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Chef Needs Help

4K views 18 replies 15 participants last post by  GaSteve 
#1 ·
I teach culinary arts at a vocational school level and I am trying to bridge the understanding that food doesnt come on a truck, that is comes from farms. I am also trying to get the point across to my students that honeybees and pollination are paramount to a lot of foods that we work with everyday.

With that said, I would love to start collecting videos to show them. At the school we teach at, we are not allowed to watch Hulu or Youtube so I would need to buy the videos.

Any recomendations?

I heard that The Last Beekeeper was a great documentery but I can not find it for sale.

Any thoughts?
 
#2 ·
If you have access to the internet at another location, such as your home, there are countless numbers of videos on YouTube and Google Video that are free to download and record with free addons to your web browser ( I use FireFox with the free "Video DownLoad Helper" addon.)

Once downloaded, it is simply a matter of burning the videos to a CD or DVD for viewing anywhere you go.

Big Bear
 
#5 ·
Hi Chef,



I joined Slow Food last year... I wish the membership was cheaper so more would join.

Good luck.

Joe
Thats Funny, we just hosted Slow Food out of Knoxville at my Dads farm.....Turned out GREAT!! Chef, why not get a hive? Talk to the Culinary Institute and see what they say......
 
#4 ·
I am also trying to get the point across to my students that honeybees and pollination are paramount to a lot of foods that we work with everyday.

Here's one of my old applications:

Tossed green salad.
Have them list each ingredient, seed source, and agricultural location where it's grown.
For example:
Red leaf lettuce, grown from seed located in the Oxnard plains of California.
Pole grown tomatoes, grown from seed, transplanted and grown in the Oxnard plains of California
Pick up a few seed order booklets. Have them use the booklets for research
You could add local photos of the crops being grown for local consumption.
And, if you dress up your salads with some flowers like Nasturtiums.


Nasturtiums are one of my favorite flowers because of their ease, versatility and flavor, and of course their beauty. These little wonders require very little attention to thrive in your garden. Just give them some soil, water and room to grow and they'll be happy campers. Both nasturtium flowers and leaves are edible as long as you don't use pesticides. They give a peppery punch similar to watercress in salads and pasta dishes, and the flowers add a hit of color and flavor. Nasturtium seeds are edible as well when they are young and green and have been likened to capers when pickled. They even offer their fare share of Vitamin C.

You now can extend your lesson plan to many areas.
Remember to let the student make their own deductions.
You can extend this concept thoughout your entire menu!
Have fun with it.
Because I sure do/did!
Ernie
 
#7 ·
my wife does alot of work with the farm to school program here, and everyone involved in that has the same real food values you are talking about. if there is a farm to school program there talk to them. my wife has taken the local elementary school to an orchard, a dairy farm, the community gardens, etc. she also started school gardens and has all the teachers working it into their lesson plans, so the kids have to be getting some of it into their brains. good luck. i think school gardens would be the most educational tool and would also give you some good food to cook with. justin
 
#8 ·
Chef I tried to watch the movie but unable to. Here is a link to a thread here. It was on GREEN channel.


http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=233869&highlight=beekeeper

Fortunately a lot of youngsters around here have the benefit of knowing/experiencing that food is not found in celophane, but is time consuming and supplied with great responsibility and by those who answer a call (I believe). As well as knowing that just because you plant it you will harvest is not true. That each year can be a crapshoot with all kinds of uncontrolable variables that are part of life.

I think it's great that teachers do what you folks are doing!!!!
 
#10 ·
Chef,
I am a beekeeper and also high school teacher. I honestly would not recommend The Last Beekeeper to high school students. I thought it was a good documentary about bees, understanding you knew something about them and could follow the storyline. I just dont think they would easily connect with the film and would lose interest quickly.

On the flip side there are a number of fantastic YouTube videos out there which I've shown my students. I use www.keepvid.com, where you just paste the youtube video URL and it records it into a file for you to play. (Most schools have blocked youtube). Quicktime will play the file format and is free aswell. I would highly recommend this route, some people have put up some awesome tutorials and you can find pretty much any aspect of beekeeping you desire. I typically put it on my laptop hard drive and plug it into the projector, but a DVD could also be burnt.

