Rotating groups through learning modules keeps students engaged while enhancing their skills development.

By Carrie Stebbins, CWE

If you teach practical lab classes and have not yet tried a lesson plan where you have students rotate through a number of modules, each teaching a specific skill, I encourage you to try!

This works especially well early in a class when you have several fundamental skills you want your students to practice. With a lab class of 20 students, I plan four modules with five students in each group. I give each of the groups a mise-en-place list.

Coors Recycles® teams up with Recyclebank® to reward consumers for their environmental efforts.

Coors Brewing Company, inventor of the first 100% recyclable aluminum can in 1959, last month kicked off its latest sustainability initiative by announcing a partnership with Recyclebank®, the company that rewards people for taking everyday green actions with discounts and deals from more than 4,000 local businesses and national brands. The program, Coors Recycles®, will support the Recyclebank mission to promote environmentally conscious waste disposal through a monetary contribution and special packaging.

Almost 25% of the motor cortex of the human brain is dedicated to the hands. Yet as chefs, says this former president of a prestigious culinary school, we take better care of our knives.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

I have been giving lots of thoughts to my tool kit lately. Like many chefs, I have a plethora of knives, forks, cutters, pastry tips, strange new gizmos and the like. My tool kit (if I brought everything with me to the kitchen) would require a two-wheel cart to drag it from location to location. Instead, I usually bring a handful of knives in a small tackle box.

Unlike some of the young “chefs in training” who have $300 Japanese knives, mine are pretty modest. Keeping an edge on the knife is the only real important factor in determining how well a knife cuts.

As I look at this arsenal of cutting equipment it suddenly came to me that the knife without the hand is pretty useless. This made me really start to wonder in amazement at the versatility of the human hand and how it truly is the most important tool in a chef’s kit.

It and 10 others join The Food Channel’s 2013 Trends Forecast. Smoked water, anyone? And “no choice” is becoming the new choice when dining out.

The Food Channel recently released its 2013 Trends Forecast, compiled in conjunction with CultureWaves® and the International Food Futurists®. Here’s an abridged look at what The Food Channel sees happening in the world of food this year. Click here for the full report.

1. Kickstarting New Food Concepts. Kickstarter, GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sites have been around a while, but we see them really kicking it up to a new level in the food and hospitality arena in the coming year. Got a new food product idea, or want to build a new restaurant? Go for it, and make it a crowdpleaser.

Cascade Culinary Institute builds a new culinary center whose physical and spatial attributes meld perfectly with its natural surroundings, facilitating student learning and the successful collaboration of education and community.

Located on the perimeter of the Central Oregon Community College (COCC) campus in Bend, Cascade Culinary Institute’s new Jungers Culinary Center is the anchor for a future mixed-use development, providing academic and commercial opportunities for the college and its students.

Portland-based Yost Grube Hall (YGH) Architecture collaborated with nationally recognized culinary and kitchen-design professionals to analyze the academic program and then develop a new curriculum and facility to support it. The new 15,000-sq.-ft. building reflects the college’s partnership with the region’s leading hospitality establishments and their staffs, resulting in a flexible facility program that will accommodate the culinary school’s needs for the next five to 10 years.