Future Personal Chefs?

Thursday and Friday of last week, I was fortunate to be asked to come in as a guest to Sharon Poorman's 8th grade Family Consumer Science classes at Palisades Middle School.  It was a great time.

These kids have been working on units on careers and many of them have expressed some interest in jobs in the food industry.  In the cooking portion of the class, they've been learning and cooking healthy and ethnic foods.  In fact, their final project for the class (due this week!) is to create and cook a full meal for their families.  So Mrs. Poorman thought having me in to talk to them and demo some dishes would be a good fit with their classwork.

                                                             Photo courtesy of Sharon Poorman

I tried to combine all of those topics in my visit.  We talked about what a personal chef is and how I became one.  We discussed what it takes to come up with a good menu.  I talked about how healthy eating and local foods go hand-in-hand.  And, of course, we did a little cooking.

I decided to go with two easy and tasty Asian dishes--Asian Pork Lettuce Wraps and Beef Satay.  I made the dishes as they watched--she's got one of those nifty mirrors so they can see what's going on--and, best of all, they got to taste!

I was really impressed with their attentiveness and some of the really good questions that they had about my business and cooking in general.  Some of the kids went away saying how they really wanted to try to make these dishes at home.  I know that exposing young people to different ideas, flavors, etc. only helps them to be more willing to try things in all parts of their lives.  And that makes my visit well worth my time.

Read Mrs. Poorman's write-up on my visit on her web page.