Does Cooking Technology Matter? Fuelwood Use and Efficiency of Different Cooking Technologies in Lilongwe District, Malawi

Biomass, mainly firewood and charcoal contributes over 90% of Malawi’s total energy demand. As a result, deforestation is increasing at unprecedented rate and firewood is becoming scarce. Individual assessment of various cooking technologies has been widely done without comparison of various cooking technologies. Therefore, this study has been devoted to compare the performance, cooking time and fuelwood usage of the three-stone fireplace, Rocket and Chitetezo cooking technologies. The study used Specific Fuel consumption (SC) as a proxy for principal indicator of cooking technology efficiency. It measures the amount of wood used per kg of food. Rocket stove has been found to use less time, less fuelwood and produces less smoke.Cooking Technology, Fuelwood, Stove Efficiency

The usage of mobile application to teach practical skills among catering students

Latest educational media based on mobile application nowadays is an important tool for teaching and learning which can help to attract the students’ attention and the students will be more efficient since they can study by their own anywhere and anytime with different situations surround them. This paper focuses on the usage of the mobile application in teaching practical skills among catering students. In line with the issues nowadays where the live demonstration is too backdated rather than use the mobile application to enhance the enjoyment of the cooking process in catering classroom. Teaching and learning with the mobile application was perceived to assist the learning process in cooking by following ways: increasing the comprehension of the cooking process and real-time to reassurance in the cooking process, enhancing the enjoyment of the cooking process and acquire new cooking skills. The findings show that the usage of mobile application is at moderate level. On the other hand, the positive implication towards students is at medium level. Overall, for this study, researchers found that the usage of mobile application among catering students was good and perceived positively towards students

Suggesting Cooking Recipes Through Simulation and Bayesian Optimization

Cooking typically involves a plethora of decisions about ingredients and tools that need to be chosen in order to write a good cooking recipe. Cooking can be modelled in an optimization framework, as it involves a search space of ingredients, kitchen tools, cooking times or temperatures. If we model as an objective function the quality of the recipe, several problems arise. No analytical expression can model all the recipes, so no gradients are available. The objective function is subjective, in other words, it contains noise. Moreover, evaluations are expensive both in time and human resources. Bayesian Optimization (BO) emerges as an ideal methodology to tackle problems with these characteristics. In this paper, we propose a methodology to suggest recipe recommendations based on a Machine Learning (ML) model that fits real and simulated data and BO. We provide empirical evidence with two experiments that support the adequacy of the methodology

Semi-automatic annotation process for procedural texts: An application on cooking recipes

Taaable is a case-based reasoning system that adapts cooking recipes to user constraints. Within it, the preparation part of recipes is formalised as a graph. This graph is a semantic representation of the sequence of instructions composing the cooking process and is used to compute the procedure adaptation, conjointly with the textual adaptation. It is composed of cooking actions and ingredients, among others, represented as vertices, and semantic relations between those, shown as arcs, and is built automatically thanks to natural language processing. The results of the automatic annotation process is often a disconnected graph, representing an incomplete annotation, or may contain errors. Therefore, a validating and correcting step is required. In this paper, we present an existing graphic tool named \kcatos, conceived for representing and editing decision trees, and show how it has been adapted and integrated in WikiTaaable, the semantic wiki in which the knowledge used by Taaable is stored. This interface provides the wiki users with a way to correct the case representation of the cooking process, improving at the same time the quality of the knowledge about cooking procedures stored in WikiTaaable

Developing Sous Vide/Freezing Systems for Ready-Meal omponents

End of project reportSous vide cooking involves sealing raw or par-cooked food in a vacuumised laminated plastic pouch or container, cooking by controlled heating, rapid chilling and then re-heating for consumption. The chilled storage period is up to 21 days at 0 to 3oC. The recommended thermal process for sous vide products is 90oC for 10min or its time-temperature equivalent. Concerns about the safety of sous vide products, mainly due to the potential for temperature abuse in the chill chain, has prevented the widespread use of this technology. The role of the current project, therefore, was to investigate sous vide cooking followed by freezing, as a safe alternative to sous vide/chilling for 10 ready-meal components i.e. carbohydrates (potatoes, pasta, rice), vegetables (carrots, broccoli) and muscle foods (salmon, cod, chicken, beef and lamb).National Development Plan (NDP

