Good practices of social-media conversation honor five key principles just as they do within teams and in kitchens.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, we talked about using social media in our classrooms; this month, we will start a conversation on social-media etiquette for students, something that many of us are concerned about, but not sure how to tackle.

Although some of us have talked to our students about being careful what they post on Facebook because it can make a difference to employers and potential internship and externship sites, some of our students have not heeded that advice. It might help to share with them the 2009 study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, which found that 45% of employers used Google and other social networks to check on the backgrounds of potential hires. And that number is increasing. While we should keep delivering that message, there are many other aspects to social-media etiquette and to communicating clearly and carefully. Given the importance of learning how to use social media thoughtfully, here are a few pointers to share with students.

Easy, free and completely impartial, an assignment board guarantees that everyone shares equally in the assignments over a few days. Say these educators, the system is beautiful in its simplicity.

By Windi Hughes and Chef Adam Weiner

One of the toughest set of problems facing all levels of culinary instructors is how to make sure that no one in a group takes over, no one is always stuck doing the dishes, and no one just sits back and watches everyone do the work. One of the toughest things for a high-school teacher to explain to parents is why their daughter or son comes home every day and says that they did nothing in cooking class.

An easy, free and completely impartial way to handle these problems is to set up an assignment board, which guarantees that everyone shares equally in the assignments over a few days.

Produced for only $0.88 a gallon to operate the college’s vehicles, the savings from converting cooking oil to fuel rather than purchasing regular diesel is huge.

The delicious smell of hot, freshly made doughnuts and French fries is wafting through the air at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley, and it has nothing to do with the creations from the college’s culinary students. It’s the smell of cooking oil turned into biodiesel fuel being used in campus vehicles.

The biodiesel fuel is created on campus from used cooking oil gathered from the fryers in the college’s teaching kitchen and Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant. About 50 gallons of cooking oil is transformed into 45 gallons of fuel by putting the oil into the CIA’s biodiesel distiller. This machine removes the fatty acids from the oil and cleans out impurities. The oil is then heated to a high temperature to remove any remaining water in the mixture.

According to the author of a new book, Demystifying Food from Farm to Fork, the benefits of organic foods are not justified by their cost.

By Maurice Hladik

In 2009, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a similar report, Nutritional Quality of Organic Foods: a Systematic Review, which reached a similar conclusion. The later research was conducted by the University of London on behalf of the British government. Both these were meta-analyses, meaning the highly qualified teams gathered numerous research papers on both sides of the argument before concluding that when it comes to nutrition, farming is farming. The approaches by organic farmers, which differ from their conventional brethren, had little or no impact on nutrition.

These results are hardly surprising when one considers that nutrition is dependent on a host of issues, starting with the variety of the plant or animal. For example, hard red spring wheat has higher protein content than soft winter wheat, and Jersey cows tend to produce milk with higher butterfat content than black and white Holstein Friesians. Then there are a slew of other factors, including the maturity of whatever is grown at harvest, length of time in storage, the variables of humidity and conditions in transport, plus many more. Whew! With so many factors influencing nutrition, it isn’t surprising that a handful of farming practices would make little difference.

Demonstrating the importance of adding a little acidity to the final flavor of a dish is especially important when developing low-sodium recipes.

By Carrie Stebbins

In both culinary and dining classes I talk a lot about the balance of a food or beverage on the palate.

It seems like we teach our culinary students to add salt at many stages, but we only encourage them to add acidity on specific occasions. What I like to emphasize is that acidity can brighten a dish without making it taste sour.

A few years back I attended a wine and food pairing seminar given by Jerry Comfort of Beringer Wines. We tasted foods that represented the basic four flavors, plus umami, along with a variety of wines. The results were negative as often as they were positive! Some of the multiple combinations, however, were the best. I decided to try a similar technique with my culinary students at the beginning of a class to show how important adding a little acidity is to the final flavor of a dish. This is especially important for developing low-sodium recipes.