Tena ra koutou katoa.

In Maori, my class and I watched Te Pu O Te Wheke perform on stage for kapa haka nationals in Nelson.  There are 42 groups performing. 3 groups representing Te Tai Tokerau and Te Pu O Te Wheke being one of them.  In my honest opinion I think they did very well, they performed with confidence and overall the whole group amazed me.

Their actions, their facials and stances were impressive throughout their whole bracket which is why I think they stood out.  The thing that stood out for me the most out of their whole bracket was their haka because it was well put together and they performed it at their best.

In today’s maths lesson my group and I were given a task to find the radius of a ping pong ball.

Firstly we started by finding the circumference of the ball.  In doing so we grabbed a string and wrapped it around the ball.  We then drew a line where both ends of the string met.  After that I grabbed the ruler and measured from the end of the string to the line marked to find the circumference in which it ended up coming out as 13cm.

When we found the circumference I was able to use the formula C=2πr. 

All we had to do was divide the circumference of our ball ( 13cm ) by 2π where I was able to find that the radius of the ball was 2.07. 

In my hospitality and catering class my group and I put together a nice warm pumpkin soup with a side of pizza dough bread.   It was a very easy recipe to assemble with the help of many hands working together to create a nice dish of pumpkin soup.  We had already made the pizza dough bread multiple times so we already had the knowledge on how to make it off by heart.

The recipe we used to make the pumpkin soup is:

1 C peeled,diced pumpkin, ½ C peeled, diced carrot, ¼ onion, finely diced, Peeled, grated ginger – to taste (1tsp), Crushed garlic – to taste (1tsp), Curry powder – to taste (1tsp), 3 C water

Roast pumpkin, carrot and onion until tender and golden.

Put in a pan with ginger, garlic and curry powder and saute until it becomes fragrant.

Add water and simmer until vegetables are beginning to break down.

Taste and correct flavour to your liking.

Blend soup and pass through a sieve, squeeze as much through as possible or your soup will be thin.

Serve in a bowl garnished with a drizzle of coconut cream, and a sprinkle of fried shallots.

For the pizza dough bread its basically the same as making your normal fry bread or takakau recipe.

By combining yeast, warm water, sugar letting that sit in a bowl in a warm place till it starts to foam up.  We then would add about 2 cups of flour and need it in with the foamy like yeast mixture and let that rise in a warm place for an hour till doubled in size.

One the dough has risen in size we would then place our dough into an oven tray and spread it out, poking holes into the dough and covering it in oil and a bit of sea salt,  we were also being extra and added some garlic and herbs to add a bit more flavour to our pizza dough bread.

I normally don’t like pumpkin soup but the recipe we used I really enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’ve had pizza dough bread multiple times and I think it gets better and better every time my group and I make it.

In today’s hospitality and catering class my group and I prepared a delicious vegetable gratin to share and eat.   Our ingredients for class hadn’t arrived beforehand so we worked with what we did have.

A vegetable gratin is a casserole type food filled with veges like potatoes and pumpkin. etc and topped off with cheese and a nice cream filling.   What my group and I did to make our vegetable gratin was to prepare our vegetables by washing. peeling, cutting and rewashing them to make sure they were nice and clean to put in our dish.

Firstly we preheated our oven on 180 before starting our recipe.  In our dish we used sliced potatoes as a bottom layer, then continued to layer pumpkins, onions, silver beet, spring onions, and then more potatoes and oregano to cover our greens so that they wouldn’t burn.  We then filled it with a cream soup we made with cream, milk and onion soup powder then covered it with tin foil and put it in the oven for about 30 minutes till we pulled them out to then layer with cheese and put them back in the oven until the cheese was melted and nice and golden on top.

I really enjoyed making this recipe.  The most fascinating thing about today is that my class fed around 50 individuals for just $52.   This recipe would have to be my favourite by far.   When I heard the word ‘vegetable’ I thought it would be some yuck recipe overloaded with vegetables I dislike, but rather than that it ended up being a mixture of vegetables I do like.  I give this recipe a 10/10.