I've been promoting beekeeping at my high school and found that the flavored honey sticks go a long way. My students bend over backwards for them and once they had them it really intrigued them about bees/honey and the proccesses and skills of beekeeping. It can also been a sweet treat for students, at my school they are considered a "school certifed healthy food aswell".

I wish you the best of luck, if I can help you out any further don't hesistate to send me a PM.
 
#12 ·
Chef,

On the flip side there are a number of fantastic YouTube videos out there which I've shown my students. I use www.keepvid.com, where you just paste the youtube video URL and it records it into a file for you to play.
Did not work. How did you do it.?

"Please try again. Report any problems to: keepvid.com@gmail.com

No links found on http://video.pbs.org/video/995224587/"
 
#11 ·
I noticed The Last Beekeeper is a free offering from my cable company's On Demand selection. Comcast is my provider.

Personally, I didn't care for the the movie. It's a reality format, and it's truly sad to see the beekeepers they follow face the tragedy of CCD and financial ruin. I'm sympathetic to that. But aside from that drama, I don't think there is much learning to be had other than we can't keep doing things the same old way and expect continued good results.
 
#13 ·
SD:

I could see that with high schoolers, yes. I teach at a culinary school and I feel that I have to make that connection to the stuents. Students just think things come from the store or on a truck and do not really value the hard work farmers do or the journey from seed to edible product things go through.
 
#14 ·
Hey chef heres a great idea take them on a feild trip to the farms,packing houses processing plants and so forth and show them your own bees have the farmers explain how the crops would produce muchless if not fail all together if not for bees. If there are FFA OR 4H chapters in your area talk to them about some kind of presetation that they could do. I think that everybody should have some sense of where there food really comes from you may even suggest growing a simple garden of a few herbs and vegetables.A simple understanding of these things should be a requirement in culinary schools. We have gotten so far away from where our food comes from we do not have any appreciation as a people for our food anymore. I think what you are trying to do is a very good thing.:)
 
#15 ·
Here’s an idea - stock a refrigerator with common items and have the students research where each idem comes from and how it is produced. Then take all the items out that are pollinated directly by bees. See what is left. Then remove the items that are indirectly pollinated by bees and start cooking cook from what is left!:doh:
 
#16 ·
East Side Buzz,

It should work for you, I've been using it for a while and at times have found it didn't work but 98%+ it does. It can be tricky if you haven't used it before. The way I do it is

- Go to YouTube and open up the actual video you want to watch (it should be playing on your screen and copy the web address up at the top of your internet browser. Dont try to copy the link/thumbnail from the main page.

- On www.keepvid.com at the very top of the page there is a blue bar with a URL/web address field. Paste the URL/ web address into the blue bar and click the "DOWNLOAD" button.

- A new page will come up and you will usually be given 2 choices under a green menu bar called "Download Links". The two choices usually are low quality (.flv video) or high quality (.mp4 video). I recommend the .mp4/high quality video, you will have fewer issues with playback.

- Click on the download link corresponding to the video quality you'd like and download the video, it will save as a file onto your harddrive. Simply double click on the file you'd like to watch and it should play. I've found Quicktime (which also comes with ITunes if you have that) to work the best.

Hopefully this helps, if you continue to have any issues please don't hesistate to contact me. My best advice is if it isnt working for you to try another video or possibly if the site is down try it at a different time. Hope you have a great evening.
 
#17 ·
I agree about not recommending The Last Beekeeper - it does presume you know a lot about beekeeping - and it is VERY depressing (watching adults cry is never fun). The focus is more on beekeepers deprived of their livelihoods than on food not being pollenated, which it sounds like you are after.

If beekeeping itself is what you're looking for, Nova's "Tales From the Hive" can't be beat.
 
#19 ·
It was depressing. After one of the beeks bought a few hundred packages without telling his wife, my wife turned to me and asked what I bought without her knowledge -- of course I answered "nothing, dear". ;)

Both Tales from the Hive and Silence of the Bees are good videos. There was about a 10 minute piece on the CBS Morning Show a couple years ago that was really informative and good for short attention spans. It might still be on the CBS website.
 
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