Parents teaching children to cook family meals is steadily becoming a thing of the past. Several middle schools in Madison county offer after school cooking clubs to combat this growing issue. These clubs are offered to seventh and eighth graders in an eight week course featuring safe food handling, basic cooking, proper knife skills, meal planning and nutrition lessons taught by the Snap-Ed assistant from the Madison County Cooperative Extension Service. Ending with a dinner party prepared by the students for their families, complete with table setting and clean up.

One student started the club but couldn’t finish, he came back the next year claiming he enjoyed it so much that he was thinking of becoming a chef. He wanted to take this class to see if his passion was real and to gain skills to advance him into high school culinary class. He is confident this much training will make culinary school a breeze and he can’t wait to become a famous chef.