Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Report

1.      Explain why you chose the blog topic.

 There were a few reasons we chose cooking as blog topic. First of all, we all agreed that we needed to write something which we were familiar with. After talking with each other, we found we all like cooking, but we were not really good at cooking. Therefore, creating a blog about cooking could keep a record of our cooking history.

After being a blogger, we started to search other blogs to find information about food. We also considered the reasons why other blogs were more attractive than ours. That helped us optimize our blog and make us be better blogger. Second, because cooking is a broad topic, we could write our blog without many difficulties. We have meals every day; we have many opportunities to get some sources for our blog. For example, one of us go to restaurant today, we can take pictures of the food and update our blog with writing about the feeling of that meal. Or one of us cooked something at home; she can update the blog immediately. If we choose a narrow topic, we may not have so many sources to finish our blog. 

2.      What were the largest challenges with a team assignment?

As a team consisting of three people, we faced a lot of challenges. Lacking of corporation could be one of the largest challenges. We made a schedule of updating our blog three or four times a week in order to keep our blog fresh. However, if one of us forgot to update the blog, another member had to write something instead of that one.

What’s more, we would write something familiar with each other sometimes. But we want to make our blog diversified and write many different things. Therefore, we needed to communicate with each other as much as possible. It was quite hard to keep in contact with other members all the time. Tracy and Jamie went travelling for a few days on Christmas holiday and Yevi went out of Sydney on Christmas holiday too. All of us were busy and could not update the blog for a few couple days.

Another main challenge was different people had different ways to finish the job; we had conflicts of blog’s layout and background. It took so much time for us to decide the blog’s looking. We wasted a lot of time on these problems. Actually, we had tried our best to avoid conflicts and learned to listen to other members. At last, we got final decision which made all of three were satisfactory. Thirdly, it was not easy to improve a team blog’s quality.  

3. How did you come up with the final design that you used?
The topic of the blog is cooking and our objective is to share the cooking methods and present special dishes in different countries. When people browsing our blog, they may engender interest in cooking or desire to try them, and then make progress in cooking with us. Therefore, in order to achieve this objective, the main page of our blog has several changing pictures about dishes; they look very delicate and excite praxis.
Every blog we post is talking about cooking method; we write down ingredients and every step, to make it clearly, sometimes we attach photos. If we taste special and delicious food outside, we will take photos and post in our blog as well. Visitors also can write down their comments and share the opinions with us.
The posts range from cold dishes to general meal to dessert which covers a good variety commonly seen in Asian food. We also add gadgets such as videos and link sites to broad horizons.

4. Compare a blog that has similar content to yourself, critically analyse your site comparing theirs.
The one blog we find of good merits whose topic is similar to us is linked on our website----http://www.eatlivetravelwrite.com/.
This blog is appealing to us as it is fairly eye-catching when we just had a glimpse of it. It is created by an Australian girl who teaches French in Canada now. She’s been living and working in England, Hong Kong and France. It is worth noticing that she originally started this blog as something to do in the year between MA and PhD – after all, she uses eating, cooking, taking pictures and writing as the topic. We really agree on this concept of life. 
Firstly, the blog has a simple template with a unique header and straight into the content which is attractive at first glance. Our blog adopts the opposite concept of filled-colour from top to the end which may get visitors out of focus.
Secondly, the main content of the posts are strictly related to the topic, plus detailed information and feelings were shown with some humour comments every now and then. The blogger shared photos so delicate and refined that are close to professional works. Merely browsing the pictures can be a feast for the eye. I must say that she has a wonderful camera with high pixels that can shoot from the very best angle and dimension.
Thirdly, there’re many link sites provided to each post and visitors can find buttons to directly share on social networking hot spots such as Facebook, twitter, MySpace etc. which is an economical and fast way to promote the blog.
Additionally, the blogger said she spend a lot of minutes a day doing something for herself (aka. For the blog) and being creative has been the best refuge from the sometimes stressful life like a teacher/ grad student. So we can conclude she is really committed to the blog who devoted time and efforts, hence updates frequently.
If we want to create a successful blog like hers, those aspects stated above are of basic concerns. But anyway, we really enjoyed visiting her blog for delight.


Sunday, January 9, 2011

Special chinese dish: Spareribs and potato w/ Black bean Sauce~~~

I really really like eat spareribs, so i cooked spareribs and potato w/ black bean sauce for my dinner. hahaha~~~ feel very satisfied ^_^!!!!

