Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Last week, during the final week of our 'Science of Cooking Class - with a Food Writer and an Engineer', Jenn and I talked to the kids about the science of taste and smell.  And, after watching an episode of  Brain Games , we decided to have the kids test their palate mettle by identifying foods while blindfolded and tasting foods while blindfolded and with their noses plugged. Here's where we started the discussion... What are the 5 senses? Which ones affect how we taste food? Here are some taste facts that Jenn shared... Everyone has a different number of taste buds. You can't taste very well if you can't smell. Eating sweets forms a memory of a meal. You can tweak your tastebuds. Your tastebuds prefer savory when you're in an airplane. Some of your taste preferences are genetic. In fact, your genes determine whether cilantro tastes like soap to you or not. On to the science of taste and smell... You taste with your brai...

One of the benefits of having a best friend whose kid attends school with my kids: we can co-teach a class! Our boys' school has 6-week elective courses that are volunteer-led called SEMs or Schoolwide Enrichment Models. I've taught several through the years; Jenn is new to the SEM world since this is the first year that G can take one. So, she wanted to teach together. Perfect. Naturally it has to involve food...and science. To include all three of our kids, this is going to be an all grades class. Yikes! I've never had the span of 1st graders to 8th graders. This will be a culinary adventure. We are still working on our syllabus, but we plan to cover emulsification, fermentation...not sure what else. It's a good thing we have till February to plan. Stay tuned.