In today’s hospitality and catering class my group and I worked together to create some sweet blueberry and apple muffins, as well as some banoffee tarts on the side.

In order to make the muffins my group split into two separate groups.  One half on peeling and cutting the apples and blueberries into perfect sizes to go as a filling in our muffins, and the other half making the base of the muffins.

The ingredients we use to make the muffins were:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup white sugar

1 egg

1 cup milk

¼ cup vegetable oil

In my honest opinion I really enjoyed baking this recipe and it ended up turning out very delicious in the end.

We then mixed in our blueberries and apples after we peeled, washed, cut, and precooked them in boiling water.  and put them in the oven at 200 degrees C until nice and golden.

To make the banoffee tarts we were given a miniature tart to fill with a caramel custard we prepared earlier on and topped them off with some finely diced bananas, caramel/chocolate, ice cream and more.

How we made it was with 2 Tbsp Edmonds custard powder,  2 Tbsp Chelsea sugar and milk.  We were given the caramel by our teacher to mix into our custard to create a very golden caramel custard.

I enjoyed making this recipe because it was quick and easy.  I didn’t really enjoy the tart though, it didn’t fit my likings but overall I would give it a 7/10.

Identify employment opportunities within the hospitality industry

The hospitality industry offers a wide range of employment opportunities.  You could consider positions within each of the three sectors of hospitality.  The first being hotels and accommodation.  This sector could have a range of employment opportunities, such as: management roles ( front desk manager, general manager ), food service staff ( chef, waitress ), event coordinators, etc.   In sector 2,  food service and entertainment, you could find yourself applying for a role in a fine dining restaurant as a chef, server, bartender, host, etc.  Theme parks & entertainment venues will also offer employment opportunities in the food service and entertainment sector as ride operations, security officers, guest services associates, ticketing agents, food and beverage attendants, and more.  Lastly, sector 3, travel and tourism.  This sector can offer employment opportunities on cruise line companies, online travel agencies, etc. examples include head chef, entertainers, deckhands, stewards, customer support and more.  The hospitality industry has multiple choices of employment for your skills and interests.

Identify career pathways for the hospitality industry

In the hospitality industry, there are a various amount of career pathways you can explore based on your skills and interest.  Most common paths include hotel management, event planning, food and beverage services, travel and tourism, and guest services.  The hospitality industry allows individuals to have a career in a space they enjoy showcasing their expertise and knowledge.

Training options for the hospitality industry

There are various training options in the hospitality industry catering to different roles and skill levels. including certificate programs, online courses, on the job training, professional development workshops, internships, etc.  These popular training options help individuals understand their aspired career pathway to a higher level in the hospitality industry.  Some hospitality companies provide more practical training for the employee to gain experience and practice to develop their skills whereas some hospitality companies offer online courses to gain a better understanding in the three different hospitality sectors.

In today’s lesson my group and I managed to follow a set of instructions in order to create a tasty cheesecake as well as an apple strudel.

To be completely honest, I have never made a cheesecake like the one my group and I made today, or an apple strudel in my life, but would I do it again?  After this lesson yes.

Firstly,  when Chef Mark pronounced to the class that we would be using rice krispies as a base for our cheesecake I started to wonder.  The idea of adding a rice krispie layer for the base is pretty unique because  I have never seen nor heard of anyone that used rice krispies as a base.  Second of all.  I’ve made many cheesecakes alongside my Aunties growing up, but something I found different about today’s lesson is that the recipe we were given had us use gelatin in our cream cheese mixture.  I have never used gelatin in a cheesecake before, but it’s a change and overall, very delicious.

The apple strudel my group and I made today was absolutely amazing.  It’s a fancy type of rolled puff pastry food that is stuffed with apples rolled in cinnamon, brown sugar, etc.  By far the best thing my group and I have made throughout the past couple of lessons in our Hospitality and Catering class.

