Teaching Cooking to Kids!

Well, I me our children's pastor for coffee this morning to discuss my idea for Vacation Bible School, and she gave me the go-ahead to teach cooking classes to 5th- and 6th-grade kids! I offered to do this last year, but it was too late to get it going and they were worried about heat and knives. The VBS is a Sports & Fun Arts Camp, where the kids can learn a new skill like pottery, painting, sign language, balloon-creature-making, hip-hop dance, that sort of thing, OR can work on skills in sports like soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball, football, etc. We have something like 800 kids sign up each year.

I told her I was not interested in teaching kids to mix milk w/ a box of instant pudding; they don't need me for that. I told her heat WOULD be involved (hey, it's COOKING), but that I came up w/ a menu that uses a lot of cooking methods, lots of good hands-on, but very little chopping or cutting w/ knives. We have 4 nights to do activities, so 4 dishes. We'll do pancakes, muffins (let kids stir-in their choice of choc chips or fruit), Parmesan Chicken, and Broccoli & Bow Ties (both Ina's recipes). I want the kids to go home after the week being able to prepare supper or even breakfast for their family. Muffins will bake, pancakes on a griddle, pasta boil, broccoli (frozen florets) microwave to steam, and we'll pan-fry chicken.

I need to come up w/ a shopping list and budget, but as I told her, we don't need snacks each night like other groups do! We'll be eating our creations for snacks!

I'll ask the kids to bring a hat or hair restraint and an apron each night, maybe thick pot holders. I plan to discuss Food Safety, Personal Safety (avoiding steam burns, etc), cleaning up vs. clean-as-you-go, how to set a table, how to properly measure wet and dry ingredients, maybe why leavening works, stuff like that. I will only take 12 kids, and have 2 other adult helpers, plus DD(13½). Seems like a drop in the bucket, but for a huge church, we have pretty lame kitchen facilities. That's all I can do.

I'M SO JAZZED about this! I'd even love to teach adult cooking classes! So many people of my generation were the first to have working moms and grew up eating take-out and grocery store deli food. They never learned to cook. And now can't teach their kids to cook. I feel called to equip people to do the most basic of life skills: cooking. And the first week of August, I'll start w/ 12 kiddos from my church!