Ingredients are: cooking oil, soy sauce, sugar, ginger sliced, cooking wine (approx.15ML) and black bean sauce

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Step 1: cut spareribs into cubes, peel the potato and chop potato into the similar size with spareribs!


step 2:stir-fry ginger sliced in cooking oil in a large skillet until scented

Step 3: add spareribs in the skillet, stir-fry spareribs until remove the water and fishy smell of the spareribs

Step 4: add soy sauce, sugar and cooking wine, stir them

Step 5: add potato and stir

Step 6: add black bean sauce, mix thoroughly, add water, then cover and simmer until spareribs is tender and potato is soft, approximately 20-25 minutes.
 Finished!
 This is a special Chinese dish. Tastes very nice.
 If u like Chinese dishes. Do not miss it!!!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

I like Japanese food ~~~

  Hi, I am Jamie.
  I went to Japan with my families three years ago. It was a great trip and I began to be interested in Japanese culture and Japanese food.
  I visited capital Tokyo,   Nagoya and Hokkaido.


Having supper in Tokyo ..  Stone fire pot  + miso shiru + roast fish + sashimi


Sapporo Seafood Market

sashimi boat (we bought the seafood and restaurant cooked for us)


my sister was eating ramen , almost finised , ha ha ha ,ramen is one kind of Japanese noodle


lunch in Sapporo , many different side dishes



Friday, January 7, 2011

Easy Brekky-----Pancake

During the trip in SA, the backpacker hotel offered homemade pancakes for tenants. Though it's not that delicate, I found it fairly tasty and easy to make. Most importantly, it's not oily thus great for brekky.

So I made myself the simplest pancakes for brekky. All I used were a pan of medium size, some pancake powder which can be bought at any supermarket, and some seasonings.

First, pour the powder into a bowl. To make the pancakes edible, mix it with an egg, some salt and pepper, and some water to form a paste.( sometimes tomato cubes and minced shallots can be added as well)

Second, add cooking oil to the pan and turn on the heat.

Third, gently pour the paste into the pan. Make sure it is even and thin(the thinner, the better taste).

Finally, after cooking for a while, turn the pancake upside down and cook the other side until it is of solid state.

Now it can be served. I like to apply butter on pancakes, jams and bacons are nice as well.
With a cup of milk. A fresh and easy brekky for a fresh start!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Baking a cheesecake

  I prefer to make cheesecakes at home rather than buy cheesecakes in store as cakes on sales are usually not cheap.

  When I was a new learner , I found a few videos from YouTube. They taught audiences how to make a perfect cheesecakes, like this one "Easy Cheesecake Recipe: How To Make Cheesecake "


Ingredients1-1/2 cups HONEY MAID Graham Cracker Crumbs
3 Tbsp. sugar
1/3 cup butter or margarine, melte
4 pkg. (8 oz. each)  Cream Cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
4 eggs

Instructions
PREHEAT oven to 325°F if using a silver 9-inch springform pan (or to 300°F if using a dark nonstick 9-inch springform pan). Mix crumbs, 3 Tbsp. sugar and butter; press firmly onto bottom of pan.

BEAT cream cheese, 1 cup sugar and vanilla in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition just until blended. Pour over crust.

BAKE 55 min. or until center is almost set. Run knife or metal spatula around rim of pan to loosen cake; cool before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. Store leftover cheesecake in refrigerator.

Tips
- Sweets can add enjoyment to a balanced diet, but remember to keep tabs on portions.
- Top with cut-up fresh fruit just before serving.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

BBQ Time ~~ Yummy

  My younger sister and her friends visit bbq restaurants a few times every month, she always asks me to join with them. After that, we call our group "bbq union" , pretty foolish , but funny...
  I would like to share some of delicious food with my blog readers . I am sure you will feel hungry, haha

Roast vegetables

Roast oyster (so colorful , ha ha )


Roast chicken wings

Roast eggplant

Roast scallop(my favour,but a little expense)

 

Monday, January 3, 2011

Herbal Jelly~a fresh summer delight!

Herbal jelly is a renowned Chinese dessert famous for its bitter-sweet cool taste. people like this kind of herbal dishes because they are natural and healthy, especially in the Summer, which relieve the heat.


Now we can see finished products sold in stores which can be directly eaten. 


(P.S. Not for advertisement^^)



But today I decided to make my own jelly and store it for later delight.


The ingredients needed are: Jelly powder and water.


Step one: pour the powder into a container.


Step two:  add water into a pot and heat until boiling




Step three: slowly pour the boiling water into the container just now, and stir in one direction  Or paste can be boiled over the fire.


Step Four: Slowly stir them into a paste, and finally forming the jelly which can be placed into the fridge for cooling.


After cooling down, dice it into small cubes. 



when eating, sugar/honey, fruit cubes, milk/water can be added to taste.


A small tip: I used a heart-shaped mold and a star-shaped one to shape the jelly which is pretty fun~




 It's really smooth and refreshing. Have a try!