With a shifting of focus to what our High School Family and Consumer Sciences programs are teaching at our high school, there was a void in providing culinary/cooking education to students at Crittenden County High School. With that in mind, a partnership formed with the 21st Century Learning Program and county 4-H Youth Development Agent Leslea Barnes. A 6 week, beginner cooking course was created to provide students with basic cooking skills such as knife and food safety as well as providing some of the foundations of cooking so they could apply those same skills and knowledge to other foods and have a good general knowledge of basic cooking.  Each meeting focused on a certain skill and youth applied what they learned each class by following a recipe. Youth learned basic kitchen and knife skills, safety, ways to cook eggs and potatoes, how to boil noodles, how to properly cook ground beef and sausage, as well as, cost saving skills of learning how to make homemade pizza, biscuits, and gravy (thickening liquids).  The agent chose these basic areas of education so students could have a basic understanding of a lot of the common skills needed to learn how to cook. During this 6 week series, youth gained confidence in their basic cooking abilities and began to apply what they were learning in class in their home. One student in particular came back after we learned about eggs and the many ways to cook them and said "I cooked eggs at home for my family!  I asked them how they wanted their eggs cooked and I was actually able to make them they way they wanted."  She was so excited and told me on multiple occasions later about how she still cooks eggs for her family and loves to do it.  I asked her if she had ever done anything like this before and she said "No, this is the first time I've ever cooked like this on my own."  You could see the confidence build in this young lady and she looked forward to each cooking class. So much so, we are starting another series of cooking classes at the high school this next semester. I would say that cooking was a success for this young lady and other group of High School students. Because of these classes, they now have some basic foundations and understanding how to cook.