Harry D

            Last weekend I went to NYC with my family to go to the Broadway show for Spiderman: Turn off the Dark.  It was a great show.  I then went to the Brooklyn Diner in Times Square right after.  I got a double bacon cheese-burger with fries.  It was really expensive for some reason.  It cost $27.50.  I still think it was for every penny of it.  It tasted delicious.  The service was a little bit long.  This is because it was really packed.  I think this is alright though because the people were friendly and the food tasted great! 

P.S.  Ms. Hoagland: I’m sorry that my blog is late… we just got our internet switched from at&t to charter… It is finally working.

Recently both inside and outside of school, cupcakes have been very relevant. We just had the cupcake wars in culinary class a few weeks ago (which was won by the dream team table 12), and so our groups had to find creative cupcake recipes to use. It was fun picking out flavors of cakes and frosting and deciding how to present them in a decorative way on the plate.  We got to try different flavors than you might normally expect, like smores cupcakes with graham cracker crust as the cup's shell and whipped frosting that tasted like marshmallows. Testing out different combinations of flavors was interesting and we got to experiment. Coincidentally right around the time of cupcake wars, the new cupcake shop in town just opened, called Cherries Cupcakes. I went on the opening day last week for an after-lacrosse snack with some teammates. I tried two cupcakes that day: the Oreo cupcake and a chocolate cupcake with chocolate ganache and some type of frosting. They both tasted great, but the Oreo cupcake was better than I could have expected. There was a perfect amount of frosting and a piece of an Oreo cookie on top. Oreos are one of my favorite things by themselves, but the Oreo flavor in the cupcake was much better than regular Oreos alone. Another day that I went to the shop, I tried a "vanilla fudge sundae" cupcake with chocolate cake, vanilla frosting, sprinkles, and a cherry, and an apple crumb cupcake which was surprisingly one of the best cupcakes I think I've ever had. It's definitely a plus having a good cupcake store in town, and I'm going to keep going back to try all of the flavors offered there.

- Hayley D

Gustavo P

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday Meals

            As a catholic, we don’t eat meat on Ash Wednesday or on Good Friday to show respect. So we have to come up with something to replace our delicious meat and poultry. Normal people would just go to fish instead but we like to make our meals a little more interesting and a little more flavorful. For Ash Wednesday, we did fry some fish and made a mashed potato with some peas as a side dish. Later that day, for dinner, we had more of the great fish we had made and we also had some corn on the cob to go along with it. But the food fun doesn’t stop there. Even though we could eat meat the other days, we chose to continue making meatless meals because they were so much more interesting and less mainstream. We made meals that included fried eggplant, other fried vegetables, and different kinds of fish and cooked different ways. With good Friday coming up soon, we already started our meatless grocery shopping to prepare our great meals ahead of time. We have salmon ready to be cooked and various kinds of vegetables to be fried, broiled, and other ways to be cooked. Cooking is such a big part of my family because depending on the occasion, the food we make is different every time. We don’t always eat the same thing which always makes dinner and lunch interesting. Without food variety, holidays and life at home would always be so boring.

Nicole O

Cookies

Cookies are by far the best things in the whole entire world. They are just so amazing it is ridiculous. And the best part is there are so many different kinds of cookies. My favorites are the classic Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I prefer making them from scratch rather than buying the premade dough that you just have to slice and bake, but those are still fantastic. The other week when we had to chose a cookie recipe to make in culinary my group chose double chocolate chip Oreo cookies and they were amazing. We made them by making regular chocolate cookie dough and then adding in white chocolate chip cookies and crushed up Oreos to the dough. The only thing that could have made them better would have been if we cooked them for one or two minutes left because once they cooled down they got hard very fast. For my sisters birthday I made her Snickers cookies which were delicious. They were just like the Oreo cookies where I made chocolate cookie dough and then added crushed up Snickers and then baked them.

            Other than just making homemade cookies, there is a plethora of premade cookies that can be bought at the grocery store. Some of these include Oreos which are just amazing. I love how there are special types of Oreos for the different seasons. For halloween there is Oreos with orange frosting in the middle and then in the winter the frosting is red or green and then there is pink frosting for the spring. Also, with Oreos the more frosting in the middle the better, double stuffed Oreos are heaven. Cookies just make everyone’s day better and there isn’t anyone I know that doesn’t like cookies. The great thing about cookies is that they can be eaten any time of the day all year long. As for ice cream, it’s also amazing but it isn’t something that someone would want to have in the middle of the freezing cold winter. Cake and cupcakes are also good, but if you don’t have frosting with them then they aren’t as good and having frosting around the house isn’t always as handy as having the ingredients for cookies. Cookies are so easy and fast to make which makes them even better. Mrs. Fields Cookies are also so cute and amazing. They are the size of a pizza but a cookie; I mean seriously what could get better than that!?  So, it is easy to conclude that I love cookies and baking all different kinds of them. There is definitely over 100 different types of cookies that are all so delicious.

Jackson C

3-27-13

Chilis

Last Saturday, I went to Chilis in Danbury; one of my favorite “chain restaurants”. For an appetizer we got chips and queso. For an entrée I got my usual, Big Mouth Bites. In my opinion, these are the besty things there because their ranch sauce is so good when put on the burger. My sister got the same and my dad got the avocado burger.
            For dessert, we went to Friendly’s, which is right next to Chilis. I got my usual, the Oreo Friend-Z, which is pretty much a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Over all, the night was a success.

Matt Villamana

3/27/13

Wing Night Buffalo Bills

Every month Newtown Ambulance has a meeting one Wednesday out of every month.  These meetings usually run for about 2 or 3 hours.  Around the end of the meeting its usually about nine o’clock and everyone is starving.  The one thing I look forward to on these Wednesday nights is going to get wings after the meeting.  Me and about 5 or six other people usually go to Buffalo Bills, in Monroe.  Buffalo Bills is just a fantastic place to go if you’re just getting wings.  To be honest I don’t even think they serve much else.  I do not recommend going there though if you want a quiet dinner.  The one downside to Buffalo Bills is that it is mainly a bar so its very loud at times. But it’s a great place to go with a bunch of buddy’s to go get some wings.  The bonus about going with a bunch of people is that its 30 cent wing night.  You can stock up on as many wings as you need for only a few dollars.  The wings themselves are also very good I believe you have a total of five different flavors ranging from mild to Very hot to Choose from. Any way it’s always a great place to go with a bunch of friends and I highly recommend it.

Albert D

Deviled eggs

These are deviled eggs. Every party we have at our house or a family members house we have deviled eggs. We make deviled eggs because they require a lot of eggs and we get 6 eggs a day from our chickens. These are good to make because it uses up the whole egg. The orange on top of 1 deviled egg in the picture is roe. Roe is eggs from a female fish’s ovary. These deviled eggs were used for a party we had for a family friend’s graduation party.