ACA chefs adopt a school: An evaluation

This document summarises an evaluation of a cooking in schools initiative called Chefs Adopt a School (CAAS) which is delivered by the Academy of Culinary Arts.1 At present, sessions are provided all over England from Cumbria to Cornwall subject to demand and resources (with a few sessions being delivered in Scotland too). Annually, 21,000 children take part in the initiative. Delivered by professional chefs, the programme aim is to teach children about food, food provenance, health, nutrition and cookery. The evaluation was informed by a rapid systematic review of the existing literature on cooking in schools. This research has been carried out at a time when cooking in schools is being put forward as a solution to improving diets and reducing obesity. It is currently the only evaluation of school cooking in the UK that measures outcomes that impact on health, such as: eating behaviour, cooking confidence and confidence asking for fruit, vegetables and ingredients at home. As such, it can inform future UK school cooking initiative interventions and evaluations. It also highlights the need to incorporate evaluation into school cooking initiatives, as findings provide valuable information necessary to fine tune an intervention. In the core programme, chefs link with local schools, usually primary, where they deliver 2-3 sessions to one year group within a school. This process is then repeated each year. Key issues covered include hygiene, healthy eating, an appreciation of food through the senses (particularly taste) and practical cooking/food preparation. The first session covers healthy eating and the sensory appreciation of food while the second and third sessions are practical

Implications of Charcoal Briquette Produced by Local Communities on Livelihoods and Environment in Nairobi Kenya

The residents of Nairobi, Kenya, use 700 tonnes of charcoal per day, producing about 88 tonnes of charcoal dust that is found in most of the charcoal retailing stalls that is disposed of in water drainage systems or in black garbage heaps. The high costs of cooking fuel results in poor households using unhealthy materials such as plastic waste. Further, poor households are opting to cook foods that take a short time to prepare irrespective of their nutritional value. This article presents experiences with community self-help groups producing charcoal fuel briquettes from charcoal dust in poorer nieghbourhoods of Nairobi for home use and sale. Households that produced charcoal fuel briquettes for own use and those that bought them saved 70% and 30% of money spent on cooking energy respectively. The charcoal fuel briquettes have been found to be environmentally beneficial since they produce less smoke and increase total cooking energy by more than 15%, thereby saving an equivalent volume of trees that would be cut down for charcoal. Charcoal briquette production is a viable opportunity for good quality and affordable cooking fuel. Bioenergy and waste management initiatives should promote recovery of organic by-products for charcoal briquette production

Physicochemical and nutritional properties of rice as affected by parboiling steaming time at atmospheric pressure and variety

To elucidate the effect of different parboiling steaming time on the physicochemical and nutritional quality of rice, four varieties, NERICA1, NERICA7, IR841, and WITA4, were soaked at the same initial temperature (85°C) and steamed for 5, 15, 25, 35, and 45 min. NERICA7 steamed for 25 min recorded the highest head rice yield (71.9%). Nonparboiled IR841 recorded the shortest cooking time (17.0 min), while NERICA1 steamed for 35 min recorded the longest cooking time (26.1 min). NERICA1 steamed for 45 min was the hardest (63.2 N), while nonparboiled IR841 was the softest (28.7 N). NERICA7 recorded higher peak and final viscosities across all steaming times compared to the other varieties. NERICA7 steamed for 35 and 45 min recorded the lowest total starch (77.3%) and the highest protein (13.2%) content, respectively. NERICA7 steamed for 25 and 45 min recorded the highest phosphorus (0.166%), magnesium (572 mg/kg), and potassium (2290 mg/kg) content, respectively. We conclude that, depending on desired physicochemical and nutritional properties, specific varieties and steaming times can be selected to achieve those outcomes

Pemanfaatan Limbah Kulit Jagung (Zea mays) Sebagai Bahan Baku Pulping dan Bleaching dengan Penambahan Natrium Hidroksida (NaOH) dengan Menggunakan Alat Digester (Utilization of Corn Husk (Zea Mays) Waste as Raw Material Pulping and Bleaching with Addition of Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) by Using a Digester)

Corn is a useful plant that is widespread throughout the country, including Indonesia. This plant is one source of carbohydrate food to the people in Indonesia. One part of this plant in the form of corn husks are often used as animal feed. Corn skin contains cellulose that can be used as an alternative raw material in the manufacture of pulp. The pulping process used in this study is the process of soda, which is releasing corn husk fibers with sodium hydroxide solution by using a digester. This study aims to determine the effect of concentration cookers and cooking temperature on the quality of the pulp produced. The variables used in this study is a 7% concentration cookers, cooking temperature 90°C, cooking time 80 minutes and 11% concentration cookers, 110oC cooking temperature, cooking time 80 minutes. Results pulp is analyzed to obtain moisture and cellulose α levels. The results show the best pulp at 7% concentration cookers, cooking temperature 90°C and cooking time 80 minutes with a water content of 33,00% and cellulose α levels 39,33%. Keywords : Pulp, corn husk, cooking temperature, cooking tim