A must list that students should review frequently so they might keep their jobs in commercial kitchens.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

Happy holidays!

Those of you who read this column on a regular basis know that I preach the need to teach your students more than how to cook. Unless you teach a pure home-economics class, your ultimate goal is to have your students get jobs in the culinary field. If you don’t teach them how to work in a commercial kitchen, you are dooming them to failure.

So, in honor of the 12 Days of Christmas, and December being the 12^th month, I will recap the 12 things that your students must know to be able to keep their jobs in a commercial kitchen. Feel free to print them out and give them to your students. Tell your students to look at them frequently when they start working.

The Great American Can Roundup Industry Challenge raises more than $183,000 for charity.

As the nation celebrated America Recycles Day on Nov. 15, the aluminum-beverage-can industry announced it had collected and recycled more than 235,100 pounds of cans, raising nearly $183,830 for local charities across the country according to the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI).

The Rexam North American beverage-can headquarters office in Chicago won first place in the annual industry competition, with 70,775 pounds of used aluminum cans (874 per capita), followed by Novelis in LaGrange, Ga., whose employees collected 3,517 pounds of cans (352 per capita). In third place is Ball Corporation’s plant in Findlay, Ohio, collecting and recycling 36,611 pounds (101 per capita). Winners are selected from the highest per-capita collection rates based on the number of pounds of aluminum collected per employee at each site.

An English professor expresses his hope for the culinary-arts students he teaches: that they will see how public speaking translates to everyday interactions.

By Scott Palmieri, Ph.D.

With dreams of becoming the next Thomas Keller or Alice Waters, freshmen who must enter my Communication Skills class at Johnson & Wales University are often far from enthused. As my colleague, Bill Lenox, reminds me, when they go home for Thanksgiving and are asked by their loved ones to wow the family in the kitchen, they are left to explain that they were behind a desk or podium for most of the fall.

For the university, this is a source of pride, as they receive a well-rounded education. However, how do I, an English professor, relate my subject to future culinarians? After 11 years teaching English courses to culinary and baking-and-pastry students, I have learned to speak their language better while bringing them into my world.

From a veritable vegetable harvest to liquid luxuries to 24/7 snacking, a noted trend-tracker is among the first to predict what will be hot on menus next year.

Courtesy of Culinary Visions^® Panel

Culinary Visions^® Panel collected insight from foodservice professionals, scoured more than 20 trade conferences and surveyed more than 3,000 consumer foodies to get their take on the foods and flavors most likely to captivate consumers this coming year. This year the conversation was about the cultural significance of food and the role consumers play as curators.

Curation has become the new art form practiced by opinion-leading chefs who are among the important cultural curators of our time. Consumers, who have been digitally enabled, have become enchanted with the idea of becoming the curators of their real or imagined lives. Following are highlights from the insight collected that includes both food-professional and consumer-foodie perspectives, and what it suggests for the coming year:

When teaching the development of successful children’s menus, emphasize to your students that all five human sensory perceptions (and an arguable sixth) must be put into play.

By Eric Stein, RD, MS, CCE

Getting kids to eat a nutritious meal doesn’t have to be a challenge. Just as there’s no one-size-fits-all learning style in the classroom, kids don’t respond to food stimuli the same way, either. Each child is born with a dominant sense that guides his or her food choices.

Appealing to the senses has a direct bearing on parents’ success getting kids to eat enough of the right foods. And while it is commonly perceived that we eat with our eyes first, aroma and sound also play vital roles in building hunger.

The following recipes are not only visually striking and flavorful, but also appeal to the senses of smell, touch (including texture and mouthfeel) and/or sound: