Culinary Arts - An Idea in Motion

Twenty minutes goes a lot faster that I think it will.

Tonight was the first night for JIFF and we had the opportunity to introduce the plan for having Culinary Arts classes this year. I discovered that very few of the students (grades 3-8) know what the word "culinary" means - but they all like to eat, and some of them even like to cook!

We began the classes with a contest - how many kitchen tools can you name in 2 minutes? Go ahead, take the two minutes...we'll wait... Most of the kids came up with 8-10 items and the most often named items were knife, fork and spoon. Sometimes they wandered off into lists of ingredients...but I have to admit, without food...there would be no cooking! All four groups came up with things like microwave, toaster and whisk...the most unusual items were ladle, garlic press and sink. How was your list?

I will now take two minutes and see what I can come up with: knife, fork, spoon, spreader, spatula, slotted spoon, wooden spoon, whisk, garlic press, mallet, meat tenderizer, kitchen shears, baster, pot, pan, skillet, blender, food processor, mixer, oven, stove, microwave, dishwasher, measuring cups, measuring spoons, mixing bowls, meat thermometer, candy thermometer, deep fryer...time's up. Wow...two minutes goes by quickly too!!

After that contest we talked about the fact that we would be trying some new things - both skill sets and tastes. Then we had a little tasting plate to begin the adventure. That was my sister Denise's idea - and a pretty darn good idea it was! I was proud to see that most of the students at least tried everything on the plate.


We had 3 different cheeses - Smoked Gruyere, Chevre and Parmesan; 2 fruits - a dried apricot and a slice of kiwi; 2 types of cracker - wheat thin and Club cracker; and for the adventurous ones we even had a small piece of roasted garlic. We tasted the cheeses by themselves and with the crackers, explored the kiwi - learning that you can indeed eat the little black seeds, talked about dried fruits....and without fail, ran out of time in every session!

I'm looking forward to having a whole 90 minutes with each group in the kitchen.

But knowing me...we will still manage to run out of time!

Till tomorrow - keeping my promise!