Every summer, the Marion County Cooperative Extension office partners with one of our local day cares. The class consisted of about 10-12 children each time we met. I worked with the children twice a month so we had about six teaching lessons with them. 

One particular young lady in this group was very shy and didn’t talk a lot. I never knew she was grasping all that I was teaching in the cooking class. Each time we met in cooking class we always went over food safety, keeping our hands clean and how to read a recipe. Little did I know that the shy, little young lady was going to utilize these skills as she grew older. I had not come in contact with her until this past summer. The young lady now works at our local grocery store part time and attends college. As I was checking out in her line she asked aren’t you Mrs. Juanita that I had cooking with when I used to come to the day care? I said, yes I am. She started to tell me how I had taught her the skills of cooking and the simple recipes that we used in cooking. She even shared one chicken recipe that we used in one of our classes. She told me that she is still using the recipe and just loves to cook it for her family. 

Even though this has been a few years ago you never know what kind of impact you can make on young people. If she had not been in that cooking program, she may not have acquired the basic cooking skills from the Marion County Cooperative Expanded Food and Nutrition program. This makes me very proud of our program.