My group and I found the apple strudel quite challenging at the start.  We messed up the first couple of pastries but ended up fixing our mistakes and all our problems that we caused with the pastry were solved after a bit of thinking of what we could do to revitalise it.   We learnt from our mistakes so the second one we made ended up turning out way better than the first.  They both tasted the same once they were finished and topped up with a spoon of ice cream.

Today’s lesson may have had a tiny bit of mistakes here and there but in the end our food ended up coming out just the way we hoped it would.

In today’s class with Chef Mark my group and I learnt how to cooperate and communicate with each other to make a type of soup called a Minestrone soup.

One thing I learnt about chef Mark is that he has been cooking for around 35 years under the hospitality and catering services and has owned and worked in different restaurants in different countries and areas of New Zealand.

One of the sectors of hospitality and catering are all things having to do with cooking and serving food to other people. Things like being a bartender, waitress, chef, etc.

Some of the 2 main aspects that I can remember about knife safety is that you must always hold your knife to the side of your leg with the point facing down for safety reasons.  You must also pass the knife with the handle facing the person you are handing it to.

Two types of knives I can remember are the boning knife and the chefs knife.  The boning knife is a really small and sharp knife that is used to precisely remove meat from bones, separate meat from fat or joints, etc.  The chefs knife is a very big sharp knife that is used to cut fine slices of meat, dice us vegetables, slice herbs, and cut up food with ease.

I thought today’s lesson was a challenge because of how it is my first time being in a hospitality and catering class.  The soup my group was challenged to make was pretty good but I think we could get even better overtime.

In maths we have been learning how to simplify ratios.  Ratios is where one amount is compared with another amount.  For example when there is a number like 18 : 26 the thing we learnt first was to divide them both by 2 then again and again until you can’t anymore.  When you find that you can no longer divide it by 2 you will end up with your final ratio.

“I went to Auckland for the holidays”, “I went to the beach on the weekends”. Those are the fun things you usually hear about peoples holidays, but my holiday was the complete opposite of fun. It was more of a hard working type of holiday because instead of sleeping and going to all these different types of fun places, I was still waking up early to go to work with my dad.  I was wishing to sleep in and enjoy days without doing homework, but instead I was waking up every day at 6 – 7 in the morning to go to water blast schools.  But I was still motivated to work though because, like some honest people say “do the mahi, get the treats”, and also because my dad needed a hand and I wouldn’t want to leave him do a lot of hard work all alone.

When I got time off from working, my cousins and I were thinking of fun things to do and we came up with the idea of lighting some old roman candles we found in some random box in my shed and like any other young teenagers we definitely weren’t thinking straight. “what if this happens” didn’t come to any of our heads at the time.  So what we did was we grabbed all our fireworks and walked down the back of my house in a place that was more open and safer for us to be lighting things that could starts fires.

There were four of us all holding them at the same time, and us forgetting that these fireworks were like five years old we didn’t know that they could explode in our hands if they weren’t still in good condition. We were all laughing thinking we were the funniest people in the world until the fireworks blew up in our hands, we stopped laughing after that and realised how dangerous they were so we all threw them off the side of the bank and it all went downhill from there, fireworks started shooting everywhere, into trees far away from us, into the creek and even back up at us. We definitely learnt our lesson after that, but instead of not playing with them anymore we stuck them in the ground, dumb idea but it was a fun night and it was something entertaining to do for the holidays.

After that we decided to settle the night with a warm outdoor fire where my cousins and I sat around and talked about the good old memories we’ve had.  We checked the time and it was midnight.  We had been outiside since 7pm and we were still laughing, acting like we were having a rage but really we were just enjoying the good times.

My holiday may have sounded boring but that night was definitely a highlight out of any other thing I did throughout the 2 weeks. But I gotta say, the worst part of the holidays was the Sunday before school started because I spent that day annoyed knowing we had school the next day.

The end