Life Skills Arcade Middle school Family and Consumer Sciences, grades 6 to 8

Handout 6.10

Handout 6.10: Dish Research Card and Comparison

Unit
Unit 6: From Farm to Table
Handout
6.10

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Name: ____________________________________ Date: ______________ Period: ______

Print pages 1 to 4 for every student. Page 5 is the research packet reading option for classes without devices. Page 6 is the grade 8 stretch card.


Our class agreement on food talk

Read it before you write anything.

  1. Curious, not disgusted. "I have not tried that" is a sentence. "That is gross" is not.
  2. Ask, do not assume. If you want to know why a food is made a certain way, ask the question instead of guessing the answer.
  3. No ranking. No best cuisine, no worst, no "weird." Different climates and different crops made different food. That is the whole explanation.
  4. Nobody has to be the expert on their own background. You may share a family dish if you want to, and you may say nothing, and neither one gets a follow-up question.
  • * *

Part 1. The five factors that shape a cuisine

FactorWhat it meansOne example from today
Climate
Crops
Trade
Migration
Religion

Which factor do you think matters most? ______________________ Why?



Part 2. Pick your form and your three cultures

Circle one form. Your group takes all three dishes inside it, one per person.

FormCulture 1Culture 2Culture 3Fourth option
Filled doughEmpanada (Latin America and Spain)Pierogi (Poland)Samosa (South Asia)Jiaozi (China) or ravioli (Italy)
Rice and beans plateRice and peas (Jamaica)Gallo pinto (Costa Rica and Nicaragua)Red beans and rice (Louisiana)Hoppin' john (the Carolinas)
FlatbreadPita (eastern Mediterranean)Roti or chapati (South Asia)Tortilla (Mexico and Central America)Injera (Ethiopia and Eritrea) or lavash (Armenia and Turkey)

My form: ______________________ My dish: ______________________


Part 3. My research card

Fill in all five boxes. You need two sources and one of them must be a library source or a reference source, not a search result summary.

BoxMy answer
1. Region and country or countries
2. Main ingredients (four or five)
3. Cooking method (from the Lesson 6.6 list: bake, roast, broil, toast, sauté, boil, simmer, steam, poach)
4. Why here? Name a crop, a climate, a trade route, a migration, or a religious practice that explains why this dish exists in this place. "Because it is their tradition" does not answer this.
5. One thing that will surprise the class

My two sources

#Source titleAuthor or publisherType (book, encyclopedia, museum, university, news, other)
1
2

My ninety-second presentation, in order

  1. My dish is ____________ from ____________.
  2. The main ingredients are ______________________________________________.
  3. It is cooked by ____________________.
  4. It exists there because _______________________________________________.
  5. The thing that surprised me is _________________________________________.
  • * *

Part 4. The comparison

Fill this in as you hear the other two dishes in your form.

Dish 1: ____________Dish 2: ____________Dish 3: ____________
Region
Main ingredients
Cooking method
What makes it different from the other two

What is the same across all three?



What is different?



Why is it different? Name at least two of the five factors.

Factor 1: ____________ How it explains a difference: ________________________


Factor 2: ____________ How it explains a difference: ________________________


The last line

One thing I would try: ______________________________________________________

One question I still have: __________________________________________________

Exit card, Day 1

The factor that explains my dish best is ______________________ because _______



If we are not tasting: the extension task

Pick a fourth everyday form that shows up in at least three cultures. Name the form and the three versions. You may not use one of the three on the list above.

My fourth form: ______________________________

CultureThe name of the dish thereOne ingredient that makes it local
1.
2.
3.

One sentence on why this form shows up everywhere:



Page 5: Research packet reading option

For classes without devices. Print two short paragraphs and one photo per dish from a library source. Below is what each paragraph needs to contain so students can complete the card.

Each printed paragraph must giveBecause the card asks for
The country or region, and whether the dish travels beyond itBox 1
Four or five main ingredients by nameBox 2
How it is cooked, in words a student can match to the nine methodsBox 3
One fact about the local crop, the climate, a trade route, a migration, or a religious practiceBox 4
The source title, author or publisher, and date, printed at the bottom of the pageThe two source lines


Page 6: Grade 8 stretch card

Three sources, one of them printed. Then answer this.

Pick one ingredient in your dish. Trace it back to where the plant actually came from, and explain how it got to your dish's region.

QuestionMy answer
The ingredient
Where the plant originally came from
How it got to my dish's region (trade, colonization, migration, or deliberate planting)
About when
My source for this

The hard question: based on what you found, is there such a thing as a pure traditional cuisine? Answer in three or four sentences, using your ingredient as the evidence.