Kusina Chem: The Science behind Filipino Foods

In my search for a livelihood opportunity related to food, I attended a vegetable processing seminar at the UP Los Banos where we were taught the basics of the various ways of handling and processing vegetables such as drying, pickling, freezing and bottling.

Hands on training to make bottled ampalaya.

Learning the right way to pasteurize vegetables from Mr. Emong

my fellow participants

The course was informative and the hands on was very interesting but what I realized was that although most people are familiar with the many techniques that were taught us, they do not have an idea of the "why"  or the science behind a certain procedure taken in food preparation or why is it necessary. I thought that maybe this would be an interesting topic for a book.

So apart from going home with knowledge on how to process vegetables, I also came home with a potential book idea.

our finished products

Hope I can get the cooperation of local food scientists to make this idea a reality.

Frankly though I was hoping that we could have been taught more interesting stuff. But since the course was really for beginners I can not complain. What I am really grateful about however is that on the side, our hands on instructor taught me how to make home made yoghurt when he found out my liking for it. It was liking getting two courses for the price of one.