over the summer if you have not done so already.  He argues that there is no evidence for learning styles, so changing up your teaching to accommodate the hypothesized (although widely accepted with little data) styles will not change the learning.  I know many want to believe that there is such a thing as learning styles and it can help one be a better teacher because it makes sense but there is no evidence to support it other than folk lore.

Here is an excerpt from an article entitled "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" which discusses learning styles:

Question: What does cognitive science tell us about the existence of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and the best way to teach them?
The idea that people may differ in their ability to learn new material depending on its modality—that is, whether the child hears it, sees it, or touches it—has been tested for over 100 years. And the idea that these differences might prove useful in the classroom has been around for at least 40 years.
What cognitive science has taught us is that children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn't affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content's best modality. All students learn more when content drives the choice of modality. In this column, I will describe some of the research on matching modality strength to the modality of instruction. I will also address why the idea of tailoring instruction to a student's best modality is so enduring—despite substantial evidence that it is wrong.  You can read the entire article here, which is a good read:
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2005/willingham.cfm

You can also watch a video where he explains the trouble with learning styles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk

Enjoy!

Am off to Italy and hope me and the iPad will get along so I can post my journey on  to the blog.  We shall see!

Banfi Wine Tour of Italy

I am extremely honored to be representing Purdue's School of Hospitality Management at the annual Banfi Foundation Scholastic Wine tour, which starts in Milan and ends in Rome over a 7 day period.  I will be joining faculty and students from over a dozen other top hospitality and culinary programs in the United States on this educational tour.  Along the way we will be visiting some of Italy's best wineries located in Vinge Regali, Acqui Terme, Gamba, Reggio and more. 

Many of you who read this blog may have even been on this tour or one of your own as a culinary educator or restaurateur over the years but this will be my first.  If you have or have not been to Italy I am going to take you along through the blog and post the highlights of each day and photos or videos if at all possible.  I know I will be able to post website links from those I will be visiting at the very least.  I am taking my new iPad which I hate so far but hope to come to terms with it as a working tool like my laptop. That being said, I will do all I can to share what I am learning with you so that you can share with students.  If you have tips for me to enjoy the tour as a novice feel free to e-mail me at lalopam@purdue.edu.

What the H is a Calorie?

Okay, I am closer to age 60 than I like to admit but there is one thing I never really got and that is, "what is a calorie?"  This question was asked of people in the film "Supersize Me" and those interviewed on camera could not define a calorie.  Indeed it was finally defined by renowned nutritionist and food scientist Marion Nestle in the film after the "people on the street" could not do it.  Nestle defined it as "the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of a quart of water by 1 degree centigrade."  Say again?!  That definition left me clueless.

But now Nestle has a new book out entitled, "Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics" that she co-wrote with Malden Nesheim and it is an excellent primer on the history of the science concerning calories.  The chapters are short and concise making it easier to digest (pun intended) the information on calories.

Did you know that the concept of a calorie was written about by the Greek physician Hippocrates around 400 B.C. especially as it relates to the secret of health, which is to balance diet and activity?  Hippocrates reasoned that was a way to forestall illness and have a healthy life.  I know the answer to this question but one can only wonder why such sage advice prevented the epidemic of Type II diabetes and obesity we have today because so many cannot live their lives according to this simple hypothesis.

Then there is the example of Santorio Sanctorious who in the 1600's built a contraption to be the first one to study human genetics with respect to the use of energy in the body (tied of course to the definition of calories).  Although some say he made of OC disorder, he took the initiative to weigh himself, weigh everything he ate and drank, and everything he produced in urine and feces nearly every day for thirty years.  From this dogged research he noticed the effects on how is body weight was effected by the foods he ate and the resulting waste excretions.  He attributed this to "insensible perspiration" but little did he know at the time he was discovering what we now know about calories.

I highly recommend this book to culinary educators as a summer read.  It is really a fascinating journey into the ancient and modern science of the research on calories and written in a manner that allowed me to comprehend and apply the concept to my diet and the way I will teach the restaurant management class in the fall when we discuss the calorie count in each dish we serve the public.

As a result of reading only the first half of this book I know longer think of calories as a bad thing, I think of them in terms of how I can use food and drink to power my body to do what I need to do every day which is get out of bed and be a vibrant teacher, and climb on my bike or work out in the gym to fend off the aging process.  Perhaps you too will understand "calories" and pass it along to your students for their professional and personal use.

Off to the NRA Show in Chicago!

I am truly excited to be going to the restaurant show in Chicago this year, although for only a couple of days for four great reasons.  The first reason I am excited is that I will take the train for the first time from Lafayette, IN to Union Station in Chicago for $19!  I LOVE traveling by train, it is so relaxing.  You can kick back, watch the scenery roll by, read a book, take a nap in your comfy seat and more.  We were used to taking trains all over the UK during my six month sabbatical in Wales, UK.  In fact we never drove once the entire time we were in Wales to do sightseeing as a family or when I needed to take business trips for my research on sustainable tourism, which was only fitting due to the nature of the research!  So I am looking forward to getting back on a train.

The second reason I am excited is that I will see plenty of old friends, colleagues, business associates, alums, current students, FELC advisory board members, FELC members and more during the show; it is like Homecoming weekend.  It is such a great time to catch up with who is doing what in their personal lives and professional careers.  Perhaps I will see some of you reading this blog post at the Show.  If you are going come see me in the Purdue booth for the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management on Monday afternoon or Tuesday.

And of course the third reason is that I LOVE Chicago.  It is truly a great city and I have been visiting it as part of the show since 1989.  The city and I have truly come a long way since then and both are better off for it or so I would like to think.  I am still trying to find a watch I lost late one night on Rush Street but that is another story for another day.

Finally there is the obligatory stop at the Billy Goat on Hubbard, below the Wrigley Building.  It is the place that inspired the "Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger" skit with Dan Akroyd and John Belushi on Saturday Night Live from their days at Second City where they were regulars.  Of course, I will have the grilled cheese now since going vegetarian but the atmosphere and the eclectic mix of people at 1 AM is awesome!

In closing, it was a great pleasure seeing so many at my seminars as part of the Education Development Series at the Central and Northeast Regional ACF Conferences.  The series entitled "Teaching that Sticks" was a great success and hope it has made a difference in the way those who attended the series teach their courses when back on their respective campuses.  Chef Carmel also had the same pleasure of seeing so many culinary educators at his seminars for the South and Southwest Regional ACF Conferences!